Page 38 of Sincerely, Butterfly

“You have got to be fucking with me, right?” I ask, laughing in disbelief. “Of course! Dude, you were known for leaving bodies all across the UK. Your body count is, what? In the hundreds?”

“What?” My dad’s eyes widen, his cheeks turning bright pink. “No! Of course not. I’ve only been with your mother and maybe three other women.”

“Oh my god, Dad, no. I mean body count, as in how manypeople you killed.” I can’t help but laugh. And this man is telling me he killed people before. He’s too cute.

“Ohhh,” he chuckles. “Then yes, around that. Actually, there are a few more that they never found,” he admits.

The Midnight Shadow was a serial killer who killed over a hundred men across the UK back in the eighties.

Surveillance cameras were a new thing back then, and not every place had them. At least not in the areas where the bodies were being found. So there were no witnesses, no video proof, and no DNA evidence that was left behind.Not that DNA was much of a thing back then, either.

None of the victims seemed to be connected to the killer, so the police were calling it a random act of violence.

Others called him a vigilante because the men who were being killed were linked to some fucked up crimes.

To this day, there are still a lot of unknowns, despite this being a big case the police were determined to solve.

And now I get to knoweverything.

“You have no idea how fucking pumped I am right now.” I giggle. “Holy shit, my dad is my favorite serial killer. I can’t believe this.”

He just smiles back at me, not sure how to take the compliment.

“I have so many questions. Like, how did you start? What was your reasoning? Why those specific men? Why did you stop? And when was the last time you killed?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he chuckles. “Slow down there. One question at a time. Let’s take this one at a time.”

“Okay.” I nod, getting comfortable and leaning in, eager to listen like he’s telling me some amazing bedtime story.

How is this my life right now? It’s like meeting your favorite celebrity and getting to consider them your friend.Only he’s my dad!

“Do you know who Ilya Petrov is?”

My brows furrow, trying to remember where I heard that name from. “I think so…” It takes me a few moments before it clicks. “Wasn’t he like a part of the Russian mafia or something awhile ago?”

“Not just a part of, the leader,” Dad corrects. “And your great-grandfather.”

“Wait, what?” My eyes practically bug out of my head. “You’re fucking with me?”

“Nope,” he chuckles. “You see, my father spent his whole life working to be just like his dad. And he ended up doing just that. He’s a very powerful man who was determined to shape me in his very image. And for a while, it was working. But the older I got, the more I realized I didn’t want that life. When I was eighteen, I moved to Poland, changed my name, and started over. Life was good. I was happy, had a good job, met a girl…” He gives me a look that tells me this story doesn’t have a good end for him.

“For a few years, I was able to be out of my father’s clutches. I should have known it wasn’t going to last long. Just after my twenty-first birthday, my father found me. He told me it was time to come home and be a part of the family business. And when I told him to eat shit,” my dad pauses, grimaces, and sighs. “He didn’t like that answer.”

“What did he do?” I ask, already guessing the answer.

“He took the girl I loved and killed her. Said he would do the same to any other woman I tried to be with again. That was, unless I came back home. Otherwise, I’d never have peace.”

“Fuck.” I blow out a breath. “That’s fucked up. I’m sorry.”

“It was. And thank you. I loved Lena a lot. She was my first love. At that time, I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with her. I was ready to propose and everything. Until he took her from me.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I went a little mad.” He smirks sadistically. “I channeled all my anger into getting revenge. At first, I wanted to slit his throat, but that was too merciful for him. Instead, I decided to show him the kind of man he was losing to. I was trained to be his enforcer of sorts. So, from a young age, I was taught how to take a life and how to cover it up. I was supposed to be a game-changer for my father. It’s why he wanted me to come back so badly. Not just that it was a betrayal to the family, but because he’d be losing a man that could benefit him bigtime.”

“Sounds like grandpa's an asshat.” I wrinkle my nose.

“He is. Big time. Anyway, over the course of a few years, I made my way across Europe, finding men who worked for different organizations my father had partnerships with and killing them. When things began getting too risky, and I’d left too many bodies, I’d move on to the next place.”