Chapter 30
DELILAH
Ever since Lennox arrived, the atmosphere has been odd. It’s not comfortable like when I had Kane with me, but he keeps coaxing me out of the room and sticks beside me like a guard. Now he places shoes in front of me. “The fresh air will do you good.”
“You’re a really irritating captor, do you know that?” I snap, pushing my feet into them.
His lips twitch as he dryly says, “I’ll make note to be less irritating the next time.”
“Oh shit, I’ve failed at my goal of putting you off kidnapping people.
I’ll need to try harder now.” I drag my feet as we leave the room.
There’s no one in the hallway as I hide behind him like a child.
He’s not violent from what I’ve seen. He’s still a good place to hide though, because he covers me as he pulls his leather gloves so they’re tight against his fingers.
When we reach the metal staircase, he continues walking through the hallway.
I whisper, “Lenny, where are you going?”
The name differentiates him from his twin. Humans feel emotions, they have likes and dislikes. Rowan will always be a monster, incapable of possessing those things.
“Are you aware you have an unfortunate name, given your circumstances?” he asks over his shoulder as I’m forced to follow him to an even creepier part of this huge house.
The walls are all covered in silk paper with rusted sconces, coated in old wax collected over time.
Even the windows are older, thinner, so I can hear the waves as the hallway bends to the left.
“What’s wrong with my name?”
“Delilah,” he says, slowing until we’re side by side. “And you suffer from delusions.”
“That’s fucking rude.” I stare at the side of his head. “They’re not delusions—”
“Of course not, little doe. They feel real to you.” His lips twitch again while I’m caught between a slack jaw and glaring at him. “Come on, a little further.”
I begin walking again while I try to work out if he’s made a joke for the first time since being here. We reach a thin wooden door. Lennox holds it open for me and says, “Walk ahead, in case you fall.”
“I’m not so fucking delusional that I can’t remain on my feet.”
He nods once, waving his hand for me to walk. Annoying asshole. I bet Kane told him to piss me off on purpose. Bunch of dicks.
The stone steps have worn away in the middle, so it only takes three of them to disorient me. I have to stare at my feet as I slowly walk up.
Lenny’s newfound humor makes another visit as he whispers, “They are your own feet, little doe.”
“Shut up, Lenny,” I hiss. “Or I’ll tell your mother.”
The air is even colder by the time I finish speaking but I don’t apologize to him. Just because he’s the nicest member of his psychotic family doesn’t make him good. That’s like winning a competition for smelling the least like shit.
When we reach the top of the staircase, I stand back as he walks around me to lead me to another door without saying a word.
This one is wooden too, with a large beam across the middle.
He slides it across, opening the door to the cry of the gulls and wind whirling around us as the breathtaking view is unveiled.
I can’t see any other land in the distance, just miles of the sea as the sun sparkles across the surface.
It’s less blue, more green from this vantage.
I can almost forget where we are as I step onto the flat stone roof.
The wind is more vicious, whipping my hair into my face, so I tuck it into my hood and hold the strings as I stop at the edge of the roof.
Knocking my elbow into his, I give a half apology. “I won’t really tell her you talk to me.”
“I’m not afraid of my mother,” he says without any emotion.
“So why are you being weirder than normal?”
“I was the first person to hold Kane,” he admits, like it’s a crime. “Isadora didn’t know I was there in the delivery suite when they handed me the second-born. In that moment, I felt something I’d never felt before.”
Leaning with my side against the railing, I smile. “You love him.”
“No.” He stares out at the horizon, unblinking.
“Fear. I’d held babies before, but he felt smaller than the rest even though he was perfectly healthy.
” He mechanically blinks, turning to me.
“I don’t harbor any hate for you, or your actions.
Not when I know it was always planned for you to be here. ”
I need to get Helene is a liar tattooed on my eyelids because I keep allowing her to suck me in when she’s incapable of telling the truth.
“Lennox, can you tell me why it was so important for me to be here?” I continue examining him. “Don’t mention some agreement with my family because no one forced Ruby or Scarlet to be here when you’re all clearly capable of finding them.”
He pulls on his gloves again before threading his fingers together so the seam is firmly planted on the inside of his fingers as he asks, “Are you aware of The Three?”
I nod as he looks over at me.
“This all began with three prominent families in different fields and a game of ‘hunt the maid.’ It was my twice great-grandfather, your fourth, and a third associate. From what I’ve heard, they would take fishing trips.
On these trips, they would each choose a maid to accompany them—a representation for their family. ”
Harkin would go on those fishing trips. It always coincided with my mother firing a member of staff.
He points at the side of the island where three large logs are stuck in the middle of the water.
“Do you see the post stuck in the water?” He curls his gloved fingers around the top bar of the railing.
“They would fish there, while each maid would be tied to a post as the patriarchs bonded. At first, it was a way to show they had control over their house, that they could command their staff, but then it built into a darker game.”
“What did they do?” I squeak.
“The first year they gave into their whims, they stripped the maids and tested what would attract more birds to them. The next, they attempted to lure sharks to the shore by threading fishhooks into the maids’ skin, tugging whenever they caught something on their lines.
It took five years for their true desires to come out to play. ”
He pauses while I do the same with my breathing. I know how this is going to end, the same way all their creepy family stories do.
“One by one, they untied their maids,” he says lower.
“When the sun set, they gave them the option to earn their freedom. A choice none of the previous maids in their position had been given as they always came home with a box of fish, three travelers light. That fifth year, as all three of them ran into the woods to reach civilization, they were shown no humanity. In turn, the veil of civility each of the families managed to maintain dropped away. They no longer cared about the wealth of an ordinary man, or the accomplishments. What they wanted was to feed on fear. It became this.” He holds his hand out, gesturing to the forest full of dolls.
“What does it have to do with me?”
Some random evil cunt of an ancestor shouldn’t dictate my life.
Lennox clearly thinks otherwise as he explains, “A pact was made between the three families to make something bigger than anyone has ever witnessed before. Marriage wasn’t a deep enough bond when they would regularly intoxicate their wives, so they were unaware of who entered their bed.
Children were off limits, at the time anyway, so the bond could be made. ”
At. The. Time.
The lump in my throat chokes me, holding my bile back as I lower to sit on the floor.
He lowers with me, sitting on his haunches as he recites their—our—sickening family history.
“When you were a child, there was a change. One of the families angered Helene. It made her pull your parents closer because she needed protection. Ruby had already agreed to marry Rowan, as long as you were unharmed. She wanted to save you, little doe.”
I hug my knees, causing me to mumble. “But I killed Asher?”
“Yes, and no. The bond of a groom to his wife is something Helene couldn’t risk.
Not jealousy or having her most devout child swayed from her control.
She was already interested in you. She saw to it Ruby only ever knew you as the happy Delilah who was in love.
Scarlet was never an option, due to her traveling overseas to have a tubal ligation, so you were the only child left in your family. ”
That’s why my mother gave Asher a chart of where he was allowed to hit me, and she would pick out my clothes to make sure the bruises were never seen.
Because the alternative was my sister, who couldn’t live in that house without them pimping her out, would have imploded their business agreement.
My sister, who was a child, agreed to marry a grown man to save me.
“Why me?” I whisper through my tears.
“Why not you?” he asks simply. “Ruby’s knowledge took away the entertainment of breaking her. Asher regularly boasted about your fight to be with Kane. All stories throughout history are a battle of the heart and body. Why would she choose anyone else when you exist within the same fight?”
“I didn’t do anything.” I wipe the tears off my cheeks.
“No one ever does. Are you aware some believe God and the Devil to be siblings? This universe, the belief of right and wrong, everything you know solely exists due to a sibling rivalry by those who were naturally given more power than you. So again, why not you, when you emulate that very struggle?”
“Would Kane have been left alone?”
He slowly shakes his head, taking a deep breath.
“The way he was raised made him see family as something to yearn for. Asher had no intention of leaving his life. He wanted to be both of them, so he wouldn’t have allowed his name to die.
It was always going to be Kane trapped in this world while Asher lived the best of both.
He would have acted on his desires here while accepting the praise in the other.
Don’t believe Helene. She was too in awe of what she created in Asher to accept he had higher aspirations than what she would allow. ”
Why the fuck is everything a lie? There’s one morsel of truth buried under a ton of carefully crafted lies like a maze with the smallest gap to escape, but I only end up in another maze with more deceptive groves.
“Do you see now, little doe? You took the only route you had to save yourself.”
“Save me?” I scoff. “I was locked up for years. So was Kane. Who knows what they did to him. None of this is the better option than Asher living. I would have lived with Asher beating me—I did live with it—to keep Kane safe. If you think I hold any joy about his death right now, you’re wrong.
It’s not possible anymore because all his taunts, his manipulation, the way he’d beat me while telling me he’s keeping me safe were the better option. ”
For Kane.
Lennox stands to his full height, taking his phone out of his pocket, then turns it so I can see the screen. Or screens, because it flickers with multiple rectangles, each showing a different room with a new sickening act the Devil would find repulsive.
I close my eyes, turning my head, but it’s burned into my mind and I can’t remove the image of the person strapped to an elevated bed on their stomach being mounted by a dog. Strings of thick saliva dripping on to their back, their body shaking in the restraints keeping them in place.
“Curiosities,” Lennox says. “Those are Rowan’s, enacted for his entertainment.
Asher wanted to see how his body would react and he planned to force Kane to play out every one of his curiosities.
” My face is tipped up as he softly says, “Open your eyes, little doe. See you are responsible for something great. You defeated one head—you have three left.”
My eyes burn as soon as they open to him squatting in front of me like I’m not some dumb, weak, silly girl.
“Bide your time,” he says, “like you did with Asher. Trust your instincts to know when the time is right. Don’t allow her to control this again.” He taps my temple. “You succeeded as a girl when you didn’t know all of this existed. Knowledge is power. Use it to save each other.”
I nod even though it’s weak and unconvincing. But he doesn’t say anything else as he gently holds my elbow, guiding me up. Rather than force me to move, he allows me to lean my head on his bicep and watch the water while my tears fall.