Chapter 55 #2
She moved toward the chair, fingers hovering over the restraints without touching. “Is he torturing you? In this?”
“You d-don’t understand!” Kieran was already moving back toward the stairs, needing to get away from her pity and her judgment. “You need to l-leave. Please, just—”
But Alex was at the top of the stairs now, blocking his path, and Kieran skidded to a halt on the landing.
“I said the same things you’re saying,” Alex said. “I thought he was helping me too. I thought the lessons were making me better, stronger, more authentic.” His laugh was bitter and sharp enough to cut glass. “But I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t break the right way. So he let me go.”
Something shifted in his expression—like envy mixed with resentment, a twisted longing that made Kieran feel sick.
“You got the full treatment though, didn’t you?
” Alex’s eyes moved over Kieran’s visible marks with an intensity that felt invasive.
“Everything I wanted, he gave to you. He never—” His voice cracked.
“He never touched me the way he obviously touches you. He never looked at me the way he looks at you.”
The observation should have been humiliating, shameful even. Instead, Kieran felt a flicker of pride.
He chose me. Not you. Me.
“That’s b-because I’m better than you,” Kieran blurted out. “Because I understand what he’s t-trying to—”
Jericho’s hand closed around his wrist—a firm grip, thumb pressing against his radial artery exactly the way Vale did. The touch was meant to be soothing, grounding, but it felt all wrong. Her skin was too soft, her pressure too imprecise, nothing like Vale’s hands.
“Please, just come with us,” she said, following as Kieran jerked away and continued up the stairs. “We have a place you can stay. You’ll be safe. You can get help, real help, from people who—”
“D-Don’t touch me!” Kieran wrenched his arm free, spinning to face her on the narrow steps. “You don’t get to t-touch me like that! Only Vale—only he—”
“We’re not leaving without you,” Alex said, still blocking the top of the stairs, his body a wall between Kieran and freedom.
Panic crested into something approaching hysteria. Kieran’s breath came in short gasps, copper flooding his mouth as stress pushed his nervous system toward dangerous territory. “Please l-leave. You can’t be here. Just go. Please just g-go!”
Jericho reached for him again with those too soft hands, trying to guide him up the stairs toward where Alex waited. Her fingers wrapped around his forearm, pulling. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get you somewhere safe—”
Kieran shoved her.
Not hard. Just enough to make her stop touching him, to create distance, to make her understand that he didn’t want her help or her pity or her hands on his body.
Her foot caught the edge of the step.
Time fractured.
Kieran saw her eyes widen—not with fear yet, just surprise, the beginning of understanding that balance was already lost. Her arms pinwheeled, fingers grasping at air that offered nothing to hold. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
He reached for her.
His hand shot forward on pure instinct, fingers stretching toward her sleeve, her arm, anything he could grab. For one endless moment, his fingertips brushed fabric—cotton, soft, warm from her body heat—and then it slipped away.
She fell.
The first impact was her shoulder against the wooden railing, a hollow thud that made Kieran’s stomach lurch. Her body twisted, momentum carrying her sideways, and her hip caught the edge of a step with a crack that might have been wood or bone.
Kieran watched her fall and couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but stand there with his hand still extended toward empty air.
Her head struck the third step from the bottom.
The sound was wet and wrong—not the sharp crack he’d expected but something softer, more final.
Her neck bent at an angle that human anatomy wasn’t designed to accommodate, and then she was sliding, tumbling, her limbs loose and graceless until she came to rest at the base of the stairs.
Still.
Too still.
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the hum of the recording equipment seemed to fade, leaving nothing but Kieran’s ragged breathing and the thundering of his own pulse.
Get up. Please get up. Please please please—
But Jericho didn’t move. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing, and her head was bent at that terrible angle that meant—that meant—
“JERICHO!” Alex’s scream shattered the silence. He shoved past Kieran, nearly sending him tumbling too, and took the stairs three at a time.
Kieran’s legs gave out. He sat hard on the landing, unable to move, unable to breathe, watching as Alex knelt beside Jericho’s body with shaking hands.
He checked her pulse, first at her neck, then at her wrist, searching for any sign of life.
When Alex looked up at Kieran, his face was a mask of pure horror. “You killed her. Oh my god. You killed her.”
No. No, I didn’t mean—I just wanted her to stop touching me. I just wanted her to let go. I didn’t—
The metallic taste in Kieran’s mouth intensified as the edges of his vision began to shimmer, an aura building with the inevitability of a storm that couldn’t be stopped.
No. Not now. Please not now. Vale. I need Vale.
But Vale was hours away, and Jericho was dead at the bottom of the basement stairs, and Alex was staring at Kieran like he was a monster.
And maybe—maybe he was right.