Free Dead Men (Marie and Lotte Book 1) by Mette Glargaard

but, surprisingly, her father was faster. He grabbed a piece of the broken of handrail, staggered down the stairs and with his mouth twisted in a snarl, he swung the piece of heavy wood with a whoosh sound and it hit her mother’s face with a resounding crack. Under the force of the blow, her mother’s head twisted to the side and slammed into the floor, blood splattering through the air and onto the wall.
    Marie was down the stairs in seconds, crying out for her father to stop, but now he really was like a man possessed. Again and again, the handrail rained down onto her mother’s face and head and, with each strike, her features disappeared into a bloody pulp of torn and ragged flesh. He finally delivered his last blow and stepped back as Marie collapsed and fell to her knees by the body; she knew that her mother had to be dead. The life had been beaten from her by her husband because he wasn’t allowed to touch their daughter’s tits and give her to his friends.
    She finally made herself look up at him and then he saw and understood what he had done. The wood dropped from his hand and fell to the floor, more drops of blood flew from it and one landed on Marie’s check. She let it run down and as her father’s eye caught sight of it he flinched. She could see the shock in his eyes and then the expression changed; there was no regret, only fear.
    “Oh my God, what have I done?” he said quietly.
    He fell to his knees and looked at Marie across the body, putting his bloody hands on her cheeks and he started crying.
    “It wasn’t on purpose. It wasn’t on purpose. I love you. I love you.”
    Marie felt paralyzed by the whole situation. Her father dropped his hands, turned from her and grabbed her mother’s arm, shaking it fiercely.
    “Don’t die. Don’t die. You can’t do that to me. You can’t leave me like this. You can’t blame me. It wasn’t my fault.” He cried like a scared little boy who has done something terrible and is trying to escape the blame; and Marie realized how very much she hated him.
    In one split second, like a vision that hit her from out of nowhere, she knew what she had to do. She got up and took her father’s hand and yanked it slightly to make him look at her.
    “Dad, you’re going to bed to get some rest and clear your head. We can find a way to get you out of this. I will tell the police that there was an intruder; he could have done it. Let me handle it, okay?”
    Her father looked at her with an expression of disbelief and self-pitying relief in his eyes.
    “You would do that for me?” he asked and she nodded. Still in a daze he got back to his feet.
    “You’re going to make it look like an intruder?” he asked again with wonder as if she were the parent. Marie nodded again.
    “Don’t worry Dad, I’ll fix it. I won’t let you down.”
    He put his face close to hers and snarled: “You’d better not!”
    Then his boyish expression found its way back and he cried again. She took his hand and led him back up the stairs to his bedroom, where she pulled the covers over him. He kept asking: “Are you really gonna fix this?” and she would confirm the fact and soothe him. His eyes got sleepier and just before they closed and he dozed off, he reached out and touched her breast again and said:
    “I love you, Marie. You’re Daddy’s girl.”
    Then he was out, but Marie poked him a few times to be sure, but there was no sign of him waking up. Now she ran as fast as she could to the bathroom downstairs, cleaned her face and hands so no blood was left on them, then went to her room where she changed her clothes and got her backpack ready for school. Going back up to his apartment she went into the kitchen where the table was full of empty and near empty bottles and over-flowing ashtrays. She hunted around the bottles until she found what she was looking for and filled a glass with the contents; she’d remembered seeing brandy being used in cooking on TV.
    She found her