Chapter 26 #2
The minister. I was here to meet a minister, to negotiate to get rid of those videos, and protect Wade from seeing them. That's all this was. A meeting. Handle it and go home.
I approached slowly, my hand sliding into my bag to grip the knife handle through the towel I'd wrapped it in. The weight was solid and reassuring.
My heart hammered harder with each step. Twenty feet away. Fifteen. Ten.
Every instinct I had screamed to run, to leave. To find Wade and tell him everything, but the alternative was Wade seeing me in Castellanos's office, seeing what he did to me, seeing things I could never explain or make okay.
I stepped in quietly, my hand tightening around the knife handle inside my bag, and walked into the dim interior.
The smell of mildew and dust hit me first. Sunlight filtered through the dirty windows, casting everything in a gray hue. Old furniture sat against the walls, on the concrete floor, and a couch was positioned in the center, facing the door.
And sitting on that couch, like he owned the world, was not the minister.
It was Castellanos.
The world tilted sideways. My vision narrowed until all I could see was him, until everything else disappeared and there was only the man who'd haunted every nightmare I'd had for five years.
One leg was crossed casually over the other, his arms spread along the back of the couch.
That dark smirk was on his face—one I'd seen a thousand times.
In hallways when he'd corner me, in his office when he'd lock the door, in moments when I'd tried so hard to disappear inside my own head just to survive what he was doing.
My legs stopped working, and I couldn't move forward or backward. I couldn't do anything except stand there frozen while my brain tried to process that he was here, that he was real, that this wasn't the minister at all.
Castellanos, who’d done things behind closed doors that even the other girls didn't fully know about. Who'd made sure I understood exactly how powerless I was.
"Marie." His voice was exactly as I remembered, smooth and cultured, hiding cruelty beneath civility. He spoke like we were old friends, like he hadn't destroyed me piece by piece for five years. "Right on time. I knew you would be."
I couldn't breathe. My chest wasn't working right, my lungs refusing to expand properly. The knife handle dug into my palm where I was gripping it too hard, but I couldn't make myself let go.
He gestured lazily to a chair across from him. Casual and relaxed, like this was a business meeting instead of—instead of—
"Sit down," he offered, that smirk widening like he was enjoying this. "We have a lot to discuss. Starting with how you destroyed years of my work in a single night."
The words barely registered. I was still stuck on the fact that he was here, that the email hadn't been from a minister at all, that I'd walked right into this thinking I could handle it, and instead I'd walked straight into the one person who terrified me more than anything.
My knees were shaking. My whole body was shaking. The room felt too small, the air too thin, and I couldn't stop seeing flashes—his office, his desk, his hands, his breath on my neck, the sound of the lock turning behind me—
No.
I forced my gaze back to him. To now. To this ugly little stone room that smelled like mildew and dust, and not that office with the heavy wood and locked doors.
I straightened my spine a fraction and hid the trembling as best I could. I’d been with Wade for two weeks. That was two weeks of him looking at me like I was worth loving, two weeks of safety, food, sleep, and his hands on my skin like I was to be worshipped, not owned.
“Sit,” Castellanos repeated, sharper this time. That voice, that tone that used to make my body move before my brain caught up, landed wrong now. It scraped against everything Wade had been stitching back together in me.
I didn’t move. I just stared at him.
His eyes narrowed, annoyance flashing across his face before he rolled them like I was being dramatic.
“Always had a little streak in you, didn’t you?
” His mouth twisted into that familiar, hateful smirk.
“Thought you were so clever with your little schedules and files. My efficient Marie Rivers, running my house like it was yours.”
His words felt slimy. Wrong. Like they were trying to crawl under my skin the way his hands used to.
I curled my fingers tighter around the knife handle in my bag, anchoring myself to the present.
“I want the videos,” I managed, my voice thin but steady. “I want them deleted. All of them.”
He laughed, and it was an ugly sound. “You want?” He stood, adjusting his cuffs like this was a boardroom negotiation instead of whatever it was. “And what exactly are you offering me, hm? Gratitude? Tears? One last performance for old time’s sake?”
My stomach curdled, but I wasn’t the powerless girl he knew anymore. Wade had money, lots of it, and he’d just given me ten grand.
But most of all, I had a voice now. I could make choices and control my own life.
“I’ll pay,” I forced out. “Five thousand today.”
His eyebrows rose, surprised for a heartbeat before he smoothed it away. “Five thousand,” he repeated, like he was rolling the number around in his mouth to taste it. “From where, exactly? Your sugar daddy?”
The way he said it made my skin crawl. It turned the word into something dirty.
I didn’t flinch. “From me. I have it.”
That, at least, made his eyes sharpen with real interest. “Of course you do. Men like him always fall hard for projects like you. Pretty little broken things that make them feel powerful and righteous.”
His gaze dragged down my body in a way that made me want to peel my skin off. “Tell me, does he know how good you are at taking orders? How well you follow a schedule?”
My jaw clenched. “Six thousand,” I said, because I wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d stop at five. “You delete everything and hand me the originals. Every copy, every backup.”
He clicked his tongue. “You don’t negotiate very well for someone who used to run my entire calendar.
Do you remember that? How you scheduled the girls?
Who went where, who saw which client, who got fucked on which nights?
” His smile widened, razor sharp. “You were very good at it. Efficient and profitable.”
Guilt hit me hard, stinging. I knew what he was doing, where he was aiming. He always knew where to press.
“You made sure my clients were happy,” he continued, voice going almost fond.
“Made sure the girls were on their backs where they needed to be. If anything, Marie, you were at the top of the pyramid. My right hand, my favorite. Doesn’t that keep you up at night?
Wondering how many awful things happened because you made the schedule? ”
I felt the shame. The old, familiar acid of it, burning its way up my throat, filling my lungs. It wasn’t true; he was twisting it, but he knew how to weaponize words against me.
“You’re lying,” I glared. “You’re twisting it.”
“I’m telling you what you already think about yourself,” he corrected. “I’m just saying it out loud. You think your Mr. Easton would still keep you if he saw you on those tapes? If he knew how helpful you were? How many nights you went into my office?”
The room swayed—he knew exactly where to cut. He always had.
I thought of how Wade had looked at me this morning, half-asleep and soft, like I was the best part of his day.
“He might keep you now,” Castellanos went on, stepping closer, voice dripping poison. “But that’s because he’s only seen the sanitized version. The good girl with the sad story. What do you think will happen when he sees the real you? When he sees how you’d—”
“Stop,” I whispered. My grip on the knife was so tight my hand hurt.
He ignored me. “—spread your legs in my office. The way you’d—”
“Shut up,” I snapped, the word tearing out raw.
He smiled. “Shut up?”
He closed the last bit of distance between us, close enough now that I could smell his cologne, cloying and forever twisting in my head into a panic.
“You’ve put on a little weight,” he observed. His hand lifted, fingers reaching toward my face. “Looks good on you. He’s feeding you well. I’ll have to thank him when I meet him.”
He brushed his fingers over my braids, tucking them behind my ear like he had any right to touch me. My body reacted on instinct, flinching back, my heel shifting away. I hated that he got even that much reaction from me.
Outside, through the open doorway behind me, distant voices drifted in from the abandoned road. Male voices. One was loud and incredulous. “The fuck?”
Castellanos’s eyes flicked up, over my shoulder, toward the door. His expression snapped from smug to sharp, irritation flaring.
And something in me just… happened.
I didn’t think, I didn’t plan. My hand just moved on its own.
The knife came out of my bag in one fast, jerky motion, the towel dropped to the floor, and I drove it forward with every bit of strength I had.
The sound it made going in was sickening, wet and wrong, but I felt the resistance of his flesh, then the give as the blade sank all the way to the hilt into his lower stomach.
His eyes went impossibly wide, his mouth dropping open in pure shock.
I think mine did too.
For a second, the whole world went perfectly quiet. No voices from outside, no sound of my own harsh breathing. Just the feeling of my hand on the handle of the knife, buried inside the man who’d ruined my life.
I stabbed him. The thought was wild and distant, like it belonged to someone else.
His knees buckled, his weight leaning into the blade, and that broke whatever frozen shock I was in.
If I were going to do it, I’d do it right. Papa had taught me that with fish, with conch. With anything we killed to eat. Quick and clean or not at all.
This wasn’t quick, and this definitely wasn’t clean, but I knew what twisting did. Where the soft spots were—at least in fish. I knew how to make it count.
I twisted the knife.
His breath rushed out in a horrible sound between a gasp and a choke. Blood bubbled at his lips, and his body sagged more, pulling the knife slightly, and I held on, wide-eyed but focused.
He made a wet, ugly sound, tried to say something, but whatever words he was reaching for drowned in a cough of blood.
When his hands slid down completely, I let go of the knife.
It stayed in him. Buried to the hilt, the black handle protruding from the front of his shirt, already staining dark.
He took one staggering step back, hit the couch behind him, and then his legs gave out entirely. He crumpled, half on the couch, half off, then slid gracelessly to the concrete floor with a thud.
I just stood there.
My chest was heaving. My hands were empty and trembling, and my fingers were smeared with his blood. I stared at him, at the knife jutting out of his stomach, the spreading pool of red soaking into his shirt.
He was still moving. Little jerks, spasms, his hands fluttering around the handle of the knife like he couldn’t decide whether to pull it out or push it further in.
I stepped inside more fully, one slow step, then another, until I was close enough to look down at him.
Castellanos was on the floor bleeding, his eyes glassy with shock.
Not untouchable, not invincible, and not the monster from my nightmares. He was just a man bleeding from my hand.