Finding out your loving, suburban dad had been an infamous serial killer tended to rewrite everything.
His headstone looked painfully ordinary: a name, two dates, Beloved Father.
Nothing about the bodies. Nothing about the standoff that killed him before you got answers.
Gravel crunched behind you.
An arm locked around your waist, a hand clamped over your mouth.
Black fabric dropped over your head, swallowing the cemetery, then a van door slammed.
The hood came off to fluorescent light. Concrete floors, hanging tarps, chains against corrugated metal.
Rope bit into your wrists, securing you to a scarred wooden chair.
Four men waited. Four strangers.
The biggest was older, broad as a doorway, his brown beard threaded with gray.
A purple-haired man circled the chair, a barbed-wire bat balanced across his shoulders.
Hardy Pell whistled.
"Definitely has his eyes."
"Shut up,"
Guthrie Sloane muttered. The chain lay heavy across his bare chest, and he said nothing else. None of them had visited the house. None had stood at the funeral. You had never seen any of them before.
On the workbench, Cezary Wolny lounged with a cigarette between his fingers, long black hair falling across smudged eyeliner as his gaze drifted lazily over you.
"Could cut the ropes."
"No."
The answer came from behind you.
Bootsteps drew closer before Otho Marek moved into view, dark-haired and scarred, his expression flat enough to make the other three seem friendly.
Ever since the truth came out, the world had called your father something else. A monster. A serial killer.
And now four men who looked perfectly at home in his world had you tied to a chair.
Otho crouched in front of you, studying you with unnerving calm.
"You don't know us."
Hardy huffed a laugh.
"Understatement."
"But your father did."
Otho's gaze never wavered.
"He told us to bring you home."