Chapter 10 Kaia
KAIA
Five hours after Flynn took his first bite of that fateful soup, I sit locked up in an underground cell I didn’t even know existed.
Frank locked me in here with a look of utter disgust, then rushed away and left me in the cold and the dark.
It’s no more than I deserve.
Killing Flynn was supposed to make me feel better.
It was supposed to avenge Anya and my brother, to bring peace to my aunt, and, hopefully, to bring me right back into the safe arms of my uncle.
It was supposed to feel good watching him choke and gag at my feet with pain in his eyes and death kissing his lips.
It didn’t feel good.
It felt…wrong.
Still, I tried to justify that being a result of his twisted, manipulative words while he ate and I tried to look past the guilt that swelled up just below my ribs like a bubble.
Tried to focus on the pain he’d caused me, the deaths he’d orchestrated, and the pride I’d feel once he was in his grave.
Until Angie burst in.
I’ve no idea where she came from.
I didn’t even hear the door.
One second, Flynn was writhing and dying at my feet, the next his daughter was throwing herself over his body and screaming for him in a voice broken from lack of use.
Those screams echo chillingly in my mind as I curl up in the furthest corner of my cell and weep.
Her sudden appearance and yells knocked me out of my trance and I was the one yelling for help.
I told the first guard who appeared that I’d poisoned Flynn with Lily of the Valley and there wasn’t any time.
My cheek still aches from the blow of one of the guard’s guns as he fought to subdue me, not that I was resisting.
The last I saw of Flynn, he was on the floor surrounded by men while his daughter yelled for him over and over again.
My hands slide into my hair and I grip tightly, pressing my face into my raised knees and sob.
What kind of monster am I?
Everyone I’ve ever known has spoken about killing like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
Plant a poison, pull a trigger, stab a knife. Even during my attempt to kill Flynn in his office with the hairpin didn’t feel like this.
Back then, I told myself it would be easy to slice his throat once I had the information I needed. It was like a game because I’ve never killed someone before and all I had to go on was stories from Anya about the men she’d killed.
When Flynn disarmed me, I told myself it was because he was stronger but now, with my head in my hands and utter defeat in my heart, I know the truth.
He disarmed me because I let him. I’m not a killer.
I don’t have that streak in me to take another’s life like it’s a day at the market. I’m not built like that.
At least, I wasn’t.
Angie’s sobs will haunt me forever.
Poison was supposed to be easy and guilt-free, but it’s like my ribs are trying to tear my chest open, and my heart won’t stop pounding.
Revenge isn’t worth the horrifying screams that came from that little girl.
I cry until my eyes burn and end up throwing up all over myself in deep, gut-tearing wretches that leave me gagging and gasping for air.
My tears don’t stop.
They lead me to exhaustion and a deeply unsettled sleep where Angie’s screams wake me up and the cycle starts all over again.
I sob for hours, until my throat’s dry and my eyes itch past the point of soothing.
No one comes.
There’s no light save for a single missing brick high up in the wall and it’s my only indicator that time is passing.
Beyond that, I have nothing but my own thoughts and guilt for company in a two-by-four cell locked behind peeling steel bars.
One day, Frank visits.
He doesn’t speak; he doesn’t answer my pleas for information; he just brings soup and a change of clothes, then leaves.
Is the soup a threat?
Are they demanding I kill myself the same way I killed Flynn?
It feels like something they would do, so for a few days, I refuse to eat until the gnawing hunger inside me surpasses the guilt, and death feels like a warm embrace.
I eat the soup…and I’m fine.
It’s not poisoned.
Each day Frank brings me soup and water, each day he ignores my pleas for answers on what happened to Flynn and how Angie is, and each day I crawl back into the corner of my cell and exist in utter despair.
No one told me murder was like this.
I can scarcely understand how Flynn walks around with so much blood on his hands and not a care in the world.
And then, finally, after countless days, I get my answer.
“Flynn?”
He stands at the door to my cell, watching me through the bars as I wake from an unsettled sleep.
He doesn’t speak at first so I rub my eyes and expect him to vanish as soon as I open them again.
He doesn’t.
He’s still there leaning on a sleek black cane with a silver handle and an almost amused glint in his eye.
“Are you real?” I croak out, shifting up onto my knees.
“I didn’t know you had it in you,” Flynn replies quietly.
Despite the roughness in his tone, his familiar soft voice crashes over me like water against rocks and I scramble onto my feet.
“Holy shit, you’re alive? You’re okay?” I fly at the bars and grip them with both hands, looking him rapidly up and down. “Oh my god, oh my god I was so scared you were dead, so scared—.”
“Scared?” Flynn cuts in. “You tried to kill me.”
“I know, I know. I wanted you dead, I really did. But I…” My words catch in my dry throat and I slowly meet his eyes. “I’m really glad you’re not.”
Shadows cling under his eyes and his hair’s lost some of its volume, but all in all Flynn looks pretty damn good for a guy poisoned by Lily of the Valley.
As we stare at one another in silence, my pounding heart sinks into my gut.
Flynn alive means I’m not a murderer and the relief from that is overwhelming, but it doesn’t change what I did.
“I’m sorry,” I croak as tired tears seep into my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you let me die?”
My brows twitch upward and I tighten my grip on the bars. “Huh?”
“You had me where you wanted me. Poisoned. Dying at your feet. The revenge you wanted was right there, wasn’t it?” Flynn’s head tilts to the side. “So why didn’t you let it happen?”
“I… Angie came in and I just… I couldn’t.”
“Angie always existed though,” Flynn replies.
“Any attempt on my life, successful or not, would have resulted in the same. So why did you change your mind? Your actions calling for the guard got me the help I needed and saved my life just in time.” He leans much closer to the bars and my lungs fill with the achingly familiar scent of his cologne. “So why didn’t you just let me die?”
“I couldn’t, okay?” I croak out, shaking my head.
“I’m not a murderer. I thought…I thought I was.
I thought I could do it and I wanted to, I really wanted to but then you were on the floor and it didn’t feel good.
It really didn’t, so when Angie came in, I just…
it was like I woke up and I couldn’t go through with it.
So just…” I push away from the bars and cover my mouth, fighting a sob.
“I’m not a killer so you might as well just… just do what you came here to do!”
“I’m surprised,” Flynn says with a light, amused grunt. “I thought all Yudkin were bloodthirsty.”
Weakly I shake my head and tears slowly roll down my cheeks. “Then I’m a stain on the Yudkin name. I don’t know what you want me to say but you came here to kill me, right? Revenge?”
“Revenge?” Flynn repeats.
“I traumatized your daughter, didn’t I? I hate myself for that.
I thought I was like all the others, like my brother and everything but I’m not.
I don’t have the stomach for it.” A soft sob escapes me.
“And hurting Angie? I’m sick with myself for exposing her to that.
She’s a child and I hurt her. I can’t… So whatever you’re here to do, just do it. I’m ready.”
I really am ready, I think.
My time here stewing in guilt has shown me only one path out of this life, only one light in this infinite darkness.
I can’t survive in this life.
I wait for a gunshot or twisted words of how Flynn will toy with me for the rest of my life, but none of those come.
Instead, I’m met with the clunk of the lock sliding free and the creak of the hinges as the cell door swings open.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, hanging back when Flynn doesn’t enter.
“Letting you out.”
“What? Why?” This has to be part of a game.
Telling myself I’m ready for his revenge doesn’t change the fact that staying in the cell is surely safer than whatever hell he has waiting for me outside.
“Because,” Flynn says as he turns away from the door and heads toward the exit, “you might be the first Yudkin I actually respect.” He stops at the door and holds it open, showing the illuminated stairs leading back to the manor.
“Are you coming?”