Born Evil Read online

  I absolutely hate overbearing, crunchy, neurotic moms like I played all that time. I was so glad I could be myself now, especially with Shane. Well, most of the time. Whenever people were around, I acted like nice Jennifer. Yuck.

  Anyway, he finally knows why he’s in jail, why he’ll be rotting in jail until he kills himself or another kid kills him. He has to pay for killing Peter. He finally understands that’s what this was all about.

  To be honest, I had a moment of weakness. Toward the end of our trip, I was thinking about making him my new partner, training him to become a killer. Being on the lam, it wasn’t like he’d have a choice but to do what I wanted him to do anyway. Obviously, I did not have an affair with that fat, old pig, also known as Dr. Jonathan Wilkins. He was a terrible psychologist. Seriously. He had no idea who I really was. The affair was just a lie to throw off Shane, and so was the story about the patient who had raped and killed his ex-wife. I can’t believe Shane bought that stupid story even for one second. I mean, how the hell would I know the size of that guy’s shoes? How would I have gotten a hold of his watch?

  Unbelievable.

  Anyway, when Shane brought that old bag to our room, I had no choice but to kill her and make it seem like Shane had done it. That went very easily, thank God, especially considering that I had taken the precaution to shut down those nasty little cameras the day before. Having been at The Shithole before—that’s what Peter and I liked to call it back in the day—I knew exactly how those cameras worked. All that was needed to make them inoperable was to cut the cords behind them. So I did. No one had been around to see which one of us had pushed her down the stairs, never mind snapped her neck when she had refused to die. The old bitch must have had real bad osteoporosis because it had taken me zero effort to break her neck. It had felt like a bird’s.

  You probably wonder how come I’m not in jail for harboring a criminal. Well, I knew it was likely I could strike a deal with the prosecutor in exchange for witnessing against my son. And it had turned out, I could. When I told them I was willing to confess that I had seen Shane return home at four in the morning the night Dr. Wilkins had been killed, my lawyer told me we would accept nothing less than me serving no time at all in exchange for that testimony.

  Of course they had agreed.

  People can be so naïve.

  I’m going to have a glass of wine now. I used to not be able to handle alcohol. I drank in secret in the years after Peter’s death as a way to cope with all the grief. Hardly anyone knew about my excessive drinking habits. Only my mom and my son. When I realized I could channel my grief into planning my revenge against my bastard son, I stopped drinking. I stopped feeling the need to get drunk out of my mind and only had a drink every now and then.

  I can enjoy a glass of wine just like any other normal person now.

  I’ll be reading through my finished screenplay as I drink my wine. I’ll pause and pore over the part I added when nice Jennifer learned that an anonymous person had called in a tip about having seen someone who looked just like Shane outside Dr. Wilkins’s apartment building. That person was me. By now, you’ve gotten that already, right? I was the person calling the cops, leaving that tip. I had to make it extra urgent for us to run away.

  Obviously, the movie ends with me becoming all depressed after I realize I can’t save my son, not with me having set him up all along. It ends when I realize I have to do the right thing, turn him in to the authorities before he can do more harm in the world. Everything besides the lies I told Shane are true in the story. They happened just like I told you. Shane did kill our cat. But he wasn’t stabbing it as viciously as I described it in the beginning of this story. The cat wasn’t half decapitated. I just added that because I thought it would make for a great opening. Which it did, right? And the cat did have rabies. Shane never tossed it out in some creek. He buried it in the backyard and even put a wooden cross on the grave. I was curious to find out if it had been as rabid as it had looked from outside the living room, so I had it dug up and checked. It definitely had rabies.

  Oh, and I also made up that he confessed to killing his father on purpose. Since the little shit refuses to admit the truth to me, I had no choice but to make it up.

  Anyway, it’s a brilliant, brilliant story. Not only will it make me rich, but also famous for sure. Even better, it will, as always, give me the last laugh. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Cheers,

  Jennifer

  EPILOGUE

  It’s 2015 now and I have been in juvy for two years, almost exactly to the day. I know that Mom is crazy, crazy for real. So crazy that she thinks I killed Dad on purpose. I didn’t kill him on purpose. It was all an accident.

  But she refuses to believe me, and this is why I am in jail now. She needed me to pay for what I had done to her husband, my dad. I have come to the conclusion that my mom, and probably my dad too, is a psychopath of the worst kind. She can fool literally anyone. She sure had me fooled for the longest time. But I’m older now, older and nowhere near as naïve as I used to be.

  She says that she’s surprised that I’m still alive. That I haven’t tried to hang myself or something. That none of the other kids here have tried to kill me. She doesn’t realize that I’m not the dumb kid she was used to. The kid she could fool so easily. I have learned how to survive in juvy. It took me only a few months of bad beatings to realize that I needed to be the one in charge, not the one everyone pushed around. It took three guys gang raping me one night for me to wake up and start to fight for my life. I refused to be a victim anymore. So I started to work out and align myself with two beefy guys who are actually good people. They watched my back. And then, when I turned fourteen a little over a year ago, I started to grow. A lot. Now, at fifteen, I’m six foot two and very muscular.

  I’m getting out of here in less than three years if I can behave as well as I’ve done so far. And I think I can. I know the ropes now. I’m the one who calls the shots in here. No one messes with me anymore.

  I’ll make it till I’m eighteen and free again. And then I’ll come after you, Mommy Dearest. I’ll make you pay. We’ll see who gets the last laugh in the end.

  AFTERWORD

  Thank you for reading BORN EVIL. If you want to receive notices about my book releases, click HERE to join my mailing list. Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed this story, please review it at your vendor. Even if it's just a sentence or two. Click HERE to leave a brief review.

  ALSO BY JULIA DEREK

  BLOOD EAGLE (Historical Thriller)

  Blood Eagle

  COOPER AND WHITE MYSTERIES (Police Procedural)

  Sins of the Past

  Deadly Dreams

  Girl with a Secret

  A Criminal Mind

  Mortal Sin

  THE DIARY (Psychological Thriller)

  The Diary

  THE GIRL UNDERCOVER SERIES

  Girl Undercover

  Denial

  The Truth

  Showdown

  THE META-HUMAN SERIES (Thriller)

  The Crucifier

  The Joker

  The Traitor

  The Scientist

  DUPLICITY (Prequel to the Girl Undercover Series)

  Duplicity

  THE SMILEY KILLER (Companion book to the Girl Undercover Series)

  The Smiley Killer

  The Celeste Jones Paranormal Mystery Series (Cozy mysteries)

  Haunted Hardbodies

  Spooky Hardbodies

  Ghostly Hardbodies

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapte
r 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by Julia Derek