Page 119 of Unholy Masks

She tugged at a lock of her hair, her frown deepening as she read through the file.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I asked, looking at her, trying to gauge her reaction.

Her nostrils flared as she clenched her hands on the table. Her eyes were so full of disdain and rage.

“Yes. He slipped up one time, and I had to search through different archives to find the news,” she admitted. “I found the news.” She winced. “Why are you looking for that bastard?”

“Sometimes, you have to look a monster in the eye so you can finally move on.”

I didn’t say you need to kill a monster to move on. You had to.

Monsters like Reginald Sinclair wouldn’t simply disappear into the dark. They hunted, they haunted. I was free the moment I killed my father.

“What are you—”

“Ryden needs closure. A real, definite one.”

She exhaled sharply, shaking her head. “But what if he doesn’t want that? What if digging this up only makes things worse for him?” She worried her lips. “I don’t want that. I don’t want him to suffer through it again.”

“I won’t drag him into this mess without asking him about it,” I said. “I just need some information first. That’s all.”

“And what exactly do you plan to do with that information?”

I met her gaze head-on.

“Nothing, not yet, but I believe Ryden deserves the truth. He deserves to know if the bastard is rotting in some ditch, or if he’s still out there, breathing the same air as him.”

Reginald Sinclair had broken Ryden in ways that couldn’t be fixed, left scars that no amount of time could erase. I wanted to break him in return for that sin. I wanted to break him into unrecognizable pieces.

I hated it when someone hurt the people I loved. There were very few people I loved. And I loved Ryden more than I loved myself.

He was the one constant in my life, the only one who had seen the darkest, most twisted parts of me and never turned away. Even Irene did, at some point.

She came back. Kat said.

She came back, but he never went away.

He had stitched my broken pieces together, and then waited until I healed. He had stayed when others had run, holding my hands even when he learned about Victor.

For him, I would do anything, I would do everything.

“And if he is?”

My fingers curled into a fist. “I’ll find a way to hurt him back.”

I will kill him.

The man who dared to steal beautiful parts of Ryden… to break his soul… deserved to burn. And I would burn Reginald Sinclair to the fucking ground.

I had no mercy left in me, not for fathers like him.

I could see the war behind her eyes—whether to help me or warn me off. “You think this will fix things?” she asked at last. “That it’ll make Ryden feel better?”

I leaned forward, staring into her worried eyes. I was happy that Ryden had people like her in his life, people who cared. Truly cared.

“I don’t know if it will. But I know what it’s like to carry ghosts on your back. And I know that sometimes, the only way to put them to rest is to face them.”

To bury them alive until they are too dead to haunt you.