Chapter 32 Family Loyalty

Chapter 32 Family Loyalty
Richard POV

The Connecticut estate's basement smelled like it always had—damp stone and old wood, the particular mustiness of a space that hadn't seen proper air circulation in decades. I stood at the bottom of the stairs watching David arrange his materials on the workbench Dad had built in 1985. The bench where I'd helped our father clean hunting rifles. The bench where David had first practiced on small animals at nine years old.

"This is insane." I said it for the third time in two hours. "You broke into the DA's office. You sent her emails from a traceable account. You're practically inviting them to find us."

David didn't look up from his laptop. "I'm inviting her to come to me. There's a difference."

"She's in federal protective custody. She's not coming anywhere except into a courtroom to testify against you."

"She'll come." He clicked through files, surveillance photos from months ago. Morgana at work, Morgana walking to her apartment, Morgana sleeping. "Because she needs closure as much as I do. Because running is psychologically unsustainable for someone with her profile. Because she's already tired of being afraid."

I grabbed the bottle of Dad's old bourbon from the shelf, the one we'd been saving for special occasions. This felt like the right time to break the seal. "You're projecting. You're tired of the chase. You want this over. That doesn't mean she feels the same way."

"I've studied her for eight months. I know how she thinks."

"You studied a version of her that didn't know you were a serial killer. She's different now. Unpredictable." I poured three fingers of bourbon that had been aging since before David killed his first victim. "And Bruno's not an idiot. If Morgana surfaces, it'll be a trap."

David finally looked at me. His eyes held that flat quality I'd learned to recognize at twelve, when he'd strangled the neighbor's cat and felt nothing while it died in his hands.

"I know it's a trap, Richard. That's what makes it interesting."

I drank the bourbon too fast, felt it burn. "You're telling me you want to walk into a police trap because it's interesting?"

"I'm telling you that after eighteen years of hunting women who followed predictable patterns, who trusted too easily, who died exactly as I documented they would—Morgana represents something different." He turned back to his laptop. "She broke the pattern. She survived. She saw me, Richard. Really saw me. Not the performance, but what's underneath. And I need to complete that connection before I can move on."

"Complete it how? By killing her while FBI tactical teams blow your head off?"

"By finishing what we started. By documenting her final responses. By proving that my research methodology was sound even when the subject became aware of it." David's voice had gone clinical, detached. The tone he used when discussing his victims. "She's the most important data point in my entire body of work. I'm not leaving her incomplete."

I sat down on the stairs, the bourbon making my head fuzzy. Or maybe it was exhaustion from thirty years of having this same conversation in different forms. Different cities, different victims, same brother who viewed murder as scientific inquiry.

"You remember when Dad first figured out what you were?" I asked.

David's hands stilled on the keyboard. "Pittsburgh. I was sixteen."

"Before that. You were eleven. The cat."

"That was nothing. Curiosity."

"That was the moment Dad pulled me aside and told me I had a new job. Watching you. Keeping you out of trouble. Making sure whatever was wrong in your head didn't become everyone else's problem." I poured more bourbon. "He gave me five hundred dollars. Said it was my responsibility as the older brother to manage you."

David was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I didn't ask to be managed."

"No. You asked why the cat stopped moving. You asked if Dad had any other animals you could study. You asked questions that made it very clear you weren't just curious—you were empty. No empathy, no remorse, no understanding that killing something was wrong." I stood, moved to the workbench, looked at the photos of Morgana. "Dad knew he'd raised a monster. And he decided the solution was paying me to be your keeper."

"He paid you?" David's voice had changed, something almost vulnerable creeping in. "All these years, I thought you helped me because we were family."

"We are family. That's why I took the money and did the job instead of turning you in when I was eighteen and you killed that graduate student in Seattle." I met his eyes. "But let's not pretend this is about brotherly love, David. This is about Dad knowing one son was a predator and deciding the other son's purpose was damage control."

David's mask slipped for just a moment. Something that might have been hurt flickered across his face before the flat emptiness returned.

"How much?" he asked. "How much did he pay you?"

"Five hundred a month when we were kids. A thousand a month when you started college. Ten thousand lump sum every time I had to help you relocate after a kill. He had it all set up in a trust. Still pays out even though he's been dead twelve years." I laughed, bitter. "I've made over three hundred thousand dollars keeping you out of prison. That's what your freedom is worth, apparently. About thirty thousand per victim."

David turned back to his laptop, but his hands weren't moving. "I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't know. You were too busy documenting kills and studying predatory behavior to notice that your entire support system was a financial transaction." I finished the bourbon, felt it settle cold in my stomach. "But I knew. Every time I tampered with evidence, every time I convinced other departments to look the other way, every time I helped you move cities and start fresh—I knew I was doing it for money. Not for you. For money Dad left because he was too much of a coward to turn in his own son."

The basement was silent except for the old furnace clicking on upstairs. The house settling around us, creaking with age and secrets.

"You could have stopped taking the money," David said finally. "Could have turned me in decades ago."

"Yeah. I could have." I looked at the surveillance photos again. Morgana's face in every frame, unaware she was being studied like a specimen. "But I didn't. Because three hundred thousand dollars bought a lot of rationalization. Bought a lot of 'he's my brother' and 'family comes first' and 'just this one last time.'"

"And now?"

"Now I'm sitting in a basement in Connecticut watching you plan to walk into a federal trap because you can't accept that one victim survived your methodology. Now I'm realizing that Dad's money stopped being worth it somewhere around victim number five, but I kept taking it anyway because what else was I going to do? Admit I'd been accessory to serial murder for twenty years?"

David closed his laptop. Stood. Moved to stand beside me, both of us looking at the photos of Morgana.

"She's different," he said quietly. "You're right about that. All my previous victims—they died exactly as I predicted. Every reaction documented, every response matching my psychological models. But Morgana—she broke the model. She shouldn't have recognized the surveillance. Shouldn't have confronted me. Shouldn't have survived long enough to become a threat."

"So leave her alone. Move on. South America, like you said. Start over somewhere the FBI can't reach you."

"I can't." David's voice held something I'd never heard before—uncertainty. "Because if my methodology failed with her, then everything I've built for eighteen years is compromised. Every assumption, every documentation, every piece of research—all of it becomes questionable if one subject can break the pattern."

"So this isn't about Morgana. It's about your ego."

"It's about scientific validity. I need to understand where my model failed. Why she survived when seven others didn't. What variable I missed in my initial assessment." He pulled up a document on his laptop, showed me pages of analysis. "I've reviewed every interaction, every documented response. The data should have predicted her compliance. But she deviated. And I need to know why."

I stared at the analysis. Columns of observations, psychological assessments, predictions versus outcomes. David had literally created a spreadsheet to understand why his victim didn't die as expected.

"You're insane," I said. "You know that, right? Actually, clinically insane."

"Probably. But I'm also right. Morgana represents a failure in my methodology, and that failure undermines eighteen years of work. I can't accept that. I won't accept that." He closed the laptop. "So yes, I'm walking into Bruno's trap. Because Morgana will be there. And when I have her in a controlled environment again, I can complete the research and understand where my initial assessment went wrong."

"They'll kill you the moment you approach her."

"Maybe. Or maybe Bruno wants to take me alive. Wants to prosecute publicly, use me as an example. Wants Morgana's testimony to mean something." David moved back to the workbench, started packing his materials. "Either way, I'm completing this research. With or without your help."

I watched him work, methodical and precise. The same way he'd approached everything since childhood. The same clinical detachment he brought to murder.

"Dad knew you were broken," I said. "That's why he paid me instead of getting you help. Because he knew you were too far gone to fix. Knew the best we could do was manage you, contain you, keep you pointed away from people who mattered."

"And you think I didn't know that?" David stopped packing. "You think I didn't understand that Dad viewed me as a liability to be managed instead of a son to be loved? That you took his money and his job and spent thirty years treating me like a problem instead of a brother?"

"You are a problem, David. You're a serial killer."

"I'm your brother." His voice had gone cold. "And regardless of Dad's money or your resentment or the fact that you've been my keeper instead of my ally—I'm still your brother. That's what family means. Not love, not affection, but loyalty regardless of cost."

I thought about the three hundred thousand dollars. Thought about the seven women David had killed. Thought about Morgana, who'd survived and was now being used as bait to catch a predator I'd helped create by being too much of a coward to stop.

"Family," I repeated. "Right. That's what we're calling this."

David zipped his bag. "I'm leaving for Manhattan in three hours. Bruno's spreading word that Morgana returned home. I'll be positioned by midnight. Are you coming?"

"To watch you die in a tactical ambush?"

"To watch me complete eighteen years of research. To be family, one last time, before this ends however it's going to end." He looked at me directly. "I know you hate me, Richard. I know you hate what I am and what you've been forced to become because of me. But you're still my brother. And I'm asking you to be there when this is finished."

I should have said no. Should have driven to Bruno's office, confessed everything, taken whatever plea deal they'd offer. Should have ended this thirty years ago when David killed that graduate student and I helped hide the body.

But I was Dad's son too. Raised to believe family came first. Trained to protect David regardless of cost. Paid to be his keeper even when keeping him meant becoming a monster myself.

"Three hours," I said. "Then we drive to Manhattan."

David nodded, turned back to his preparations.

And I poured another bourbon, thinking about the moment I'd stopped being Richard Kellerman, decorated detective, and became David Kellerman's accomplice.

It hadn't been one moment. It had been a thousand small choices across thirty years. Each one easier than the last. Each one taking me further from the man I'd wanted to be and closer to the monster I'd become.

"She saw you," I said quietly. "Morgana. You said she really saw you. What did she see?"

David was still for a moment. Then: "She saw someone who was empty. Who performed emotions instead of feeling them. Who studied people like they were equations to be solved instead of humans to connect with." He looked at me. "She saw what Dad saw when I was eleven. What you've been seeing for thirty years. The difference is, she didn't take money to ignore it. She ran. She fought. She survived."

"And you respect that."

"I respect it because it shouldn't have been possible. My methodology is too comprehensive, too refined. She should have died like the others." His voice held something that might have been admiration. "But she didn't. And that makes her the most important subject I've ever studied. The one who proves that even the most careful predator can be undone by the right prey."

"So you're walking into a trap to meet the woman who outsmarted you."

"I'm walking into a trap to complete the research. To document how she survived. To understand the flaw in my methodology so I can correct it in the future." David picked up his bag. "And yes, part of me wants to see her again. Wants to look in her eyes and ask her how she knew. How she saw through everything when seven others didn't."

"That's not science, David. That's personal."

"Maybe it's both." He moved toward the stairs. "Three hours, Richard. Then we finish this."

He left me alone in the basement with Dad's bourbon and thirty years of regret.

I pulled out my phone, looked at Bruno's number. One call. That's all it would take. One call to stop David before he reached Morgana. One call to end a killing spree that had lasted nearly two decades.

But I didn't make the call.

Because David was right about one thing: family was loyalty regardless of cost.

And I'd already paid three hundred thousand dollars' worth. Might as well see it through to the end.

I finished the bourbon and headed upstairs to pack my own bag.

Three hours until we drove to Manhattan. Three hours until I helped my brother walk into a trap that would probably kill him.

Three hours until I proved that Dad's money had bought exactly what he paid for: a keeper who'd choose family over everything else, even when family was a monster.

Even when being family made me one too.