The Perfect Son by Freida McFadden(66)

Oh my God. He’s here. And he’ll kill us both. Well, maybe not Hannah. Maybe he’ll let her live—she’s family. But I’m gone. At this point, I’ve clearly become a liability. It’s probably not worth it to him to watch me starve to death.

“Hello, Hannah.” His voice fills the room above me. I cringe at the familiar sound of it. “I thought I might find you here.”

She’s silent for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice is shaking. “Hi, Daddy.”





Chapter 58


Jason



Is it finally my turn? Has Erika finished talking? Or will it go on for another hour or two?

That’s Erika. Never shuts up. Always worried about every little thing. Obsessed. Especially about Liam. Anytime he opens his mouth, she has to analyze it to death. Half the time, I’m just staring at her, waiting for her to stop talking. Hannah is the same way. The two of them might not look alike, but they are two peas in a pod. Like mother, like daughter.

Liam, on the other hand. Well, you can guess who he takes after.

You’re probably wondering why I married Erika, considering she’s certainly far from my favorite person. There is no simple answer for that, but I suppose that some part of me wanted a normal life. When I first met Erika, she was beautiful. That long black hair and dark eyes. She was wearing a fitted white blouse and a skirt that left just enough to the imagination. I wanted her. And not just for that one night and then dispose of the body. I wanted her a second night, which turned into a third, and then a year.

And for the first time, I could imagine a normal life for myself. Well, as normal as I was capable of. A wife—a family. It didn’t seem like a bad idea, and before I really thought it through, Erika and I were getting married. In retrospect, it was a mistake. But by the time I realized that, it was too late. We already had a baby on the way.

The easiest thing to do was stash the family away on Long Island. I work long hours. No, not really. I don’t work much at all. I come up with ideas that are great ideas and make me money without having to do much. The truth is I have a lot of free time on my hands, which I do manage to fill with various activities.

And the best part is Erika never suspected a thing. Not even a little bit. It just goes to show how brilliant I am at acting the part. Liam, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired. I suppose I can’t blame him. I was equally careless when I was his age. My parents were not as understanding as Erika and I have been either. My mother was a deeply religious Catholic, and she believed I was punishment for one of her past sins.

My mother was terrified of me. It probably had something to do with me murdering her cat when I was five. She loved that cat, for reasons I could never understand. It was a cat, after all. It didn’t have real emotions, although it did struggle quite a bit when I held that pillow over its head until it stopped moving. That was part of the fun.

Erika took Liam to a shrink, but my parents had different ways of dealing with me. After I killed that cat, my mother locked me in the closet under the staircase. She left me there for six hours and ignored me when I banged my fists on the doors and screamed until my voice was hoarse. It didn’t “cure” me. After the next incident, my father beat me with his belt until I cried. Back in those days, nobody at school cared about the welts all over my back. Beating your kids used to be more acceptable. He did it frequently.

And then when I was fourteen, there was that girl. Michelle. My first. I don’t remember all of their names, but you always remember your first.

I didn’t get caught by the police. I was too smart for that. But my parents knew. They had no information that could have stood up in a court of law, but it was enough for them. Unfortunately for them, I was too big to be locked in the closet anymore—as tall as my father by then. And stronger.

That was when my mother hired the exorcist.

He was a priest—or at least, he had the collar. A middle-aged man with a round, red face. They surprised me when I came home from school one day, and my father, the priest, and his assistant worked together to hold me down and tie me to my bed while they drew the shades. For hours, they shouted prayers in my face and threw holy water at me. The priest demanded I repeat the prayers, and for the first hour, I refused.

By the second hour, I was willing to say whatever he wanted to let me go free.

When they finally untied me from that bed, I was the angriest I had ever been in my entire life. There were bruises on my wrists where I had been bound to the bed, and I was soaked in a combination of holy water and my own sweat. I wanted to lunge at that priest and scratch his eyes out, but I was outnumbered. I had to wait.

That night, I removed the batteries from the smoke detectors in the house. I turned on the gas stove. That night, my parents unfortunately died in a tragic fire that their only son managed to survive. I told Erika my mother died of cancer and my father had a heart attack, but there was really no way for her to know that was a lie.

And that priest—well, he was mugged a few days later in a dark alley. Poor guy—the police report indicated he suffered quite a bit in the hour before his throat was finally slashed.

After I buried my parents, I went to live with my grandmother. Nana was eighty years old, demented and half blind. She couldn’t care less what I did with myself. We got along very well.

Everybody says Liam is a smart kid, but he’s not as smart as me. I made two million dollars selling my first startup company when I was only twenty-five. No college diploma. Just brains. I made a lot more on the second one. So I’ve got plenty of money. Money that Erika has no idea about. She worries about the income from her stupid little newspaper job, and it’s hard not to laugh.