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“It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. You always believe the narrative you create.” Her eyes find mine in the dark. “This is your world, Layla, we all just live in it.” A few seconds pass. “So, did you get it?” she asks, finally taking a long, hard pull on her cigarette. “Your clarity?”
The darkness of the house presses in on me. The darkness inside her radiating out and into me. The darkness in my mind finally unleashes. “Depends. How many spiders are in our basement?”
Her lips tilt slightly as the realization dawns on her that my memories are back. “Don’t get all righteous on me. It was your idea to kill Mrs. Parkinson, and you executed the plan perfectly, as only an Ashby can do. You were, after all, your grandfather’s favorite. You really were brilliant strategizing who to kill and when. I stopped recognizing you after a while.”
“How many people have I killed?”
She tilts her head and narrows her eyes observing me as if biding her time for something. “I thought you had clarity?”
I let out a shaky breath. “I remember two, not including Gabe. How many more were there?”
She shifts and her eyes shimmer in the stream of moonlight. “I watched you fall apart for months. I couldn’t understand what changed in you. After you disappeared, I found the letter about Nick’s death, and I knew I lost you.”
“You and Regina both knew what I was, didn’t you?”
She blinks a few times. “She’s like a second mother to you. She would do anything to protect you, Layla. Same as me.”
I suck in a jagged breath. “Same as Sarah Crawley.”
She bristles like a cat. “Nothing like Sarah Crawley.”
I drop the gun a couple of inches as a faint siren echoes from outside, stealing my attention. Time is running out. “Help me understand. Why would I do this? Why would our family do this?”
She sets her jaw. “I’m not sure any of us fully understand it. But I still obeyed my father even if it ate me up inside. Our family is cursed. At least that’s what your grandfather believed. He made me believe it too.”
“That’s not an excuse for murder.”
“It is when you sell your soul to the devil. I never believed it until I experienced it myself. Even then, I tried to fight it, and your grandfather hated me for it.”
I glance around our rich house. “It sure seems like you’re struggling with your morals.” The Ashby family has never struggled. “What makes our family so cursed?” I ask her.
Beth watches me now, looking so pretty in her dress. I'm watching her from the shadows, keeping the red dot fixed on her face.
“Mom,” I breathe as my heart hits my chest. “I need answers.”
“It all stemmed from one sick man, sweetheart. He was brilliant and extremely paranoid, and he managed to push his paranoia onto every generation since.”
“We kill people because we’re paranoid? We can stop it, we can just end it.” She rises and walks toward me, and my hands shake.
“Your grandfather tried. Then my mother died of cancer the next year. I tried, and I nearly lost you in that lake. The paranoia is real.”
At least now I understand why I am the way I am. Generations of psychopaths created me. I never stood a fucking chance. Tears run down her face now as the sirens get closer. Red and blue lights swirl around the room, taking over my vision.
“Mom, what’s happening?”
Her eyes are soft now. Nearly broken. “So, are we going to talk about him?”
My hand tremors. The feral part of my mind, pushing to the front. My heart hammers as the little red dot moves in a circle. “Who are you talking about, Beth?” I barely recognize my voice anymore.
Her fear manifests as tears that form in her eyes as she watches her own daughter aim a gun at her head. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t run.
“The Archer,” she says.
My throat tightens at the sound of his name out of her mouth. Like somehow he is sacred and mentioning him will expose him. I’m desperate to protect him—to protect that side of me. I smile at her fully aware of how psychotic I look.
“Hiding,” I confess.
Her eyes sharpen. “Does he have something to say to me?”
