Durability (The LockDown Series Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

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Richard
     
    She won’t stop crying. Her high pitched screams bounce off the walls, her tiny body kicking out and flaying arms clinging to me with desperation.
    I am dying inside as I realise the extent of what I have done.
    “Fuck!” I shout, grabbing my hair tightly, now a little thinned with my age. This is my granddaughter, a tiny innocent little girl, and I have taken her from the protective arms of her mother, a mother who seems to care so much about her.
    I know there is something wrong with me, why else would I have bothered tormenting and scaring Abigail for the last three months?
    Eight years I have been inside, and believe me it was the hardest thing I have ever done. Losing my wife and soul mate had been a mere walk in the park compared to the continuous replays of my horrific behaviour and the way I had treated my own daughter.
    What kind of father does what I did and gets to live to see another day? I sure as hell couldn’t live with the things that I have done. It is killing me slowly and violently inside.
    So why am I now torturing myself further, sitting in our family home, with my granddaughter, having just stolen her from her father and mother, having shot my own kid? Maybe it will mean I’ll get to see her again at least once more before I am killed. That’s why I had aimed for the shoulder and not the head.
    I acted like a deranged arsehole when she had finally seen me holding her girl; I had said some sick things, things I didn’t even think of anymore. And as I looked at my daughter's face and the horror and fright she portrayed, it broke my heart. I could have been in her life from day one, in her daughter’s life, being a decent father and grandfather, but the loss of my Penny, my beautiful angel, ripped me apart at the seams and allowed an animal to manifest inside me. A dangerous devilish beast who was sick for revenge, and still was until a gargantuan net fell from the heavens and captured me, giving me the ability to banish them all.
    I am a conflicted man. I don’t know how to deal with everything at once. Seeing her alive and well, living the life I was supposed to be living with my own forever after, stirred a nasty jealousy and made all those bad feelings rush back once more. The feeling of utter hatred towards her, I know it isn’t rational, that it isn’t actually our tiny little girl's fault my wife had taken her life, but my brain couldn’t comprehend the right from the wrong and this seems to be the only way to deal with the hate that had conjured inside.
    “Shhh,” I say quietly as I hold my granddaughter, rocking her little body gently, the same way I had with Abigail as a girl, trying to sooth her gentle cries as she begs for her mother. “Oh Richard, you stupid fucking man,” I scold myself. I don’t deserve to ever touch another child again after the sickening things I have done to my own kid and even her friend.
    I deserve to be strung up in the street and left for the dogs, that’s what I feel should happen sometimes, because I can’t deal with the guilt inside.
    It will be near impossible to convince Abigail of my change in person. I am not the man I was back then, I would never ever lay a finger on a child ever again. The thoughts don’t even cross my mind. All I can think of as I hold my grandbaby was ‘gosh she is as beautiful as her mother was, I hope they protect her forever and always’.
    “Let’s get you something to eat,” I say to the baby as I walk through the house, still bearing the photos and items of worth. Our hallways still covered in family photos, but the wallpaper and flooring dirty and scummy from my drugged up antics.
    I sniffle back a tear as I look upon a photograph of Penny, myself and Abigail at about three months old. We were so happy, sure Penny had her issues but we were coping, she was coping. “God baby, I’m so sorry,” I say as I stroke my wife’s face, her happy smile looking back, but all I see is the disgust