Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Celeste
My wedding dress trails through fresh snow as Cain forces my father into the back of our truck at gunpoint.
The fabric, once Patricia's pride, is now dusty with the Lockwood estate's decay, spotted with candle wax and a few drops of blood from our violent kiss.
It's no longer pristine, but it's more beautiful for being broken in.
"This is kidnapping," Sterling slurs, still drunk but sobering fast with Cain's gun pressed to his ribs.
"This is you facilitating your last transaction," Cain corrects. "You're going to be there. You're going to make sure everything runs smoothly. And then we're going to dismantle your empire piece by piece."
"Celeste, please—"
"Get in the truck, Dad." My voice is steady, cold. "Or we release everything right now. Every document, every photo, every proof of your crimes goes live in thirty seconds. Imagine that, your reputation being ruined."
He climbs in.
What choice does he have?
I sit in the passenger seat, gun heavy in my lap.
Behind us, Sterling makes broken sounds that might be prayers or apologies.
I don't care which.
The drive to the cabin takes forty minutes through mountain roads glazed with ice.
No one speaks.
The only sounds are Sterling's ragged breathing and the whisper of snow against windshield.
My phone shows 1:15 AM. The shipment arrives at 2:00.
"They'll know something's wrong," Sterling says suddenly. "The buyers always arrive after the girls are secured. If they see you—"
"Then you'll convince them everything is fine," I say without turning around. "You've been lying for thirty years. One more night shouldn't be hard."
The cabin materializes from darkness like a wound in the forest.
Single story, isolated, windows covered with blackout curtains.
How many girls have disappeared into this place?
How many never left?
We're forty-five minutes early.
Perfect.
Inside, the cabin is worse than I imagined.
It's been retrofitted as a processing center.
Multiple locked rooms, each with a single mattress, bucket, and chain anchored to the wall.
The main room has a desk with ledgers, photos for "advertising," and a box of zip ties.
In the back bedroom, I find what Sterling prepared for his special order.
A room decorated for a teenage girl—pink bedding, stuffed animals, music posters.
Clothes laid out on the bed, all in my size from when I was sixteen.
He's recreated my childhood bedroom, waiting for a girl who looked like me to fill it.
"Jesus Christ," Cain breathes behind me.
I pick up one of the dresses—something I recognize.
It's one I donated to charity years ago.
He kept it.
My father kept my clothes to dress his victim in.
The rage that fills me is nuclear, world-ending.
I understand now why Cain kills.
Sometimes violence is the only language adequate to express certain truths.
"Celeste—" Sterling starts.
I whirl on him, Patricia's gun in my hand before I realize I've drawn it. "You kept my clothes? You were going to dress some child in my clothes?"
"It wasn't—I didn't mean—"
"Stop lying!" The gun shakes in my hand. "For once in your pathetic life, tell the truth. You wanted a girl who looked like me because you've always wanted me. Your own daughter."
His silence is confession enough.
"I never touched you," he whispers. "Never."
"Because I was too close. Too risky. But a stranger who looked like me? That was safe, wasn't it?"
Cain takes the gun from my shaking hand. "Not yet. We need him to be functional for the next hour."
Sterling's phone rings.
He fumbles for it, shows us the screen. "It's the drivers. They need confirmation to proceed."
"Answer it," Cain orders. "Everything is normal. You're at the cabin, ready to receive."
Sterling does, his voice somehow steady despite the gun Cain holds to his temple. "Yes, proceed as planned. I'm here... No, no changes... Yes, the buyers have been notified to arrive."
He hangs up. "Fifteen minutes."
We take positions.
Cain will handle the drivers.
I'll manage the girls initially—a woman's presence might calm them.
Sterling will stand exactly where we tell him, say exactly what we script, or die before the buyers even arrive.
Headlights sweep across the windows.
Two vans, nondescript, the kind contractors use.
They park, and two men exit—one huge and bald, one smaller with nervous eyes.
Both armed.
"Sterling!" the big one calls. "Get out here and help. Some of these bitches are fighters."
My father walks out, and I follow, staying in shadows.
The men don't notice me at first—their eyes are on Sterling, then the vans' cargo.
When they open the rear doors, I see them.
Twelve girls, zip-tied and gagged, some unconscious, others with eyes wide in terror.
The youngest looks even younger than thirteen—maybe eleven, drugged and limp.
"The young one gave us trouble in Albany," the nervous man says. "Had to dose her twice."
That's when he sees me.
A bride in a dirty white dress, holding a gun.
"What the—"
Cain moves from behind, his knife opening the big man's throat in one motion.
Arterial spray paints the snow red.
The nervous one reaches for his weapon, but I'm already firing.
The gun kicks hard, the bullet catching him center mass.
He drops, twitching.
I shoot him again to be sure.
My first kill.
I wait for the guilt, the horror, the human response to taking life.
It doesn't come.
All I feel is satisfaction.
The girls in the vans are screaming through their gags, terrified. I lower the gun, hold up my hands.
"We're here to help," I say, though I know how insane I must look—blood-spattered bride with a smoking gun. "We're getting you out."
Cain cuts their restraints while I keep watch. Some girls run immediately into the woods—we let them.
Thalia's people will find them.
Others huddle together, too traumatized to move.
The youngest is barely breathing.
"She needs a hospital," I tell Cain.
"Thalia's network has medical—"
Car engines. Multiple vehicles approaching.
"The buyers," Sterling says. "They're early."
"Positions," Cain orders.
We've barely moved the girls to the back room when the first car arrives.
Judge Hamilton, seventy years old, respected in the community, grandfather of six.
He walks in without knocking, comfortable here. "Sterling, what's the delay? I have court in the morning—"
He sees me first.
Recognizes me despite the dress, the blood, the gun.
"Celeste? What are you—"
"Hello, Judge. Remember me? You used to give me candy at the courthouse when I was little."
"Sterling, what is this?"
"This is justice," I say, and shoot him in the knee.
He screams, collapses, crawling toward the door.
Cain blocks his path.
"You sentenced how many kids to juvenile facilities that fed into this system?" I ask. "How many 'troubled' teens did you redirect straight into trafficking?"
"Please—"
"No. No pleading. You didn't listen to them plead. Why should I listen to you?"
The next shot takes him in the stomach.
He'll die slow, conscious for most of it.
Another car. Dr. Wallis arrives, the pediatrician who did all our school physicals.
He hears Hamilton screaming, tries to run, but Cain is faster.
Tackles him in the snow, drags him inside.
"Dr. Wallis," I say conversationally. "You gave me my vaccines. Told me I was growing up strong and healthy."
"Celeste, there's been a misunderstanding—"
"Did you tell that to the girls you examined for 'freshness'? Did you give them lollipops too after violating them?"
Cain holds him while I work.
Not with the gun—too quick.
With a knife, the one Juliette gave me.
Each cut is for a girl he hurt.
By the time I'm done, he's begging for death.
I don't give it to him yet.
Father McKenzie arrives next, clutching his rosary.
The priest who baptized me, heard my first confession, gave me First Communion.
He enters praying.
"Father," I greet him. "Come to give Last Rites?"
"Celeste, my child, this is not God's way—"
"God's way? You raped children and called it God's way?"
"I never—I only counseled them—"
Sterling finally breaks his silence. "Stop lying, McKenzie. They know everything."
The priest looks at my father, then at me. "Your father sold you to the devil."
"No," I correct. "He tried to. But I chose the devil myself."
McKenzie dies with his rosary shoved down his throat, choking on the beads he used to count his sins.
Three more arrive in quick succession—council members, business owners, pillars of the community.
Cain and I work in harmony, a wedding dance of death.
One holds while the other cuts.
One shoots while the other watches the door.
We're painted in red by the time the eighth buyer arrives.
The last is someone I don't expect. Mrs. Barnett, my third-grade teacher.
"Hello, Celeste," she says calmly, surveying the carnage. "I always knew you were special."
"You're part of this?"
"Someone needs to prepare the girls. Teach them how to behave, how to please. I specialize in... training."
The rage returns, white-hot.
This woman taught me multiplication.
Read me stories.
Sent home notes about what a good student I was.
"How many?" I ask.
"Does it matter? They were already broken when they arrived."
I empty the rest of the gun into her.
Six shots.
She dies instantly, which feels like mercy she didn't deserve.
Silence falls.
Eight bodies cooling in spreading pools of blood.
My father stands in the corner, splattered but untouched, shaking.
"It's done," he says. "You've destroyed it all. Can I go now?"
"No, Dad. We're just getting started."
Cain retrieves the ledgers, the photos, everything that documents the network.
We'll burn it all, but first my father needs to make some calls.
"Your contacts in Albany, Burlington, Montreal—call them. Tell them the route is closed. Permanently. Tell them Sheriff Sterling is out of business."
"They won't believe—"
Cain presses his knife to Sterling's throat. "Make them believe you."
He makes seven calls.
Each one burns another bridge, destroys another connection.
By the time he's done, thirty years of network building is ash.
Thalia's vans arrive as promised.
The girls are loaded quickly, the youngest rushed for medical attention.
They'll disappear into safe houses, get new identities, new lives.
We'll never know what becomes of them, and that's how it should be.
When the vans disappear into the darkness, it's just us three and the dead.
"Now?" Sterling asks. "Do you kill me now?"
"Yes," I say simply.
"Here? With them?"
"No. You don't deserve to die with your customers. You're special, Daddy. You get a special ending."
We drive him back to the place it all started—the Lockwood estate.
Dawn is breaking as we arrive, pale light filtering through the trees.
The house looks different in daylight, less menacing, more pathetic.
Just a rotten monument to evil men's ambitions.
We take him to the groundskeeper's cottage where he maintained Richard's legacy.
"Any last words?" I ask.
"I did love you," he says. "In my way."
"Your love was poison. This is the antidote."
He closes his eyes. "Your mother would be proud of you."
"My mother ran. I'm standing."
"Make it quick."
"No."
I think of every girl he sold.
Every childhood destroyed.
Every father who became a monster because Sterling enabled him.
Every mother who lost a daughter to his network.
When I'm done, my father doesn't look like himself anymore.
He looks like justice.
Cain holds me as I shake, not from horror but from completion.
It's finished.
My father is dead, his network destroyed, twelve girls saved.
"Our wedding night," I say, looking at our blood-covered hands.
"No honeymoon could compare," he agrees.
We burn the cottage with my father inside, along with all the evidence except what we need for insurance.
The fire will be investigated, but my father has many enemies.
A tragic end to a complicated man, they'll say.
By the time we return to Cain's cabin, the sun is fully up.
I'm still in Patricia's wedding dress, now more red than white.
We stand in his doorway, married for eight hours, killers for less than that.
"I love you," I tell him.
"I love you too."
We go inside to wash the blood away, but we both know it will never really be gone.
It's part of us now, sealed into our marriage like vows.
Our wedding night is over, but our life together has just begun.