Chapter 35 #2
After a moment, Cosmo continues. “Whatever he told you, the reality is he was obsessed. He read The Scientist before Stein existed. Says he read it over and over and became a worshiper. He never moved to the experimentation phase.” Cosmo looks at me.
“He claims. But he had visions he was Gates, and started speaking as if he were god.”
Aside from the last part, that all tracks with what Sanford told us, but I remain silent.
“Stein watched his descent into madness, and his father’s obsession with a dead author. Sanford loved those texts more than he ever loved his own son.” Cosmo stares at me. “Stein wanted it. Worship,” he says softly.
The word sounds poisonous, yet I feel it, for Karia. I suppose it is different, in varying doses.
“He wanted affection. Love. Attention. And when he tried to find what it was about Gates that enamored his father so much, he became ensnared and clearly, fell down the fucking rabbit hole.”
I am very still, because other pieces click together.
Sanford told me he wanted to try the experiments on Stein, but he never bit the apple.
Yet it was there. The desire. Stein must have felt it; the psychopathy of a disconnected father’s cruelty.
And maybe he did not hate me in the incomprehensible manner I always assumed.
He once wanted love from his own father. That path carved us both up.
“Why the fuck would Sanford tell you any of that?” My voice is hoarse as I wonder why my grandfather would bother and why it took me so long to find a reason.
“I mean, I probably threatened him while you and Karia have been edging each other.”
I ignore that. “He said Stein did what he did because he wanted his attention?” How could he be so self-aware? Neither of them has struck me as that.
Cosmo sighs. “He didn’t put it in so many words.
Both your father and grandfather seem to have the remarkable ability to frame themselves as victims while admitting they were perpetrators; I’ve heard how Stein operates.
” He blows out a breath and takes another drink right after.
“And they all fucked us entirely.” He growls the last words.
He has no fucking idea, but I don’t say a word. I perversely want to hear more.
“Stein met Klein,” his tone hardens on his father’s name, “at a prep school. Klein was always interested in the medical field and Sanford believed Klein could help in the implementation of Gates’s methods. The three of them, as weird as it is, were close.”
Sanford lied to me, when we spoke in Dreary. He claimed the doctor who tortured me my entire life was someone he did not know.
Cosmo forces lightness into his next words I know he does not feel. “Then Stein killed Juliet. His own mother. And Sanford realized he had passed down his beliefs in a much more twisted way than he assumed.”
I think of the tunnel under Hotel Number Seven. The words Sanford spoke to me in the dark.
You are not the only one Stein Rule has cursed.
I did try to stop it when you were much younger.
Then, about Karia… Take care of her.
He didn’t try. He ran. He chose self-preservation in fear of the monster he had created. He looked at Karia and saw Juliet and what he didn’t do for his own wife.
And under the original hotel, he performed for me. Told me what I needed to hear so I would follow him down. Duplicity. He is full of it.
I brought Karia here because he wanted it, too. Was it always to get me in a place they could both carve my life from me, and see if Gates was right about some things?
The rage builds hot under my skin.
“Karia never trusted him.” I have to say it out loud, because I should have listened to her more.
“Writhe has tried to strip it from her, but she is so fucking smart.” Cosmo doesn’t smile when he says it. “I should have told her that more instead of the opposite.”
“I already knew it,” I snarl back. I remember the ways we both called her pathetic and how far it is from the truth. He deserves to hurt for that, and so do I.
His brows lift as he looks at me then. “Yeah. I believe you. You’re kinda obsessed.” He stands slowly and sets his drink on the island and I enjoy the fact that no matter how he has always seemed taller than me in my mind, he fucking isn’t, in reality.
“They will be here sooner than later.” He stares at me. “What are we going to do?”
There is no time for me to hurt over what he’s revealed to me.
I left Karia sleeping not for childhood trauma, but for this: “I have something of a plan.” It sounds foreign, saying it out loud, because I have never really been able to create one of those.
But this time, I have someone worth living for, and now, I have all the answers I care to get.
My father is a piece of shit, no matter his reasons for it.
Cosmo arches a brow. “Not to fuck Karia again because the whole house heard her and it’ll give us away too quickly.”
“I am not above decapitating you.”
He jerks back an inch. “Okay. What is this plan of yours?” He sounds skeptical, but between us, I am the only one wearing the scars of the men who deserve to die.
But he would kill them for Karia too, even without his own personal feud in mind.
For that, I trust him enough to tell him. Besides, I need his help, although I would never say those words out loud.
I explain to him the layout of the house, the connection points of each wing, where Sanford told me the weapons are hidden—I mention the knife under my mattress I found in the urine-soaked room that Karia must have hidden away—and who can be in each room, and why.
He does not apologize for stripping me, and I never expect him to. If he ever mentions it again, in fact, I will slice his lips off.
He just stares at me, and there is a sinking feeling in my gut that at any moment he will tell me how pathetically stupid I am, and I will be forced to strangle him. But in the end, when I explain what each of us can do—Alivia, Maude, Fleet, and Elliot, too—he doesn’t laugh.
Instead he asks with not some condescension, “Do you play chess?”
I want to roll my eyes. In this house, I likely know more about survival than anyone else. “Klein might have been your father, but he was my tormenter first.”
He swallows, then looks down. His shoulders are tense. It will take him a long time to get over what his father has done. I know that feeling.
I offer no condolence.
Then he just says, as some twisted peace offering, “She loves you.” He meets my eye again. “You don’t believe it, I know.” He doesn’t smile and he doesn’t look away and I wonder if he is talking about himself just as much as me. “But, even though it pains me to say it, she does.”
I turn to look over my shoulder, through the window. I do not want him to see the pressure increase behind my eyes. The tightness in my throat.
I stare at the rolling hills around Haunt Muren in the darkness, threads of early morning light trying and failing to pierce through.
Could we stay here? Her and I? What if this truly was ours? Questions I will not untangle with Cosmo de Actis. We have done enough talking for today.
And as if he thinks so too, he says nothing else before his footsteps carry him away with his guilt.
I am back before she wakes. I always want that to be the case.
I don’t think she’s even moved.
When she wakes, there will be war.
But after that, maybe I can make her happy enough to stay.
I watch her breathing, her head on the pillow, and think of all those letters of hers I tucked away inside my own pillowcase.
I read them so much, the paper grew soft enough to tear with my tears.
I wish I could have told your mother when she was still alive that she must have known exactly who you would be before you were born.
You were boring and cruel and quiet and awful and I cannot get you out of my head.
Always unwillingly yours.
Unwillingly. As if she has tried to fight against it as much as I had.
But here we are, together at the end.
I do not want her in the middle of it. I wish to lock her away up here, until it is over.
She will never let that happen.
It’s enough to consume me, that type of love. Willing to bleed and hurt and crawl for me.
“Sullen.” She murmurs my name, her voice thick with sleep.
I cross the room fast, as if I am possessed, and sit on the edge of the bed.
Her fingers find my gloved ones.
She squeezes tight, like the feeling in my chest. “You’re here,” she whispers, confirming it to herself.
“I’m not going anywhere.” And I think I mean it.
She makes a noise of contentment.
Seconds pass, and she lets go of my hand.
Then she is asleep once more, and I allow myself to slip into bed beside her and hold her close. Maybe, despite all of my schemes, this is the last time.
When I wake, she is gone, and when I head downstairs, desperate to find her, she is sitting at the dining room table with Maude.
Or perhaps “with” is not the correct word, as they are as far apart from one another as possible.
Karia is staring down at her plate of eggs and Maude lights up when she sees me in the doorway, as if I am her relief, despite the ways I hurt her before.
She is in a black dress, her hair braided back, red lipstick on her mouth. “Good morning,” she says with a smile, coffee mug in hand, black nails tapping against the ceramic.
Karia’s eyes narrow and she lifts her chin, shooting her beautiful gaze to me. She loathes this woman who was there for me when I was desperate and seeking in an Internet forum and I needed contact with the outside world to tell me I was not as alone as I felt.
I loathe Cosmo for much the same, just slightly altered.
And so I understand it. But she doesn’t understand how wholly hers I am.
“Karia,” I say first.
This pleases her. She sits up straighter, her blonde hair wavy down her back.
She’s dressed in all black. Pants, long sleeve shirt; they cling to her figure well.
I do not know where she got them from, but it’s…
hot. An image of fucking her with her legs behind her head fills my mind and I have the painful urge to consume her all over again.
Mine. I am starting to believe it now.
I close the space between us and sit down beside her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. Before I look to Maude, I press a kiss to the top of Karia’s head.
I will never forget what we did. I will never let her go now.
I incline my head to Maude then, and watch her shift on her seat. Perhaps she is uncomfortable, and as grateful as I am to her for the past, and what she has no doubt agreed to do now, I do not care.
The Princess of Writhe is my life.
A shadow appears in the doorway before they can start fighting and my dick can get hard all over again, seeing Karia jealous.
I look up, and Fleet stands there with a lazy smile. His hair is sticking up at all angles and he seems far too excited about the prospect of nearly dying.
“Why did you all agree to this?” Karia asks, and I am glad she did. It does not make sense to me either.
Fleet flashes a wider grin but it’s Maude who answers.
“We know enough about the shadows to want to bring them to the light.”
It is the first words she’s spoken that Karia has not recoiled at.