Swim Deep - Page 119

“It didn’t matter, you fool! Can you imagine what must have gone through her mind when she heard she was married to her father? I would have been happy with even two seconds of the purest, sheerest horror on her part. To have hours… days… years… a lifetime of that shame, those are all icing on the cake.”

“But why?” Wes asked. He may have entered into an alliance with Madaster to torment Evan and me, but he’d clearly done so unwillingly. It couldn’t be clearer that he both feared and despised Madaster.

“Why?” Madaster asked scornfully, as if he thought Wes had just asked him why a heavy object fell when dropped.

“Why do you want to hurt her, like you did Elizabeth?”

“Because she’s mine,” Madaster roared.

In the silence that followed, my skin prickled painfully beneath my wetsuit.

“She’s just like Elizabeth,” Madaster continued after a charged pause. “I could see the disgust and scorn on her face when she looked at me. Evan has corrupted her into believing I’m the devil, and she’s swallowed it all whole. They both believe I’m some powerless idiot, sitting here in this damned chair, in this tower, looking down helplessly at that girl. But they are wrong. I’m still capable of exerting my will. I’ve punished them both, haven’t I? Evan has lost what he loves. How will Anna ever stay with him, knowing how he married her to get back at me, manipulated her for his own gain, and that it all came to this? You said earlier that he told you he feels her slipping away from him, cringing from his touch. How that must be killing him. He tried to bring me down with a lie. But I fought him with the truth.”

“You didn’t tell Anna the truth,” Wes said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Madaster replied. “Are you high right now? Did you shoot up before you came up here? Can’t you grasp this, you trembling addict? What matters is that they suffer… that they pay for what they’ve done.”

“But surely Evan will tell Anna eventually. He’ll tell her, and she’ll know that I lied to her. Evan will show her the paperwork I gave him from the lab. She’ll know that Evan isn’t her biological father. She’ll see firsthand that you are, Noah.”

Not Evan’s, Noah’s. Not Evan’s, Noah’s.

The words beat in time to the drum of the heartbeat in my ears.

Not Evan’s, Noah’s. Not Evan’s, Noah’s.

No. Neither, I thought. My father is Dick Solas, from Oak Park, Illinois. To me, Noah Madaster was a pedophile, rapist, abuser, sadist, and murderer: a man to be stopped at all costs. Evan had been right about that.

And that was all Noah Madaster was to me.

“What matters,” Madaster was saying, “is that Evan recognizes that he’s the source of Anna’s misery. Lord, I’d love to see it: her looking at him with complete revulsion. Even if he had to experience that for thirty seconds before she discovered the truth, it would be sweet beyond belief. It would be a worse punishment than death for Evan. And it’s not as if Anna is going to be happy when she eventually finds out who her real father is. She’ll be horrified, just in a different way. She thinks I’m the devil. Well… She’ll have to live with the idea of being my spawn.”

It may have surprised Madaster—it might have surprised most people—but I actually was relieved. Profoundly so. My knees weakened and my hand dropped off the door, inert and useless.

Evan and I hadn’t sinned, even unknowingly.

“You’re sick beyond belief, Noah,” Wes said. His tone struck me as exhausted. Defeated.

“You knew what I was ever since you helped me move Elizabeth’s boat that night. Just like I’ve known what you were ever since I caught you shooting up at your office that day, years ago.”

“Does it make you feel better to despise me? As long as you have me, or Ima, or Lorraine, to kick around, you don’t have to look into the pit of your own black soul, do you? You don’t have to face what you did to your own daughter.”

“You’re defending Elizabeth again, are you?” Madaster asked, sounding still amused by an old, hackneyed joke.

“You always act like you knew her better than anyone in the world. But Elizabeth was different, when you weren’t around. When you weren’t influencing her.”

I realized that Wes was close to tears. Wes, Wes. You should have never tangled with the Madasters. Now you’re caught in the web.

“You always acted like you loved her more than anything else in the world, and yet look what you did to her. Look what you’ve done to Anna, all for revenge against Evan.”

“I’ve barely touched the girl,” Madaster said dismissively.

“Evan is worried she might become suicidal, after all the poison you’ve fed her.”

“Elizabeth and Anna are mine,” Madaster said, his tone so cold, I felt my spine tingle and stiffen. “You’re mine, to do with as I want, as well. I never wanted you, particularly, but the dregs have been forced on me, at this point in my life. I need your legs, hands and eyes, to go, do, and see where I can’t now. Get out of here, Ryder. Looking at you makes me ill. Call Evan this afternoon. Time for you to be his solicitous friend again. Tell him that you saw Anna drive away after you told her the ‘truth.’ I’ll want a good description of how he’s reacting to Anna’s disappearance, and—”

I put my hand on the door and pushed it open with force.

Madaster glanced up and saw me. He froze in midsentence, his mouth gaping open. I walked across the Oriental carpet in my bare feet and came to stand several feet in front of him.

Tags: Beth Kery Romance
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