Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 85414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
“Oh, that. It’s the same person who sent us the recordings of Alicia’s messages. They also knew about my fixation on Bridget and Alicia. See, the first time I met your mother, I was…experimenting, but no matter what I did, it always fell short. Bridget came to Yorkshire for a festival and was sitting alone in a pub. The moment I saw her, it was as if I’d found purpose, inspiration, beauty, and madness. She was the muse that I’d spent so long searching for.
“I planned to suffocate her after I fucked her that night, but I couldn’t. The light in her eyes kept me going and going and…going. We spent the weekend together, then she went back to her husband. I followed her from afar, and she was different in London — boring almost. She was nothing like the woman who threw away all her inhibitions and showed her true colours at that festival. However, she did inspire me, and for that, I kept her alive.
“My obsession with her bled into women who resembled her, and let’s say, she suspected it. When she gave birth to you, she dropped you at my doorstep and disappeared into the night. I was so busy with you, I didn’t pay her many visits. Then Alicia came for you of her own volition. She was a carbon copy of Bridget, so when your mum killed herself, I latched onto Alicia for inspiration. She became my new muse, and I assume the one who poisoned her knew that fact.”
My lips tremble and I set them in a line as I absorb what he’s said and hear the confirmation that he’s a monster with his own words. “Who is it?”
“I have my theories.”
“Who?”
“Why do you want to know, my little muse? Do you suspect they’re after you now?”
“I want justice for Alicia.” My heart dips in its cavity as I murmur, “Is it Jonathan?”
A part of me has already started mourning the fact that it could be Jonathan. After all, Alicia named him, and he made me feel as if I were insane when I mentioned the flash drives. He could’ve easily bribed Paul, the concierge, so that he’d lie and say he didn’t receive any packages.
If he hurt Alicia in any way, I won’t be able to forgive him. I don’t care that she did. I’m not her, and deep down, I’ll always hate him.
It’ll destroy me in the process, but I won’t be able to trust him ever again.
“Jonathan.” Dad raises a brow. “What is it about him that got you both tangled up? I didn’t raise you to take other people’s leftovers, Claire.”
“Is it him?” I insist.
“Apologise first and I might consider forgiving you and telling you.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Say, I’m sorry I turned you in, Dad. I’m sorry I fucking betrayed you.”
“I didn’t betray you, Dad. You betrayed me. You painted the world for me, then you turned it all black. You became my hero just to pull the carpet from beneath my feet. The world shattered in front of my eyes the moment I saw you dragging a corpse with complete nonchalance. I was sixteen, Dad! Fucking sixteen. I hadn’t even lived yet and you killed me. I hadn’t breathed yet and you smothered me. I spent the past eleven years gasping for air and finding smoke. The moment I start to pull my pieces together, the memory of you scatters them apart all over again. So don’t you dare sit there and say I betrayed you. You betrayed me. You were my world, but you metaphorically buried me alive in that eighth grave. I’m finally digging my way out, and I will not allow you to push me in that hole again.”
Tears soak my cheeks by the time I finish, but they’re not sad or weak tears. They’re angry tears. Injustice tears. Because I was finally able to tell him what I think, what I’ve always thought.
The reason I felt so guilty towards those victims was because, even though I hated him for what he did, I couldn’t stop considering him as my dad. The little girl in me still loved him. She still saw him as the father who picked her up, after her mother threw her away, and raised her as if his world revolved around her.
But he tarnished that world. He smashed it to pieces.
Maybe that’s why sixteen-year-old me thought I needed to take the jabs and the hits. She even thought being stabbed was karma for not being able to hate my father as much as I should. For secretly still loving him. For secretly missing him.
I needed to come to terms with the fact that it’s okay to consider your father a father, despite him being a monster. I just have to move on from those memories where I considered him my world.