Epilogue
A few minutes earlier…
The envelope is on my bed when I get back from the bathroom.
I’m a maid at Vexley House. Nothing ever appears in the servants’ wing by accident, and certainly not in my room. If something is left on my bed, it’s because someone wanted me to find it.
I close the door, lock it, and open the envelope.
Inside is a small black phone and—I gasp—a stack of cash. I pull the bills free and count them without thinking.
Five hundred dollars.
I gasp again.
My mother needs a cancer treatment that’s experimental, and Medicare won’t cover it. The clinic won’t even schedule the first appointment without a deposit.
Five hundred won’t pay for the treatment. But it will get her through the door.
I set the money aside and take out the card beneath it. The instructions are typed.
You need money. Here is five hundred dollars. There’s a message pre-typed on this burner phone. Send the message at 9:00 a.m. from the lower corridor. Stand facing the last door. Do not deviate. You will receive five hundred more when you’re done.
No name. No explanation. Just those instructions.
I should walk away. I know that. People don’t leave cash and a burner phone in a maid’s room without a reason—not a good one, anyway.
But I think of my mother trying not to let me hear the fear in her voice, and I know I’m not going to walk away.
I pick up the phone.
The message is already typed.
You opened the wrong door first.
I read it once. It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s not my problem.
Staff isn’t supposed to go to the lower corridor in Vexley House, so I keep my head down and my steps light. I stop where the instructions said and face the last door.
It looks like any other door.
I check the time.
8:59.
I think about putting the phone back in the envelope, about pretending I never saw it, about walking away before this becomes something I can’t undo.
Then I think of my mother, and the second 8:59 becomes 9:00, I press send.
The message disappears.
The silence that follows feels heavier than it should.
I let out a breath and start to turn when the phone vibrates in my hand.
I freeze.
This wasn’t part of the instructions. Who would be texting this phone?
I look down at the screen.
A new message has appeared.
No number. No name.
Just text.
Delaney Cross didn’t listen. Finish it tonight.
Thank you for reading Brutal! The danger, desire, and mystery continue in Merciless.