Chapter 22 Cassian’s Past
The pain makes me dizzy for at least fifteen minutes. All I can do is bite the inside of my cheek, keep the blood flowing into my mouth, and taste metal just to stay still, awake, and alert.
The man is lost in his own world. I suppose being this close to seeing my sister in real life, after coercing and threatening her into meeting him, has only deepened the illusions in his mind.
He’s not as sharp as before. He doesn’t seem like the same predator who once counted my steps outside Sabine’s workplace and orchestrated a diversion to catch Grayson and me off guard after using my mother as bait.
Now, he looks more like an insomniac teetering on the edge of collapse.
I don’t know what’s keeping him going.
My own insomnia never lasted this long while executing some twisted plan. I can’t begin to imagine the cocktail of enzymes, hormones, and psychosis running through his bloodstream to keep him upright.
He’s excited, solemn, mournful, and drunk on a sense of divinity all at once.
Of course it’s dangerous, but that’s obvious.
Besides, I’m not that far behind him in insanity.
I’m drenched in sweat, trembling, body weak, but one of my hands is free.
It’s still numb, but I keep working it, massaging it behind my back to coax blood into my fingers without drawing his attention.
The rope on my other hand is still tight, but looser than before.
The heat helped. So did the sweat. I keep flexing, keep twisting. Each shift scrapes my skin raw.
The blood pooling in my mouth keeps me conscious. That, and hate. That, and Sabine.
It takes another fifteen minutes before he shows me why he was so intent on getting me to pass out. That’s when he starts leaving the basement, making preparations for the “date” he mentioned.
It begins with an old vacuum cleaner. I catch a glimpse of the stairs behind the door as he hauls it down, the corded machine thudding loudly against what sound like stone steps. He drags it into the room, muttering almost to himself.
“Can’t have her walking in and seeing dust on the floor. Cleanliness is respect.”
My lip curls, but I stay silent. I just watch him plug it in and start vacuuming this hellhole.
When he circles behind my chair, I stiffen my arm so he won’t notice it’s free.
While he’s on the other side, turned away, I use the sound of the vacuum as cover and work on the other hand.
My fingers are clumsy, slick with blood and sweat, but they move.
I grit my teeth and push through the pain.
I don’t get far.
By the time he finishes vacuuming and takes the machine away, there’s still too much detail work left. I can’t get the rope off completely without drawing attention.
He wasn’t exaggerating about the date.
He’s transforming the entire basement.
Next comes a rickety folding table. He wipes it down with a damp cloth, then drapes it with a delicate white lace tablecloth, something that looks like it was stolen from a grandmother’s memory chest. He lays it out with care.
His hands tremble slightly, but his movements are precise. Almost reverent.
He sets down real plates. Porcelain, slightly chipped at the edges. Silverware wrapped in twine like it’s some goddamn rustic wedding dinner.
Then he lights a candle. The same kind as before, lavender and sage, comforting to anyone who doesn’t know better. He opens a bottle of cheap red wine and lets it breathe. After that, he heads to the far end of the room and opens a large plastic container. Inside is something wrapped in foil.
A steak. I can smell it from here. Raw, marbled red, slick with juices. He doesn’t unwrap it, just peeks, then seals it up again like he’s preserving a gift until the right moment.
My stomach turns.
Then comes the music. He switches on an old stereo. First, static. Then the soft warble of a CD. He wasn’t lying, it’s Lana Del Rey. Young and Beautiful.
He hums along as he adjusts the volume, then places a single chair across from mine. For Sabine.
I swallow hard.
But if I thought that would be the worst of it, I didn’t understand what this man was really capable of.
Maybe an hour passes. Just before Sabine’s arrival, he brings something into the room I don’t expect.
A dart board.
Not the kind you’d find at a bar next to a jukebox. This one is different. Much bigger. Reshaped.
At first, I think it’s just a crude wooden circle. But when he props it against the wall and steps back to admire it, I see the truth.
It’s not just wood.
It’s padded. Layered. Stained in places where varnish doesn’t explain the color.
And it’s not made for darts.
It’s made for knives.
The surface is soft enough to take them. There are grooves, slashes from practice. Dried lines that were once wet and red. And in the center, where a bullseye would normally go, there’s a small red heart.
He brushes a speck of dust off it.
“I didn’t have this heart on it before,” he says, turning back to me. “That’s new.”
His eyes sharpen for a moment, cutting through the fog of his preparations. Locking onto me.
“What do you think of it?” he asks.
I don’t respond. I’m trying not to show anything. The rope on my left wrist is finally starting to give. Just barely. It’s cutting into my skin like a glass shard, but it’s moving. I can’t afford to let him provoke me. Not now.
But he’s fucking persistant, this guy.
“Is it too cliché? I heard black hearts are trending these days,” he muses, tilting his head like he’s open to feedback.
The rope bites deeper. I keep going.
He turns back toward the target and chuckles softly. “Personally, I think red’s a classic. It fits the moment.”
He walks over to the small box he brought in earlier and opens it.
Out comes the first knife.
My fucking god.
My fingers slip a little. Too slick. I still them, breathing slowly through the fire pulsing up my arm.
He tosses the knife once. Catches it. Then hurls it with terrifying ease at the board. It lands—dead center, embedded right through the heart.
“Mark my words, Cassian,” he whispers. “It’s going to be such a beautiful night.”
I stare at the knife, the way it trembles slightly in the wood, and wonder how many times he’s driven it into a person. How many people bled from that blade. And how many times he wanted to do it again. How often he imagined Sabine standing right where it landed.
I’ve known a few men who got off on killing.
No one talks about it in the military, but it happens.
The moment you realize someone in your unit enjoys it, not out of duty or survival, but because they want to see what spills out when a body breaks—it changes you. You start sleeping with one eye open.
You start watching for the same thing in others.
I see it in him now.
Looking for beauty in someone else’s pain.
Getting high on the power.
Loving the moment the light fades from someone’s eyes.
And he wants me to see it happen. He wants me to watch him do that to my sister.
No.
No.
That’s not going to happen.
He lifts another knife. Spins it by the tip with careful fingers, admiring the shine.
“I imagine she’ll try to talk to me first. Or maybe cry. Do you think she’ll cry, Cassian?”
He turns—
Then stops.
A knock.
Soft. Tentative.
At the door upstairs.
My blood turns cold.
Sabine.
She’s here.
Dinner is about to begin.
For all the details my brain usually catches when I’m in survival mode, the moment the man leaves the basement to let Sabine in, everything fades.
My mind goes blank. I rub at the rope again without thinking. Even the pain doesn’t pull me fully back.
Then the door creaks open upstairs.
A moment later, it closes with a soft click I somehow hear from down here.
That’s how I know.
Sabine’s inside.
Goddamn it. She’s here.
I yank once, hard.
Blood slips.
I hear them getting closer, footsteps moving toward the basement stairs, and my whole body goes still again. It’s like my mind shuts down to protect itself, unable to face how awful this moment really is.
Everything else fades.
All I can hear is the sound of Sabine’s shoes clicking against the stone steps.
She’s wearing high heels, no doubt. The thin kind, more like needles than anything solid. They clink so delicately you’d think she was descending from a dream instead of walking into a nightmare.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Then I hear her voice.
Panicked. High-pitched. Scratchy, like she’d just screamed into a pillow until her voice bled.
Still, it’s pretty.
Funny. I never thought Sabine had a pretty voice.
Now, I do.
“Is this where you’re keeping him?” she asks.
I can’t see her yet. She’s still at the top of the stairs.
Then he answers, voice soft with something that curdles my stomach.
“You look beautiful.”
It’s reverent.
It’s wrong.
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him sound breathless, like the sight of her is holy. Like she’s some divine vision he’s summoned into his sick little temple.
But this isn’t worship.
This is ruin.
He’s not in awe. He’s intoxicated, drunk on control, on the illusion that she came here for him.
I yank against the rope again.
My wrist splits open even further, skin peeling like wet bark, and something gives. Not the rope, me. There’s a white-hot bolt that shoots up my arm, stealing my breath. I clench my jaw until my molars grind.
But I don’t stop.
Because something’s changed.
The rope is slipping.
Sweat. Blood. Desperation. They’re working for me now, softening the knots, slicking the fibers. If I stay still, if I time this right, if I let him keep playing his puppet master fantasy just some time longer…
Then I can move.
Then I can fight.
And if God’s even halfway listening—
I can kill.
I will kill.
I’ve hated the monster inside me for a long time. I didn’t want to accept it. I kept swinging between pretending to be a normal man and convincing myself I’d never fit into society again. That I’m just broken.
But now I see it clearly.