The Duke's Masked Wife

Edgar went straight up to the second floor while Reed inspected the first floor. Edgar was careful not to step into any of the blood on the stairs. The blood here painted a picture in his mind that someone in a bloody state was dragged from the second floor down to the first floor.

"It could not have been her," Edgar said, looking at the dead maid at the bottom of the stairs. The trail of blood didn't lead to her. It went in another direction.

Edgar had a feeling that Simon wouldn't waste time dragging a servant downstairs while he murdered the others where they stood. It had to be Kate who Simon took the time to drag downstairs. His eyes went to the wall where there was a bloody smudged print of someone's hand as they were dragged downstairs.

Instead of going upstairs, Edgar followed this trail of blood in hopes it would lead him to Kate. The blood led him under the stairs where furniture was stained with blood and pulled out of their spot. It kept going until Edgar ended up at a door which would take him outside.

Luckily, there were still some traces of blood on the ground when he exited the house, but as he got further outside, the track disappeared as the snow falling from the sky covered it. If they were here an hour or two ago, they might have been able to see more blood in the snow.

The bright side to this discovery was that Edgar now knew wherever Simon had taken Kate was not inside the house. It was somewhere outside of his home.

"Reed!" Edgar called inside. He turned around to go back inside to find Reed. He needed to get his dogs to follow Kate's scent.

"In here! You're going to want to see this shit. This bastard has new levels of crazy the further you go into this house," Reed said.

Edgar followed Reed's voice to the drawing room where they were earlier when they visited Simon. A door was wide open and Reed stood by the door.

"Nothing about him is normal," Reed said, making way for Edgar to get inside.

Edgar wasn't expecting to be walking into a room where two corpses sat on chairs like it was normal. "What the fuck," he muttered.

"I had to break the door open. It's his parents," Reed pointed to the portrait behind the corpses. There was a portrait of a young Simon with his parents. The ring on the corpse that wore a dress matched the ring on the woman's finger in the portrait. "His parents," Reed said in disbelief.

"He didn't kill them. His parents died in a carriage accident, but to my knowledge, they were buried. I remember my father talking about attending the funersl but I never did. I didn't go to funerals for people I did not know. He must have dug them up at some point," Edgar said, covering his nose to bear the awful smell. He could not fathom how he had missed this foul smell when he was seated in the drawing room with Simon. It had to be that they were not here when he came to talk with Simon.

Edgar looked around the room and found some of the flowers he found placed on the bodies of the girls Simon killed were in vases. It was either an effort Simon made to try getting rid of the smell or these flowers had some connection to his parents.

Edgar couldn't place why Simon would dig up his parent's bodies. Did he care deeply for them and was unable to let them go? Were they part of the reason he decided to kidnap the young women?

Edgar walked around the room and stopped at a table full of books. He took up one book to flip through the pages and to his surprise, there were drawings of a young boy and two adults. Not the happy drawings you would expect from a normal child.

There were drawings of the child seemingly being struck by a stick from the woman, the man pointing off somewhere while curses came out of his mouth, the young boy crying in a box, and the word perfect written over and over again.

Edgar continued to flip through the pages of the book and was met with the same drawings over and over again. Like this was all that filled the child's mind or perhaps, this happened daily and the drawings were made every day. Edgar stopped flipping through the pages when one showed a different drawing. In this one, the man and woman seemed to be dead, but for some reason, the child did not look happy in the drawings that followed.

"His parents seemed to have abused him in the past. Never would have thought. He was always smiling whenever his parents walked around with him. They must be here because of his hatred," Edgar said, looking at the couple who were meant to be under the ground. He scrunched up his nose, unable to take another second of the smell.

Edgar closed the book which the court should take a look at and walked out of the room.

"Everyone has their own story that makes them who they are. He was once a victim, but I can't feel sorry for him because of the path he took," Reed said as he couldn't feel bad for Simon as he killed others for reasons he still could not understand. Reed was not fond of anyone who preyed on the weak.

"There is a trail of blood that leads outside. We need to get my dogs," Edgar said and took a deep breath after he was far away from the room. "Kate has to be somewhere outside and wounded. Tell the driver to return to my estate and bring my dogs."

Reed moved quickly to do as he was ordered since if Kate was wounded the longer they waited meant there was a higher chance of finding her dead. He would not allow Kate to die yet when she was meant to be punished for the things she did to Alessandra with her mother. All the bad people could not easily die.

Reed clenched his fists as he regretted not being able to either stop Simon from killing himself or at least be the one to kill him. Edgar had already regretted letting his anger get the best of him, killing Desmond too soon and now, Simon was gone by his own hands. It would have been different if Peter was not standing so close to Simon. Regardless of what he said, Reed could never allow an innocent man to be hurt, and had they rushed to attack Simon with Peter there the church would be planning a funeral for Peter once the sun rose.

While Reed went out to get the coachman to bring the dogs, Edgar went outside once more to try tracking where Kate could be.

Meanwhile,

Bella continued to dig the hole she had created in hopes of getting out of there before Simon would return. After his last arrival and the crazed look in his eyes, she knew she would not continue to live when he returned, and had to get out of there now. She looked over her shoulder at Kate who she had rested against the wall.

Bella tried her best but she wasn't able to get an answer out of Kate about what happened for Simon to be so angry. Bella was still in shock that Simon attacked Kate.

Hours ago, which felt like days to Bella, she was sitting in her corner awaiting the arrival of her food when she heard the door open and a woman screaming. Simon threw Kate down into the room just as he had done to the others and dragged her to be in Bella's view. Bella closed her eyes as she tried to get rid of the haunting image of blood flowing from a wound on Kate's face.

Simon didn't engage in his normal antics of having Bella beg to stay here and just gave her a look before leaving.

Bella's nerves grew by the second as she continued to dig through the mud to get out of the room. Her hands ached but she continued to push through the pain. She didn't care to stop if Simon were to return now. She knew she was dead the moment he returned.

"Fuck!" Bella cursed, frustrated with not reaching an opening despite how long she had been digging. "Relax," she calmed herself as getting angry would only affect her progress. "I am getting out of here."