Victoria blinked. “I’m what I make of myself, not who I’m born of. What makes you think she’s actually my mother?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “You really do know nothing. Of course she’s your mother, little sister. Dad would never let me forget it.”

Sister? Dad? Victoria felt like she was falling, everything spinning in slow motion around her, but her feet were firmly on the floor as she stared Leo in the face. Her inner sense of self cracked and shifted. Who was Leo?

Leo grinned at her. “Yes, we share a father. But not that whore for a mother.” He prodded at Isabel’s head with his shotgun. “He got her pregnant then gave you away. There were lots of adoptions going on back then. It was easy to slip you in. Dad always knew where you were, what you were doing, and got off on shoving your success down my throat.”

Leo was her half brother.

She had a killer’s blood in her veins.

Not if she had anything to say about it. She shook her head at him.

“Oh, yes. It’s true. Dad said your adoptive parents were thrilled to get a baby girl. I don’t remember any of it. I was only six or so. But I recall all the young women who came and went. Some stayed at the church for months, having nowhere to sleep. Some stayed only a few days. Dad never let me talk to them. He said they were all whores.”

He used the word “whore” to a child?

“‘Whore’ is used in the Bible, you know. Perfectly acceptable.” Leo smirked.

“So is ‘thou shall not kill,’” Victoria stated.

Seth blinked, trying to clear his vision.

No. This isn’t happening.

He’d barely swallowed any of the liquid Leo had forced into his mouth. He blinked again and the porch boards came into focus. There was no way he’d taken enough to be having any symptoms.

You don’t know how concentrated he’d made it.

He couldn’t have swallowed more than half a teaspoon. He shook his head, fighting the mild fuzziness that’d tried to nest in his brain. More likely he was noticing symptoms from his blood circulation being cut off at his wrists and waist. He wiggled in the chair, trying to make room for the blood to move back where it should be.

What was Leo going to do to Tori? Drag her up here with the shotgun and threaten to blow a hole in her stomach if he didn’t drink? What would he do? Would Leo really kill her? And if he didn’t drink, what was keeping Leo from putting a shotgun blast in his head? He was screwed either way.

The fog tried to overtake his head again. Part of him wanted to give in, to simply close his eyes and fall to sleep. But he had to fight. Before Leo came back he had to figure out what to do.

Footsteps sounded behind him. Too light for Abbadelli. He twisted his head. Jason! The boy fell to his knees and attacked the knots in the ropes.

“He’s going to kill them, just like he killed those other women. I knew he’d done it. I should have gone to the police right away as soon as I saw those pictures, but I didn’t know what to do.” The boy’s words spilled from his mouth in a rush.

“Ahhh.” Seth let out a sigh as the rope around his waist released. Blood rushed back to his head, clearing the cobwebs. Pressure from the rope had impaired his circulation. “Where’s your gun, Jason?”

“It’s right here.” He set the black pistol on Seth’s lap as he worked on the knots around his wrists. Seth looked at the useless gun; he couldn’t feel his fingers. So close but so far.

Jason suddenly snatched the gun away.

“Jason?” The older Abbadelli’s voice came from the doorway of the cabin. Seth looked over his shoulder, feeling his blood pressure skyrocket. Cesare Abbadelli stood with his shotgun pointed at the boy. Jason had his legs planted apart and the handgun pointed at his grandfather, his finger on the trigger.

Holy crap.

“Put the gun down, boy,” Abbadelli ordered.

Seth saw the quiver in Jason’s hands. Did the boy even know how to shoot? The old man seemed steadier on his feet than he’d been earlier. With a shotgun you didn’t really need to aim. At these close quarters, simply pointing it in the right direction would permanently take care of either him or Jason.

“No, Nonno. I won’t let you kill him.”

Seth saw the teen’s Adam’s apple bob nervously.

“I don’t plan to kill anyone.”

“But you killed those women all those years ago, didn’t you? The ones in the first circle?” Jason asked.

Abbadelli seemed to age twenty years with the question. “I had problems. Problems I couldn’t tell anyone about. I was ashamed, but I couldn’t stop myself.”

“It’s not too late,” Jason pleaded. “You can turn yourself in. You’re an old man, they wouldn’t treat you too bad.” His arms shook.

Abbadelli gave a harsh laugh. “They’d fry me, boy. At my age the best thing a man can do is pick the time he decides to leave this earth. I’ve had a long life, and I regret a lot of things. But what your father has done can never be undone. The police are too close. Leo is going to have to pay for what he’s done.”

“He’s going to do it again, Nonno. He’s going to dress them in white dresses and dye Trinity’s hair black. We’ve got to stop him!”

White dresses? Tori? Like the death circles?

Abbadelli looked at Seth. The old man’s brown eyes were tired. All the spit and fire Seth had seen earlier was long gone. Abbadelli was a shell of his earlier self. “Can you stop Leo?”