Chapter 15
CELL
LONDON
The first cell I ever saw was in my childhood home.
My father had transformed the bowels of our house into hell. A cage where he kept the girls he’d stolen, where he tortured and abused them. Then, when they were of no further use to him, he left them abandoned in that cage, starving in the pitch-black, until he’d finally return to end their life.
He buried them beneath my mother’s garden.
I found the first girl by accident. The anniversary of my mother’s death always arrived with so much sadness. That year, I wanted to tend to her neglected flowers, resurrect her garden.
My father was outraged when I showed him the decaying remains I unearthed.
That’s how I knew.
It wasn’t a rational response a person—a cop—should have when a corpse is discovered in their backyard.
And then I saw the glint of the key—that damn key he always wore around his neck. Suddenly, all these parts of my life crashed together, unsettling things I avoided looking at too closely, to expose a very dark, malevolent truth.
The cellar.
As details started to form into a clear picture, as I strung the connections together, with a chilling realization, I finally understood why I was forbidden from his private space.
I knew what was down there.
For three months, I listened. In the dead of the night, I crept through the silent house, pressing my ear to the floor, afraid of hearing what my mind wanted to deny.
Then the faintest cry tore up through the floorboards and gripped my soul.
There was another girl down there.
And she was alive.
I close my eyes now, for just a moment, to center myself. The air feels stuffy and humid in this part of the courthouse as the officer leads me toward the holding cell where Grayson is being kept.
“Please check your handbag, phone, and any other effects,” the officer instructs, placing a plastic container near me. “Then walk through.”
I unload all items before stepping through the metal detector. After I’m cleared, I’m instructed to follow a short hallway to the last cell on the right.
I walk the length of the corridor toward Grayson the same way I descended those stairs all those years ago. My steps slow, uncertain. My heart constricted painfully, my pulse firing through my veins.
I’m not allowed physical access to him; I can only speak to him through the bars. That same cold, unforgiving iron that filled my father’s cellar.
“You weren’t there today.”
I push my hands deep into my trench coat pockets.
He’s still wearing the suit from the courtroom, minus his belt and tie—removed for safety precautions—his white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled up to expose the intricate ink that covers his forearms, accentuating his lean muscles.
He’s strikingly attractive, and I have to force my gaze away from his piercing blue eyes to answer him.
“No, I wasn’t there,” I say, but it’s a lie. I stood outside the courtroom doors, my back pressed to the brick wall, listening as the trial unfolded.
But Grayson already knows I’m a liar. He watches me from the other side of the cell, those observant eyes dissecting the truth of my words. “My lawyer thinks I can beat the capital punishment charge.”
I inhale a fortifying breath. “Are you actually afraid to die?”
The corner of his mouth tilts. “Isn’t everybody?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m no longer on the clock, doc.”
I remain silent, waiting him out. There should be more urgency to this discussion, with the little time we have left. And yet, a strange calm surrounds us, like the solemnness before the end of a tragedy.
“I don’t fear death,” he eventually says.
“Not in the way most people do. My life never held much purpose, so I thought once they killed me, I’d just be done.
There’s nothing to fear in that. Fuck, I even welcomed it.
Finally, an end to relentless compulsions.
” His gaze tracks me, predatory and invasive. “But then there was you.”
“I fail to see how I have anything to do with it.”
His tongue sweeps across his bottom lip as he stares up at me from the cot. “You can’t fear losing what you never had. You changed that. I can’t simply cease to exist now, not when I want you this badly. When I know what we could have together.”
My heart clenches, and I adjust my glasses, giving myself a moment to remember who my patient is. “That’s a distorted perspective,” I say. “If you live—”
“If—?”
I swallow hard. “Grayson, regardless of the trial’s outcome, we’ll never be together.
You’re a serial killer behind bars. For life.
” The echo of my voice carries, reflecting the harsh truth back to me.
“I’ve explained before, you’re experiencing transference.
These feelings you have…they’re not real. ”
“Because I’m incapable of feeling.”
“Yes,” I say, softening my tone. “You’re very skilled at manipulation, at mirroring emotions to get what you want. But you’ve confused that skill with genuine feeling.”
He bounds off the cot. “Disempathetic,” he pronounces slowly, the Irish inflection bleeding through to stress each syllable. “I’ve done my research. Why didn’t you ever bring it up? Why haven’t you said a single fucking word about it, when it’s plain as day?”
I release a humorless laugh. “Disempathetic type is theoretical, Grayson. It’s a propagated myth to comfort partners of psychopaths, a delusion they cling to, convincing themselves that the person they love is capable of returning it.”
Grayson’s jaw tightens, his tone dropping dangerously. “Admit it’s possible for me.”
“I will not ever.”
Something lethal flashes behind the vibrant blue of his eyes. “Then why are you here, Dr. Noble?” My name is spat with the same callousness I see in his gaze. “If I’m just a delusional fuck, and you feel nothing for me, why are you here?”
“Grayson…” I say, unable to control the tremble in my voice. “I do care for you, but strictly as my patient. I’m here to assess how you’re coping after the hearing today.”
But that’s another lie.
“Hmm.” A wicked smile carves that dimple into his cheek as he hums, amused. “No, you’re here to find out if I’m going tell the world your little secret.”
I lick my lips, my heart in a vise as I stare up at him. “I’m tired of this game, this…dance. I won’t be manipulated.”
He presses close to the bars, hands gripping the iron until his knuckles bleach. “Then tell me what happened,” he says, his voice edged with a dark threat, “and I’ll carry your secret to the grave, London. No one will ever know.”
I can sense his excitement, the way his pale eyes glint with anticipation, hungry to experience the kill through me.
“How did you discover the truth?” he asks.
I touch my forehead and squeeze my eyes closed, willing the ache at my temples away. “I’d be a fool to trust you.”
“This only works if there’s trust, doctor,” he counters, using my own words against me. “I trust you not to harm me, and I won’t harm you.”
A shaky breath escapes. “Shit,” I mutter, glancing down each end of the hallway for the guards.
“They have me where they want me,” Grayson says, coaxing. “No one’s listening.”
I meet his eyes and whisper the sordid details of how I found the body, the girl—the monster that my father truly was. I strip every trace of emotion from my voice, denying him any satisfaction as I recount my story.
“The girl in the cage was the same age as me,” I say, pausing here. “She was too dehydrated to cry, covered in angry lashes, her skin bruised.” I fall into the memory. “She was beautiful.”
I’ve moved closer to the bars, and Grayson’s hand now covers mine, his thumb stroking gently over knuckles.
“I wanted to set her free,” I whisper. “But I didn’t have the key. I didn’t even think of calling the police or running to a neighbor.”
“Because your father was the sheriff,” he provides.
My eyes close in shame, his touch my anchor.
“I told myself no one would believe me,” I say, shaking my head. “That it would be too late by the time I found someone who did, that he was too powerful…” I trail off.
“You knew you had to kill him.”
“Yes,” I admit, my voice breathy. “Before I dared to go down there, I’d been fantasizing about it, obsessing about the different ways…
how it would feel—” I cut myself off. “I didn’t sneak down there, I made sure he heard me, that he’d follow me to the cellar.
I brought him down there on purpose.” I turn my head away.
Grayson reaches through the bars and forces my gaze back on him. “How did you plan to kill him, London?”
“I was going to throw him down the steps, make it look like an accident.”
His finger trails my jaw with gentle strokes. “But you failed the first time.”
“He was bigger. Stronger. And I saw it in his eyes, that gleam.” I shiver at the memory, at his touch. “I didn’t trick him. He’d been waiting for me.”
I don’t say it out loud, and mercifully, Grayson doesn’t make me. I was sixteen. The age as the girl in the cage.
Releasing a heavy breath, I power through the rest. “He strangled her, but he didn’t kill her right away.
First, he toyed with her, his callous eyes watching me the whole time.
” The cool air is suddenly scented with the same dank smell of that cellar.
“And I knew he was going to kill me. Maybe not right then, but soon. He’d torture me first, and he began that torture right then. So…I took his life instead.”
His thumb traces the delicate contour of my cheek before he lowers his hand and touches the scar along my palm. “But not before he took something from you.”
My humanity.
I glance at the scarred skin, stained with faded ink and makeup.
“He tried to make me a part of it. At the time, I thought he was trying to create some warped bond, I don’t know…
” I look up and release a soft curse. “I wanted to believe that, in his own sick way, he loved me. Like, if he involved me, I wouldn’t be a threat to him.
Yet reflection over the years has clarified the moment he put that knife in my hand and used me to end the girl’s life.
Years of study into psychopathy revealed that it excited him. That’s all. Nothing more.”
A dark flame ignites in his gaze as he searches my face, a hunger there. “Were you excited?”
This is the part Grayson most wants from me, and it excites him.
I bite my lip until the metallic trace of blood fills my mouth.
“In that moment, my father’s hand guiding mine, experiencing the raw power of taking a life…
yes,” I confess, knowing he understands, that he’s the one person who won’t judge me.
“I felt every stab of the blade. The way the knife sliced through flesh, the vibration when it hit bone. I was lost in the sensation before I willed myself back, ripping my hand free of his. The blade cut through my hand here.” I turn my palm over, revealing the healed-over scar.
“He let me kill him,” I say as I pull my hand away. “I’ve analyzed it…and it’s the only explanation, though I don’t know why. Maybe he was tired of his sickness. But I never should’ve been able to overpower him.”
“But you did,” Grayson says, still wanting more from me.
“He came after me, but he left the knife behind. He had no weapon. I let him wrap his hands around my throat, to get close enough before I yanked the key free of the chain and drove it into his neck. I went for the knife, but it wasn’t needed. I’d torn through his jugular. He bled out quickly.”
I glance at my hands, remembering the blood.
So much blood.
“Then you hid the kill.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I didn’t stage the wreck to hide my crime.
I had planned to die in that wreck. For what I’d been a part of…
what it stirred awake, I wanted it to end.
And yet, when I woke in the hospital, injured but alive, it felt like a rebirth.
A new life. A new chance.” I gaze up into his eyes, unyielding.
“I’m not that girl anymore. She died, Grayson.
The day I killed my father, I killed her, too.
And there’s nothing you can do to bring her back.
My own father failed, so there’s no hope for you. My will is stronger than my illness.”
He tilts his head, his sharp gaze probing, searching for any weak fractures. “Your compulsions didn’t die,” he says, a satisfied smile curling his lips. “You’ve been able to channel your needs through your patients, but it’s getting harder, isn’t it?”
With an impatient breath, I wipe a hand over my face. “I’ve told you what you wanted to know. Now I need to know that it goes no further than here.”
His smile falls, his finger tracing a puzzle piece inked along his inner forearm. “Such a hypocrite, no better than the murderers you treat,” he says, his voice accented and low, guttural. “You’re sick, baby. You might loathe me for what I am, but you despise yourself more.”
“Fucking swear it to me—” I say through clenched teeth.
His blue gaze heats. “I could never share you with anyone, London. I’m far too selfish.”
Chin lifted, I straighten my coat, smoothing my hands over the pleats. “Then this is goodbye, Grayson. I’ll see you in court tomorrow for the last time.”
I walk away from the cell, from him, leaving a jagged piece of myself behind.
Grayson possesses my secret, that dark and terrifying truth I’ve kept hidden not only from the world, but in some way, from myself.
Whether he’ll keep it or use it to ruin me, I can’t know.
Sadistic symphorophilia is a compulsion, and he’s a psychopath who gets off on orchestrating disasters.
And destroying me? That would be the ultimate disaster for a sadist like Grayson.