Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
“My mother’s dead,” Seraphina said. “She died a long time ago. But in the wake of the crime, my father left, and my mother numbed herself with alcohol, her career over and her dreams all ended. I’ve wondered over the years why the media didn’t pick up our story. We barely received more than a two-paragraph, back-page write-up. They reported it as a break-in with minor injuries. But our life was demolished. Our family was destroyed, and they called it minor. You can’t imagine what that feels like, Cami. To be dismissed that way.” She ran a finger under her lip, fixing her gloss. “I wondered if it was because my parents were unmarried, or maybe neither of them was important enough, my mother pretty, but not prime-time pretty. Not like your mother. Not like you and your sister.” She tilted her head as she again watched the road go by out the window. “Maybe it just didn’t play well. Too little drama. Maybe there was a bigger story that day, something even juicier, and ours got lost in the news cycle. Anyway, I suppose it doesn’t matter why. What happened to us was swept away. Not for us, though. We had to live with the fallout every single day. I bet you never even heard about it, did you? Even though it was your father who let the man who victimized us go free.”
Cami swallowed, shutting her eyes momentarily. There it was. She and Rex had been right. It felt like a balloon had deflated inside her chest, and, for the briefest of moments, she swore she smelled the sour scent of Trig’s breath as he’d tortured her.
This woman’s mother had sent those men to get back at her father. She wanted done to Cami’s family what had been done to hers. How? “How could she?” she asked. How could anyone who’d experienced something like that want to see it happen to someone else? “How could that ever feel like justice?”
Seraphina’s gaze hung on her for several long moments, but in the end, she didn’t really answer Cami’s question. Maybe even she didn’t have one to give. “My mother became obsessed with Judge Cortlandt. He was her singular focus. She sat around all day doing nothing but nursing a bottle and her downfall. It was all she ever talked about. Week after week. Month after month.”
A chill moved over Cami, the zip ties at her wrists biting into her skin again as she instinctively attempted to grip something. Anything. She forced herself to breathe, to focus and digest. Seraphina had been a victim then, too, but she’d withheld this information, knowledge that might’ve brought her and her father an ounce of peace, for a long, long time. “You said your mother’s dead. How? Why?”
Seraphina made a soft humming noise. “An accidental drowning in her bathtub a year after your mother and sister were in the ground, or that’s what her death was ruled anyway. Her blood alcohol level was many times the legal limit.” She paused for so long Cami thought she was done speaking on that topic. But then she went on. “The way the media was obsessed with your case, I think it was the final insult. I hope she felt guilty, too, though I can’t speak to that. Anyway, her drinking increased. Most days she didn’t leave her room. I often picture her just slipping peacefully under the water, and sometimes it brings me comfort, and other times, I know she got off far easier than she deserved.”
She did. She did get off easier than she deserved. But her daughter was sitting here now; her daughter was the one who’d drugged and kidnapped Cami. “And you?” Cami asked. “You must’ve blamed him too. Is that why you kept her secret?” So long. Eleven painful years.
Seraphina seemed to sincerely think about that. “I think so, yes. At the time. I was young, and I was constantly scared. Every second of every day. Always looking over my shoulder. Waiting for another monster to terrorize us. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“And then, later, I thought I was being loyal to my mother. And why shouldn’t I be? She was dead, and what was done, was done. I couldn’t undo it, and I was scared that I might be considered complicit too. I’d overheard the planning of the crime against your father. I’d overheard it all, and I chose not to stop it. For what it’s worth, the agreement didn’t include murder. My mother, she . . . she only wanted to show your father what it felt like to be at the mercy of a monster and think about it every day for the rest of his life. A good lesson, she thought. It might have made him a better judge.”