28. Chapter 28
Dinner smells normal, and it’s a tad unsettling considering the felony I’m currently living within.
Though, it’s certainly not what places the little spark in my nerves.
It’s the normalcy of eating across the table from a man who once stood behind me in a mirror and decided whether I lived or died based on a series of simple questions.
The stew is thick and warm and the bread is even steaming as he breaks it.
Firelight flickers low against the walls, throwing soft shadows instead of sharp ones.
For a moment—just a moment—it could pass for an ordinary night.
Just two people who have sat down to enjoy a meal in the secluded romance of a cabin.
A date even, if you could get past the fact that one half of the party isn’t here entirely of their own making.
I don’t trust it.
We eat without speaking for the majority of the meal. The silence oddly isn’t strained, but it’s not comfortable either. It feels observant. Like we’re both cataloguing what the other does when there’s nothing pressing to react to.
Soon, that silence becomes a little too much for me though. I need something to fill all these open ended questions that linger in my mind, and it’s not like I’ve got much else to do in this place. So might as well break out the guns.
“Pitch,” I start softly.
He pauses, his spoon still hovering mid-bowl. I watch him think on that word for a single moment before he sits the spoon back into his bowl, pushing it aside so that he can give me his undivided attention.
“What about it?” He asks.
“I want to understand it,” I start carefully. “Not the rumors or the mythology people build around it. I want to understand it and why you are a part of it.”
“Ask what you want to ask then.” He states simply.
“How did you end up there?”
The question hangs between us, heavier than I expected. And I almost think he won’t answer it all. Then he leans back slightly in his chair and lets go of a deep breath.
“I was recruited.”
“Recruited?” I frown.
“Yes.”
I wait, because surely there is more to it than that. Surely he can’t think that is suffice for all the hell I’ve been put through because of one damn event.
“They look for certain profiles,” he continues when he spies my irritation. “People who don’t respond to threat the way they should or who ask questions when others might freeze.”
“Or who like to murder people,” I deadpan.
“That too,” He murmurs.
I swallow at how easily that answer whips off of his tongue.
It isn’t a leap to assume he is part of the people who like to hack people apart or nail them to walls like the wolf-man had in that hallway.
Not when so many that night were shocked I had made my way out.
And it isn’t too far to assume the man who kidnaps someone to rearrange their environment to his liking might also like the feeling of blood beneath his nails.
“And you fit that?” I whisper.
“I exceeded it.”
The words are calm, almost clinical, and it causes my stomach to roll in on itself. I can’t focus on it or I’ll let fear eat me alive, so I push forward. “They just—what? Found you? Walked up and offered you a role in an underground murder ring?”
His gaze sharpens, just a fraction. “They offered me autonomy.”
“Over what?” I challenge.
He doesn’t answer me immediately. Instead, he studies me, as if weighing how much truth I can carry without tipping.
“Over consequence, instinct, and outcome.”
“That’s purposefully vague,” I fire back.
“It is.”
I sit forward in my seat, shoving my bowl aside and placing my elbows onto the table. Letting our eyes lock and hold.
“Why accept all of that then? You specifically.”
“Because I don’t believe in redemption.”
I blink.
How does that make sense?
“Are you—so you don’t believe people can change then?”
“I believe people adapt,” he reframes. “They refine and mask, but transformation implies becoming something new.”
My gaze narrows on him, because if he isn’t trying to change me in this cabin, then what exactly is he up to?
“I am exactly what I was always going to be,” He breathes out.
A chill skitters up my spine and sinks its teeth into the base of my skull. “And Pitch lets you be that.”
“It removes friction between thought and action.” He shrugs.
I rub at my brow, thinking over the time spent between running from the hell of those halls after the mirrors to this very moment.
“The man I spoke to—the one with the other Plague charm—he said his experience was different.”
“Yes, I suppose he did.” Alex murmurs.
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
Fuck, these mental games he insists on playing.
“I don’t know, because you decided it would be?” I try.
“And what did I decide for you then?”
“I thought we already established that. I was interesting and wasn’t a threat.” I mutter.
“I guess we did.”
My jaw tightens, a new little spark igniting in my chest at that. “So you torture some and fuck others.”
A ghost of a smile curls at the edge of his mouth. “Crude, but not inaccurate.”
“How many have you fucked?”
Well, that was not the question I wanted to ask when comparing the two topics I had just asked about. But look at what had gone and come out, proving just how fucked my priorities really were when it came to Alex and all his crazy.
“You don’t really want to know the answer to that, you just want something else to be angry about.” He snorts.
“Don’t hedge me, Alexander. Spit it out.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, you who knows everything can’t remember how many times he’s stuck his dick in something?” I scoff. “Doubtful.”
“Okay,” he murmurs leaning forward. “I do know, but you don’t need to. We can leave it at that, and move on.”
“We can make it fair?” I suggest, egging him on despite myself. “I’ll tell you all the men I’ve let—”
“The answer is no, so how about we move on?” He bites.
“And if I don’t feel like moving on?”
“This would be one of the few instances that I don’t care what you want.” He jabs right back. “Move. On.”
I hurl myself back in my chair, crossing my arms to my chest. “Fine. Do you regret any of it?”
“No.”
No hesitation. No caveat.
“Do you ever think about stopping?”
“No.”
At least he’s honest.
“Look,” he murmurs and leans forward to mirror the position I had only moments before. “I don’t want you constructing a version of me that isn’t accurate.”
“What version of you is accurate then, Alexander?” I ask dryly.
“The one that doesn’t pretend this is a phase or a mistake. Or something that can be undone because you ask questions and search for reasons to get pissed off at me.”
“You’re doing a very fine job at being evasive, Alex, and you know it.” I hiss out.
He takes a deep breath, as if he’s the one that needs to stabilize himself, and taps his fingers to the table once.
“Any other questions about Pitch that don’t revolve around who I have fucked?”
God, I hate hearing that more than I’ll admit. I hate the little gremlin of jealousy that pokes her head up and bears her teeth at the thought. Like she’s already lifted her leg and pissed all over him to mark her territory.
I need therapy, just… not with this man as my therapist.
“So we’ve established that you’ve fucked and tortured, what about killing?” I already know the answer, but I throw it out there regardless. Curious to see if this will be just another conversation he avoids.
He doesn’t even flinch. “Yes.”
I do.
“H-how many?” I dare to whisper.
“Enough that counting would be sentimental,” he exhales. I watch as he pushes off the table and back into his seat, mirroring my position once more.
Christ.
“At Pitch?”
“Yes.”
“Only there?” I croak out.
“No, not only there.” This answer is softer.
That one hurts more than I thought it would, and I’m not sure why.
Maybe because Pitch had felt like a boundary.
Sure, it had been monstrous, but I had let myself believe that this part of him I’m both morbidly curious about and fearful of had a containment.
To learn that it isn’t shatters the delusion I had already began to try and build to make sense of it all.
“Why?” I whisper, quieter now.
He reaches for his glass, his fingers curling around the fragile edges of it, but he doesn’t drink. He simply trace the sweating of it with the pad of his finger, his gaze locked on my own.
“Because I can, Sadie.”
As if it is as simple as that.
“So you decide who gets to keep breathing on a… whim?” I hiss, brows furrowing as I try to piece together dots that don’t make a lick of sense.
“I decide,” he agrees.
“That’s not arrogant at all,” I snipe.
Another faint smile threatens his mouth. “Arrogance implies doubt.”
I shake my head, pushing my chair back a fraction before I stand. Deciding this is indeed a conversation that requires me to pace it out. He doesn’t move to stop me, his gaze tracking my steps back and forth as I try to swallow down the mountain of shit that just keeps getting higher and higher.
“You’re saying all of this like it’s reasonable.”
“It is from my perspective,” he replies calmly.
I laugh coldly. “And what perspective is that, Alex?”
“One that does not prioritize comfort over outcome.”
I am going to pace myself into a hole in the ground before I figure out the absolute rat trap of his mind.
“And you don’t feel guilty at all? I get you don’t regret it, but not an ounce of guilt?”
“No.”
“Remorse?”
“Nope.”
“Anything at all, Alex? Fuck—anything?” I rasp, trying to find something to cling to. Something that rationalizes why I haven’t run from this man and never stopped. Why I haven’t fought him tooth and nail, and why some part of me so desperately still wants him.
“I feel precise,” he offers me.
“How does this make you better than any other serial killer out there, Alex? How do I… how do I look at you and not see the monster?” I rasp.
Throw me a bone, I want to plead. Make this make sense. Make me see with glasses of rose and not the rationality that so clearly sits on my shoulders.
“It does nothing but makes me honest about what I am, little fox. Hunting for good when I am anything but will only break your heart, and I don’t want to be the man who breaks it. Not in a way that I can’t put back together at least.”
I close my eyes, dragging my hands down my face as I try to stitch together something that doesn’t make me want to start screaming again.
Especially since I know now that screaming will get me nowhere but an endless loop of the same result.
He’s a brick wall I can spin a truck into at full speed and still would stand sturdy at the end.
It would be admirable if it wasn’t downright terrifying.
“You’re not being honest though, you purposefully omitted parts of the questions I have asked. You’re not telling me everything.”
“No,” he agrees. “I’m telling you enough.”
“And the rest? Will you ever tell me?” I breathe, finally looking to him again. Not an inch of him is ruffled or out of place. As if this is just any other conversation had about any other topic.
“It would only burden you,” He supplies.
I scoff. “It’s a little late for that, Alex! I’m burdened. I’m burdened so heavily that if you ever get caught, my ass gets a cell next door for simply knowing you do it and not doing a damn thing about it!”
His brows raise at that. “I’m not going to get caught.”
“Says every criminal ever before they were caught,” I deadpan.
“It’s enough for tonight. For this conversation.” He replies evenly.
“It’s not enough! I don’t know if it will ever be enough.” I rasp, my hand shaking where they curl into fists.
“You wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t.”
That knocks me silent.
I don’t have a clever comeback for that.
I just stand here, heart thudding, realizing something with a clarity that makes my skin prickle.
I’m as batshit as he is.