Page 99 of Burn With Me

“You know, Violet Clarke, it’s a shame I have to kill you. I like your sass. I can see why Asher likes you. Just so you know my brother can be a real ass. Loyalty is not his strongest trait so you better watch out,” I couldn’t tell if he was trying to joke with me or not.

“It seems to run in the family,” I said and once more kicked myself in the ass, but Derek laughed the sound jovial as he smiled and rubbed the back of his neck. This was too weird, even for me. It wasn’t every day that you met the person that killed your family, but this situation was one of those that I could never have planned for.

“I don’t know why you have to kill me. It’s not like I’ve ever done anything to you. You killed my parents. I lost everything, and yet here you are, tying me up like I wronged you. You can go fuck yourself.”

Derek rocked back on his heels as I glared at him and pictured all sorts of fun and new ways to kill him.

“I need to kill you because it will hurt my brother. This is his payback. I was just going to kill him, and you would be collateral damage, but then I thought this was kind of poetic. A full circle kind of thing.” My blood was boiling as he continued to talk. “You know, I watched you for weeks,” he said. “Back then, I mean. I watched you sneak out of your window and run off into the woods almost every night. I could almost time my watch by when you’d make your great escape.” He moved his fingers like they were a person running and smiled at me.

I wanted nothing more than to be able to wipe that smug look off his face.

“Why did you do it? Why did you kill my parents? They didn’t even know you!”

“Ha!” Derek yelled and stood. “Did you really think I just came across your house and decided, yup, that’s the family I want to kill?”

“I didn’t know what to think. I was fourteen, and I’ve spent my entire life looking for you,” I yelled. “I wanted you to pay for what you did.”

The laugh that tumbled from his mouth wasn’t a happy one. “Oh, I paid. I paid more than you could ever even imagine.”

I sucked in a deep breath as I stared at his face. Ghosts were haunting those bright blue eyes that were clinging to the fabric of who he was. Pulling back on my pain, which was the hardest thing I’d had to do, I thought about all the files that Asher and I had poured over and the one thing they all had in common. People that abused others, people that had wronged another in a way that most would find unredeemable, but the fires that were tied to cases involving children were the most horrific. There were a few exceptions, but they were not the norm.

“Please. I’ve spent the last ten years wondering why. Why them? Why my family?”

Derek stopped pacing and stared down at me, his eyes were angry, but there was hurt that lay beneath the anger.

“Because your parents knew. They knew that Asher and I were being abused and didn’t do anything about it, even when they had the chance.”

My mouth fell to the floor, and anger had me lashing back. “Take that back. It’s not true.”

“Oh, it is true. It’s very fucking true.”

“I don’t believe it. My parents had their flaws, but they would never condone child abuse.”

Derek stomped toward me, and I couldn’t stop from leaning back as he squatted and grabbed my face. I cringed as he squeezed my jaw hard. I didn’t remember being hit, but my face felt all bruised.

“You have no idea,” he snarled, and my anger wavered slightly. “Your mother came to my house all the time, made friends with my mother, and never helped take us away from the abuse. You want to know what would happen every time she showed up and stayed long enough that my father got home?”

Derek released my jaw, and I could feel the rage building inside of him.

“He’d hurt you and Asher,” I said.

“No, he’d hurt me. Asher only got touched once. I wouldn’t let him hurt my brother. That bitch you called mother knew what my father was like. I’d told her, Asher had told her and even my mother had opened up about the beatings we endured and yet…what did she do? Nothing!” He stomped away and then wheeled around, his large body shaking. “She knew he’d hurt us, and she’d stay until my father got home. That’s a sadistic bitch, that’s not a good person.”

He looked away from my eyes, but I could see the pain he was hanging onto. He felt betrayed. As his eyes swung back to mine, it was as if he’d sucked the air out of the room. Like a flick of a switched on and off he swung between eerily calm and enraged, and each time it came back, it burned brighter inside of him.

“I saw your mom one day driving home. She was singing away to a song in the car without a care in the world. It wasn’t right that my father got to do what he did, and your mother, who was supposed to help, did nothing and then got to head on home to her perfect life, forgetting about us. She got what she deserved.”

I narrowed my eyes at Derek, I had no idea about what my mom did or didn’t do at work, but she didn’t deserve to burn alive for it.

“I see your anger, Violet. I see the hurt in your eyes at losing your parents. A part of me is sorry for your pain. I had nothing against you, but whether you want to believe it or not, your parents were evil. They hid behind masks of smiles and popularity. You want to know what your father did? It wasn’t just your mom, you know. I was after both of them.”

I looked away from his eyes, my heart beating hard with anger and confusion. How could even a tiny part of me feel bad for this man? He’d taken everything I loved and shaped me into this person, this…obsessed shell.

Derek wandered back over and squatted down once more.

“What did he do?” I asked, my voice soft. A part of me didn’t want to know. Was he going to tarnish my parents’ memory further?

“He was a family court judge.”