I’d placed her back in the only room that she deserved. At least it felt good to tell myself that. The old me needed to know I was up for the job.
I’d walked away from her open cell with my willpower in check. But I’d wanted to strip her bare and do filthy things to her on the dirt floor. Yet something told me to curtail this need for revenge and play it out slowly.
Make her suffering a sacred thing.
She had to know what kind of man her father was. You couldn’t live under the same roof and not see his nature. There would have been phone calls overheard. Conversations with his men. There had to be evidence that revealed his illegal activities. He was a goddamn arms dealer, for Christ’s sake. She had enough insight to be useful for a while longer.
Understandably, the press refused to cover what that man really did—mainly because any journalist wanting to stay alive stayed away from any stories around that man. There were rumors, of course, of his ruthlessness, but I was beginning to suspect Anya had even been sheltered from those, too. To protect her or him, it was hard to tell.
I’d dreamed up so many scenarios of revenge, but this, this was the sweetest. Taking his daughter was the final step before my coup de grâce. Finally taking him down and his business, too. Ending his reign as a man who lorded over the weapons market in the States.
I rested my palm on the door of the chapel, taking a few moments before entering. Recalling how, as a devout Catholic boy, I’d once found this setting comforting.
After removing the padlock, I gripped the door handle.
Not yet. . .
Within the chapel lay the physical representation of my soul. The destruction of what I’d done to the inside sharpening my sensibilities.
Pulling open the doors, I was greeted by the echoey emptiness. Moonlight flooding in through the upper stained glass windows cast shards of muted moonlight over the chaos.
As I moved in farther, my soles crunched broken glass and dust filled my lungs. The faint scent of incense that had once burned here hung in the air. Candlewax, too. A reminder of what this place had been, a refuge, a simple place to say grace.
It crushed me all over again to see the place my mom had once cherished in ruins because of me. Once more, eviscerating my heart. Slicing away all doubts over this pursuit.
A decade ago, Stephen had left his mark.
What had followed that night was me leaving mine.
The chapel’s state of annihilation remained exactly the same as that day. In what was meant to be a sacred place. Because I’d come here to beg God to undo what he’d done. Yet all that happened was an irrevocable decimation.
My mother’s faith in her creator couldn’t protect her. Just beyond the outer doors was where she’d died from her wound. The landmark of where my soul was given over to the devil—by my own will, no less.
That day, fourteen years ago, I’d vowed to see Stephen suffer like he’d made us suffer.
After he and his men had left.
After my parents’ bodies had been taken to the morgue.
After my sister had been discovered in a catatonic state in the maze and transported to the hospital.
Something inside me had snapped, and I’d returned hours later to this chapel.
I’d wrecked one sacred artifact at a time. Tearing the baldachin off the altar and ripping it to shreds. Pulling at the gold-braided material and destroying it.
In anguish, I’d finished what Stephen had started in defiling our home. Engulfed in darkness, I’d gone wild in here and made a prayer of it.
Those same feelings of futility finding me still.
Even now, torn-up material lay amongst the spoils of a war that had been ravaged and raged against my creator. Scattered evidence of what I’d done. A maniacal act.
In here, alone, the night everything changed, I’d gone quietly mad. Wielding a sledgehammer. Trying and failing to dismantle the pews. Doing what I could to leave no place for anyone to sit and worship.
God no longer deserved that.
I’d moved on to the stone carvings of saints. Smashing my mother’s favorite, St. Mary Magdalene. Then all the rest, imported from Italy those years ago when she’d felt safe here. Never imagining that just outside this place would be the site where she’d take her final breath.
My soul had been decimated that day. The consequences played out in this chapel by a young man who’d lost his faith in everything. No part of me was recognizable from the young man I’d once been.
I was as good as dead inside.
All those years ago, I had promised to kill every Glassman in that family. Yet, I’d brought that girl back as though second-guessing my own will.