My Bratty Wife
Chapter 250 - Two Hundred And Fifty

Chapter 250: Chapter Two Hundred And Fifty

Ryan’s heartbroken question, "Byron, tell me this is all a lie?" hung in the cold, damp air of the ruined chapel, a desperate plea against a truth his heart could not yet bear to accept.

Byron, kneeling beside the cooling body of his only confidant, slowly raised his head. He looked at his hands, stained dark with Elias’s blood, not with horror, but with a strange, detached curiosity. Then, with a chilling deliberation, he pushed himself to his feet. He bent down, picked up the pistol that had fallen from his grasp, and aimed it, once more, directly at Ryan.

Immediately, the circle of guards tightened, their swords now pointed just inches from Byron’s body, the steel tips glinting in the moonlight. Davis drew his own pistol, his aim steady on Byron’s chest. The air was thick enough to choke on.

"You have no right to question me, Ryan," Byron spat, his voice devoid of the sorrow he had shown just moments before, now replaced with a terrifying, manic energy. "Not you. Not any of you." His gaze swept over the guards with contempt. "Everyone I killed," he continued, a wild, unsettling smile beginning to form on his lips, "deserved it. Every last one of them. They were vermin, a blight on this kingdom, on this world. They all deserved it!" He let out a sudden, menacing laugh, a sound that was sharp and broken, echoing unnervingly off the crumbling stone walls.

Ryan flinched as if struck. The laughter, so strange and unhinged coming from his brother, was more frightening than any threat. He had to be sure. He had to hear the words, however much they would shatter him. "Were you the one who truly killed them, Byron?" Ryan asked, his voice soft, still clinging to a last, desperate shred of hope that this was all some terrible misunderstanding, a lie born of madness.

Byron’s laugh subsided, and he lowered his gun, letting it hang loosely at his side. The gesture was not one of surrender, but of a man madden by rage, ready to deliver his monologue. "Yes, brother," he said, his voice now laced with a gleeful, confessional pride. "I did. I killed them all."

Ryan’s face, already pale, seemed to drain of all remaining color. He looked mortified, a statue of grief and disbelief.

"Oh, don’t look so shocked," Byron taunted, beginning to pace slowly before the body of Elias, his movements theatrical. "Haven’t you ever thought, even for a moment, why the mysterious ’murderer’ was always one step ahead of you? Haven’t you ever laid awake at night and pondered how he always knew your next move, your every plan?" He paused, enjoying Ryan’s stunned silence. "It’s because I was there, dear brother. Right there, in your study, in your council rooms, in your very household, listening. All of your plans were my plans first. I knew where your investigators would be, so I could get there before them. I knew which witnesses you sought, so I could silence them first. It was all so... simple, really."

The implication was staggering. "The spy..." Ryan breathed. "The spy Thorne warned me about..."

"Was more than just a spy," Byron sneered. "He was my eyes and ears. Which brings us to my next point." He stopped pacing and looked directly at Ryan.

"Why did you send Elias to work in my residence?" Ryan asked, the question torn from him.

Byron chuckled. "To spy on your precious wife, of course. For what other reason?" He saw the confusion and hurt on Ryan’s face and elaborated with relish. "You see, after my first attempt on her life didn’t quite work – the little tumble down the well, I’m sure you don’t even know about it – I knew she was still a liability. She had overheard something she shouldn’t have. So when I knew she was coming to Carleton to be your pretty little Duchess, I sent Elias to be close to her, to pose as a quiet librarian, to gauge if she remembered anything after that convenient fall caused her memory to be hazy. He was to watch her, listen to her, and report everything back to me."

Ryan felt as if the ground were falling away beneath him. Byron. It had been Byron all along. The sucide that Cassandra committed ... it was no Sucide. "You tried to kill her... then?"

"And you," Ryan continued, his mind reeling, connecting the dark, disparate pieces of a puzzle he never wanted to solve, "you killed Doris? And Luke? And that other woman... the one who killed Lord Collin?" The names were a recital of the dead he had been investigating for over a year.

Byron clapped his hands together, a sharp, manic sound of applause. "Bravo, Ryan! Bravo! You are finally catching up!" He grinned, a terrible, wide-mouthed expression of pure psychopathy. "Yes, I killed them. Doris, that weak-willed fool, pushed Cassandra into the well for me, but she grew a conscience. Luke was supposed to stay hidden, but he became so stupid. And Lord Collin’s housekeeper ... she was a useful tool for removing such an obstacle, but she wanted to safe her own skin by ratting me out."

He shrugged. "They were all planning on betraying me, Luke was asking for more money, greedy fool, the two women wanted to confess. They were loose ends. And I," he said with chilling pride, "am exceptionally tidy."

The weight of it all was crushing. Every death, every act of violence, traced back to the man standing before him, the man who shared his blood. There was one last, terrible question Ryan had to ask, a fear so profound he could barely give it voice. He swallowed hard. "Did you... did you kill Mother?"

The manic energy vanished from Byron’s face in an instant. The taunting smile disappeared, replaced by an icy, murderous glare. A stillness fell over him, more frightening than his earlier madness. "No," he said, his voice a low, venomous hiss. "Father killed her."

The words hung in the air, a confession far more shocking than any that had come before.

"He didn’t strike her, if that’s what you’re imagining, big brother," Byron continued, his voice trembling with a rage that had clearly festered for a lifetime. "His methods were far more cruel. He killed her with his neglect, with his contempt. He killed her with his constant philandering, with the humiliation he heaped upon her day after day. He killed her spirit until her body had no choice but to follow. He drove her into a sadness so deep she simply... faded away. Our father, Duke Charles, murdered our mother." His eyes burned with a mad, grieving fire.

"That," he finished, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, "is why I killed him."