Chapter 13 #2
“It’s never over.” He positions himself between me and the door. “For this to be over, one of us has to die.”
Fear seizes my breath. “Let me leave.”
“We can’t both carry your secret, London,” he says, voice dropping low as he devours the remaining space between us. “That is, unless we can continue to work through it during our sessions.” His knuckles brush the curve of my breast, leaving a trail of fire in his wake.
“What are you talking about?” I demand, forced to tip my head back to meet his eyes.
He cages me in against the wall. “It’s difficult for small towns to be objectionable about one of their own. No one wants to believe a sadistic killer hides among them.”
My back flattens against the concrete wall as he towers over me.
“But you knew the truth,” he continues, “and you did what you’re so good at doing.” He leans in close to my ear. “You lied.” As he pulls back, he leers down at me with that devious grin. “You’ve been lying ever since, even to yourself.”
I swallow past the ache in my throat. “I’m going to scream this time, Grayson.”
“Go ahead,” he dares. “I’ll snag the first reporter interview I can to announce that your father was a monster you put down.”
The air in the room thins, compressing until my lungs constrict. The fluorescent lights flicker, the buzz intensifying. Every sound is amplified, pulsing with the rapid beat of my heart.
Grayson licks his lips, his body pressed far too close to mine. “The puzzle pieces were all there,” he says. “They just needed to be linked together.”
“You’re mad,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “You’re delusional. You’ve built an entire story around me that couldn’t be further from the—”
His lips capture mine, silencing my words. The kiss is raw, and demanding, and punishing. A desperate moan escapes me, betraying my fight as heat sears my veins. I brace my palms against the solid wall of his chest and shove, breaking away.
“I wanted to taste the lie on your lips,” he says, a cruel smile pulling at his mouth. “Tastes bitter. Nothing like that sweetness I experienced yesterday.”
He moves farther away, allowing me to breathe and straighten my blouse. When I look at him, he’s seated behind the table, studying me with those knowing eyes.
“All those missing girls,” he says, his accent rolling through the smooth cadence of his voice. “Did you see them? Witness their torture? How long were you a part of it before you decided to kill your father?”
The walls of the white room waver in the corner of my vision, red staining the edges. I seal my eyes closed. The ink on my hand burns, and I cup my palm, rub at the searing flesh. “Three months.”
A wave of relief crashes over me with the confession, relieving the pressure at my temples. As I open my eyes, I expect to see arrogance on Grayson’s face, a smugness in having stripped me down to my blackened marrow. Yet instead, his expression is somber, gazing at me with a frightening reverence.
“Lucky for you, the coroner was a drunk. Couldn’t distinguish between peri- and postmortem injuries. That car crash didn’t kill your father. He was already dead when you decided to drive straight into a tree.”
Anxious, I glance at the metal door, unease threading my nerves. “Nothing you’re saying is fact. You have no evidence, no proof.”
“I don’t need any. The speculation alone will be enough to destroy you.”
He’s right. A renewed investigation into my father now, with advanced forensic technology and investigative procedures, could prove he was the Hollows Reaper—the boogeyman rumored to steal young girls in the middle of the night, a cautionary tale mothers told their daughters to keep them safe at home.
“What did he do with the bodies?” he asks.
“What did you do with the bodies?” I counter.
A brutal smile twists his face. “I buried them, of course.”
My hands tremble. My family home is still in my name. I kept an abandoned house with a dead garden and barren cornfield, rotting down to the foundation. I own the deed to a graveyard.
“You should tell the families where their loved ones are buried, Grayson. The court would be more prone to clemency if you did.”
He hikes an eyebrow. “I will if you will.”
I push off the wall. Shove my hands in my hair. “This is crazy. I won’t be threatened.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“No. We’re not done.” His features harden. “Come here, London.”
All I have to do is bang on the door to alert the guard. I glance between Grayson and the door, fear collaring my throat in a tight grip. Just how big of a disaster could Grayson make out of my life?
Slowly, cautiously, I walk toward him. “Turning my life into a media circus would get you off, wouldn’t it?” I ask him.
“It’s tempting.” He seizes my waist and hauls me onto his lap. “But I have bigger things in mind.”
“Let go—” I twist against him, and he clasps my wrists.
“I need to know how you felt in that moment,” he says, luring me with the rough caress of his voice. “When you killed him, how did it feel?”
Appall parts my mouth. “God, you’re a monster.”
“I’m your monster.” He grips my wrists tighter, holding me to him. “Tell me, and you’ll own me completely.” His thumb strokes the side of my palm tenderly, and the rattle of his chains forces my eyes closed, awakening dark memories. “You want to tell me, London. Tell me how you killed him.”
My body tenses, yet he expertly draws the confession from me, coaxing me closer to the cage until my mind switches off, erasing all resistance. I surrender, embracing the danger as I straddle the man who threatens everything.
My freedom. My morality. My sanity.
“A key,” I whisper with trembling lips. “He wore a key around his neck, to a dark cellar cage where he kept them. I tore it free and drove it into his jugular.”
His fingers softly brush my hair from my eyes before he removes my glasses, his gentle touch a stark contrast to the hardness I feel beneath me. He’s aroused.
“What did you feel?” he asks, his mouth hovering near mine, tasting my desperate breaths.
“I felt…free,” I admit. “Like I could do anything.”
“You can,” he coaxes. “It’s in your nature.”
No, my internal alarm screams in warning, jolting me back to my senses. I try to stand, but his strong hands clamp onto my thighs, anchoring me against him. The hard feel of him, so wanting, pressed to the most intimate part of me, incinerates my resolve.
I shake my head. “We don’t get to do anything we want. There has to be boundaries, rules.”
Releasing a strained breath, he rests his forehead to mine. “We can make our own.”
My hands glide over his forearms, tenderly feeling the scars he wears outside that match my inside. It’s intoxicating, the way he seduces my pain away, as though we really do command our own reality.
No pain.
Here with him, it would be so easy to fall all the way, to just let go. No hiding, no shame. That’s how he found me, how he discovered my secret, and it excites him—what it could mean if I’d only release the string tethering me to a life so binding.
But that’s the trade, the risk of losing my humanity. And pain is human. It means I can still feel.
“No. I’m not damning myself again.” I break his hold and stand, grabbing my glasses from the table. I back away until my shoulders hit the wall.
“I’m not stopping,” he says, but he doesn’t pursue me. “We were designed for each other. Don’t you feel the pain when we’re apart? Don’t you want relief from it, London?”
I swallow. He’s too inside my head. I have to get away. “Guard.”
“You’re mine, London. We can dance this violent dance until we bleed each other dry, or we can surrender. Your choice, but I will have you.”
“That monster born of sin and death died in a car wreck,” I tell him. “She’s gone.”
A menacing smile tips his mouth. “Then it’s my mission to resurrect her.”
I pound on the door until it opens. I throw myself past the guard, ignoring his questions as I rush down the corridor on shaky legs. The second I hit fresh air, it douses some of the heat still simmering beneath my skin—but the pain latches on violently, sending a searing rod deep into my back.
I scream.