Chapter 9
I can’t believe what I’ve done. What I’ve become. I hate looking at myself in the bathroom mirror.
I let a serial killer have… sex with me.
I don’t even begin to know how to wrap my head around that. Nor what awaits me next. Because according to Jacob, I’m to be his bride.
His fucking wife. What the fuck?
I have to get out of here, but Jacob has manacled me to the second floor again since he went out. I don’t know exactly what he’s doing out there this late at night, but it can’t be good.
I have the sickening feeling that what he’s doing is killing someone else. Another girl.
Or maybe he isn’t. I hope he isn’t.
Those hopes are dashed when he appears in the home with blood from head to toe. It’s caked deep into his skin, covering every crevasse, every crease of his shirt and jeans.
“What… have you done?” I whisper.
But beneath the horror, beneath the disgust, there’s a part of me that feels… curiosity? Curiosity of what it feels like to kill, to maim.
No, I scold myself. No, I can’t have thoughts like that. I can’t let his wickedness corrupt me.
“What needed to be done,” Jacob retorts flatly. “Unfortunately, there has been another denial of my offer. You know what the alternative is.”
Death. Atonement. Judgement.
All words I’m familiar with but yet feel foreign to me as the reality of what he’s said sinks in.
“I’ve had visions, Amy, of a world without this plague, this sin in the world. Visions where the Lord has shown me to rule over it all,” Jacob continues, unlocking my chains and walking to the bathroom of the second floor.
I numbly follow, still unable to believe what I know to be true: he killed someone. He glances at me as he flips on the shower.
“I want you by my side in this world.”
Swallowing over the lump in my throat, I release the breath I was holding. “But I’m… just me. I’m nothing special.” I hurry to add, “Father Jacob.”
“Enough with the titles today,” he says, waving me off. “I think we’ve moved past them, don’t you?” A smirk plays on his lips then. “After tonight…”
Tonight. When we had sex. When I let him ravish me and do unspeakable things to my body.
My cuts still hurt, but it’s more a dull throbbing now. The bite on my shin only stings, and I used a washcloth after he left earlier to wipe up the blood.
I can’t believe I asked him to bite me.
I can’t believe I called him daddy .
A part of me is so disgusted by myself, hates myself, but the other part of me wants… more.
And I’m wondering when it’ll happen again. If it will happen again.
“I don’t understand why you chose me,” I murmur. “Why you think you should marry me.”
Jacob pauses as he strips off the blood-soaked clothes. “Because you agreed , Amy. You accepted the choice to change your ways. That means there’s hope for you.” He comes to stand before me. “And you accepted me . You accepted my covenant.”
His eyes narrow. A shudder runs down my spine.
“We shared flesh, Amy. That makes us one in the eyes of the Lord. Being raised Catholic, I’m sure you know this.”
My cheeks flush, and a sickly feeling spreads over my skin, raising the hair on my arms.
“And being that you are to be my bride, my flesh and blood, you must know I would kill for you.”
We were truly one in flesh and spirit. I may have been a dancer, a stripper, but I didn’t let the men there touch me in that way; it was my golden rule. And yet I let this serial killer, this monster, become one flesh with me. Bond with me.
Everything about it screamed wrong .
But the idea of having someone so dangerous, so predatory, determined to protect and kill for me? It made me shudder for a whole new reason.
We were dancing a dangerous line, with sin and corruption on one end and my old life on the other.
Yet my thoughts strayed endlessly to my sister.
She must be so fucking worried about me.
“What about Amelia?” I whisper. “You must know of her condition, if you’ve been watching me.”
Jacob sighs then, turning back to the steamy shower and stepping inside.
The water immediately turned coppery red.
“I do,” he admits. “And I already left her the money you made on your shift.”
My mind goes blank. He did… what?
As if reading the look on my face, Jacob smiles. It’s not cruel, or mean, or anything but pure. “You care for her, which means I must care for her. We’re to be family, after all.”
“And… and she paid for her medicine?” I murmur earnestly. “She was able to get it?”
He nods. “I covered what she couldn’t. Simply said I was a friend of yours here to help.”
It’s like a huge weight has been lifted off my soldiers.
How could this man who knows nothing but pain and blood and ruin truly be so sincere as to care about my family? About my sick sister?
I’m momentarily at a loss for words.
“Thank you,” I finally blurt.
Jacob scrubs his bloody body with a loofah, soiling it, the blood on his face crinkling with his smile. “You’re welcome, Amy.”
It’s a smile that could change me.
It’s a gesture that could ruin me.
I think I feel something other than hate for him.