AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mom yanks me further down the hallway. “He just got out of prison.”
“For what?”
“He’s innocent. Do you hear me?” she asks, her tone laced with venom.
“O-Okay. When did he get out?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“And how long was he inside?” I ask, my voice artificially light.
“Nearly fifteen years. Why do you ask?”
I shake my head, my mind whirring with possibilities. All this time, I assumed Jake was responsible for the threatening note and the photo because he attacked me on the same day. That assumption was too simplistic, too convenient.
Creepy stalkers don’t send a message one hour, then pounce the next. They like the suspense. Jake’s build-up were all those trolling comments he wrote on social media and the DMs threatening my life. His threats were always digital until he turned up on my doorstep.
What if the polaroid and scrawled note came from someone else who’s out of touch with the internet age? An older psychopath who likes to terrorize young women using analogue methods? A chill races down my spine at the thought.
Besides, only a handful of people know my real address, so I assumed there was only one enemy. My new stalker could get every detail they want about me from Mom.
Fear coils in my gut, tightening its grip, but I still manage to nod.
That’s a brilliant deduction.
Jake wasn’t more than a few years older than me and couldn’t have taken that photo. The culprit had to be older and more likely someone who knew me before the supposed accident.
I finally have a potential lead: a strange uncle of dubious moral character who’s just been released for a crime so heinous that people are still trying to set him on fire.
NINETEEN
Alderney State Penitentiary,
Dear Amethyst,
You’re determined to know my history. In exchange, I want to know yours.
Yes, I moved in with my biological father, who already had a wife and three sons. I was the same age as the youngest, and my father thought it was a good idea to enroll me in their school.
It was a disaster. My father was always away on business, leaving me with my resentful stepfamily. I had more in common with the housekeeper’s daughters, whom I later discovered were also his illegitimate children.
I didn’t kill my stepmother and brothers because they filled each day with torment and humiliation. They were petty, hateful, and spiteful, but it was easy to understand the source of their anger.
They couldn’t punish my father for burdening them with a changeling, so they made me the scapegoat.
The trial attorney painted a picture of me as a jealous interloper, lashing out because I was denied their life of luxury, but that’s nowhere close to the truth. I adored the simple life I had with my mother.
I’m sorry to hear about the accident. What happened to the drivers, and do you still have problems with your memory?
Xero
P.S. You naughty girl. I forbid you from using a common dildo when I can commission you a mold of my cock.
TWENTY
AMETHYST
Maybe I should have parked somewhere and slept in the car instead of coming back to Mom and Dad’s. Mom acts like I’m a danger to her precious Uncle Clive.
