39. Celine
Celine
The entire time I’ve been in lunch, I have pushed my food around the plate. I got word this morning from Sister Alice that my mother wasn’t coming to visit until the afternoon. Which meant I had to sit through breakfast, my lesson, and now lunch, coming up with all the lies I’m going to tell her.
The past couple of visits have been good.
I pretended to be the Godly daughter she always dreamed of, and I can tell she is on the brink of actually believing me.
I’m hoping that this visit today will be the one to push her over the edge and convince her that I’m ready to leave this place.
That way, Alex doesn’t have to worry about getting me out.
While my mother may believe that I’ve changed, my real worry is that Father Keaton will twist her mind into thinking I need to stay longer.
Although I have avoided Father Keaton and been on my best behavior, I have a feeling that my not getting into trouble won’t stop him from keeping me here.
The man is messed in the head. He is too far gone for things to work out in my favor.
Beside me, Joanna continues to talk, as she has been throughout the meal. When she noticed I wasn’t eating, she made a point of asking if I was feeling alright. Ever since she apologized for slapping me, she has been acting like my best friend.
It’s been quite annoying, and Bekah has been giving me the cold shoulder because she noticed the attention shift onto me.
I poke at a cut potato on my plate when my ears perk up at the sound of Joanna mentioning something about Father Keaton’s plan.
“I’m so excited for it!” she says with excitement. My eyes flick to Esther, who is looking at Joanna with annoyance.
“Do you know any of the details?” I ask Joanna, turning my gaze on her.
Father Keaton has been so secretive about it, even with Alex. The only people who probably know all the details are Sister Alice and maybe Joanna. Depends on whether Father Keaton tells her these things or if he only uses her to get his dick wet.
Joanna shakes her head, chews on a piece of food, and then swallows. “All I know is that it’s happening on October 31st.”
My teeth clench together roughly when I hear the date. As I tighten my grip on the utensil, I feel eyes on me. Looking at Esther, I see a question of her eyes about my sudden change in demeanor, but I will have to wait until lunch is over to tell her.
“I love surprises!” Bekah chimes in.
“Me too,” Joanna agrees. “Father Keaton says that if all goes well, he wants to keep doing it. Like a tradition.” She turns her body towards me. “Do you know anything about it?”
“Only that his plan involves us getting closer to God,” I repeat Alex’s words to me.
Joy spreads across Joanna’s pale face. “I love how devoted he is to helping us grow our relationship with God.”
I’m sure she loves something else about Father Keaton, too, but I bite my tongue to stop myself from saying something.
“Yeah, he is a very generous man.” Bile rises in my throat as the words leave my mouth.
Darting my eyes to the table across from us, I find Father Keaton watching us converse.
When his gaze lands on mine, he offers a wicked smile.
Feeling uncomfortable under his stare, I slide my attention to Alex, who is sitting next to him.
He is also watching us—well, me —with a hunger in his eyes.
Heat fills my stomach as I wonder what dirty things are going through his mind.
“I did hear that there will be a huge feast after!” Joanna adds.
I look at her with a flat smile and sigh quietly. I wish someone knew more about what was going on. Not knowing is driving me insane because I am the type of person who wants to learn about things in advance, so I know what I’m getting myself into.
Finally, I pop the potato into my mouth and chew it slowly as I look back at Father Keaton, who is now talking with Sister Alice. He is leaning close to her; his words are quiet to make sure no one will overhear. With him being occupied, an idea comes to me. One I know Alex won’t approve of.
“My mother should be visiting soon,” I announce to the table, looking directly at Esther and gesturing slightly to the door. “I’m going to use the bathroom before she shows up.”
Esther’s head dips, and I stand from my seat.
My eyes catch Alex, who sits up straight as he follows my movements.
I shake my head at him, in a way to tell him not to follow after me.
He frowns, and then his eyes move to Esther, who also stands up.
She doesn’t tell the two women where she’s going because they don’t care.
Once we dispose of our food and plates, we make our way towards the exit of the dining hall. With every step, I sense Alex’s eyes on me. I don’t bother glancing over my shoulder to look at him because I don’t want him to take that last glance as an invitation.
In the quiet hall, closer to the chapel, Esther asks, “What’s going on?”
“That is what I want to find out,” I tell her. “Do you mind being my lookout?”
“Uhm, of course, I’ll be your lookout!” Esther says with enthusiasm, and she doesn’t even ask why. She just follows me down the hall towards Father Keaton’s office.
The door is shut, but knowing he is in the dining hall, I open it with ease. “Stand in the doorway, and let me know if anyone comes down the hall.”
“Got it.” She nods and stands guard.
The desk is cleaner this time, with only a few papers stacked beside his laptop. Opening the device, I stare at the area where you are supposed to type in the password.
“What do you think his password is?” I ask Esther, getting a déjà vu from when Alex was in here with me.
“I don’t know. Probably Joanna,” she jokes, but it’s not a bad guess.
I type it in, and a red X pops up. “Well, that’s not it.”
“What else could it be?”
I mull over options in my head. “You don’t think he’d choose something as simple as God, do you?”
Esther lifts her shoulders. “Honestly, maybe.”
It would be too easy and stupid if that were his password. But I give it a shot and end up seeing that red X again. “Dammit.”
Words fly around in my brain, trying to put myself in Father Keaton’s head to figure out what he would have chosen.
God was too easy, and even he knew that.
Joanna would have been a good password because no one would have guessed it.
But then again, would he ever suspect that someone would try to break into his computer?
I’m not sure how many more attempts I have, which means I need to be careful with my next guess.
I trail my eyes over his desk, stopping at the white notepad with the convent’s name written in letterhead.
The word ‘Grace’ stands out the most, and I say fuck it and type it in.
The system thinks for a moment before the desktop’s home screen appears.
“It worked,” I whisper to myself.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Esther asks, quickly glancing my way.
“I’d like to figure out what the hell he has planned, and why he is being so secretive about it.”
“It is pretty weird,” she says. “Speaking of, why did you get all tense when Joanna said the date?”
“The secret event is happening on my birthday.” I lift my eyes to look at her over the screen. “Not really thrilled about having to go to whatever this thing is. I was planning on wallowing in my self-pity in my bedroom all day.”
“You hate your birthday?”
“No, but I’m not able to spend it with my friends.” I flash a sad smile. “Plus, I’ll be thirty, so that bums me out.”
“Yeah, that’s scary. Thankfully, I still have two years until that happens to me,” Esther says. “But when it does happen, we can celebrate together! For me, turning thirty, and for you, to make up for you having to spend your birthday in here.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agree and drop my eyes back to the screen.
I skim my eyes over the folders, none of which are of importance until I find one that is labeled “October 31st.” My two fingers slide across the touchpad as I move the cursor to the folder, and just as I’m about to double-click on it, a different file name catches my attention.
Joanna.
I quickly scan over the folder next to it and see another name.
Bekah?
My face scrunches with confusion, and I glance one more time at the folder I came in here for.
Breathing heavily, I move the cursor to Joanna’s file and open it.
Multiple videos and images are inside this folder.
From the small photo thumbnails, I can tell exactly what they are.
Images of Father Keaton fucking Joanna from behind, from the front, with his dick down her throat.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
“Did you find what the event is?” Esther asks.
I can’t look away from the screen to answer her question. I don’t even say a word as I maneuver to a video. It opens on a separate, big screen, and loud moaning fills the room.
“What was that?” She leaves her post and comes to stand next to me. “Holy shit.”
Esther knows about Father Keaton and Joanna; I told her there was something going on between them the day Joanna slapped me. We both stare at the screen in shock as Father Keaton slams into Joanna from behind. Feeling sick to my stomach, I close the video; not able to watch it anymore.
“He has a folder for Bekah?” Esther points to the file next to Joanna’s.
I click on the folder, and sure enough, images and videos show almost the same thing as they did in Joanna’s.
“He was doing this with Bekah, too.”
“Play that one.” Esther’s finger taps the screen on the small file that shows Bekah’s face.
I open the file and hit play.
Bekah is on her knees, Father Keaton standing before her. She is still in her clothing, wearing her white dress as she stares up at him with anticipation in her eyes. Father Keaton’s hand comes into view, tipping her chin up.
“Do you know why you are here?” Father Keaton asks her.
“To please you,” Bekah responds, and it makes my stomach churn.
“That’s right.” He runs the pad of his thumb along the bottom of her lip. “Because by pleasing me, you are pleasing God.”
“He has her head all warped, too,” Esther says in disgust. “Imagine if Joanna saw this. She’d be adding Bekah to her slap list.”
The sound of a zipper fills the room, and I know what is going to happen next, so I exit the video before anything happens.
“Why is there a folder with your name?” Esther asks in horror.
“What?” My eyes search frantically around the screen to find what she is looking at.
She points to a folder hidden in the bottom left-hand corner labeled ‘Celine.’ What the actual fuck? What could possibly be in this folder?
“Maybe it’s just paperwork on me from when I came here?” I hover the cursor over the file and hesitate before I open it.
When the files load, my stomach drops, and my breathing becomes panicked. There are tons of photos and videos, but not just of me. These are of Alex and me.
In the library, when he almost kissed me.
In the library when he was saying goodbye before going to visit his mother.
Us in the chapel.
I think back to that night. Alex made sure to lock the door because I was worried someone would walk in on us. I inspect the photo again and realize it wasn’t taken from where we usually enter, but from somewhere behind the altar.
My head feels dizzy as I look at each photo, and then when I’ve had enough, I begin clicking on videos. One by one, I watch bits and pieces of them because that’s all I can take.
The first video was of Alex, standing outside my bedroom on those nights he’d listened to me touch myself. His soft grunts fill the hall as he pleasures himself.
The next, him pouring the holy water on my body.
There are multiple videos of us, but some we aren’t even in the frame. It’s just audio of him fucking me in his bedroom that night Father Keaton caught us.
“Celine?” Esther says my name carefully, as I click back on a video of us in the chapel.
I barely hear her over the pounding of my own heart. This sick asshole was creeping on us? He knew the entire time what was happening between Alex and me, but why would he film all this shit? Then it dawns on me.
Blackmail.
“Celine.” This time, my name doesn’t come from a woman’s voice but a man’s. Somehow, my eyes tear away from the screen to see Alex standing in the doorway with a furious expression on his face. “What the hell are you doing? You promised you wouldn’t come back.”
“I—” There are no words that will leave my mouth.
When my moans from the video finally reach Alex’s ears, his face drops. “What the hell is that?”
Esther steps away from me, allowing Alex to join me by the computer. The video of us in the chapel is playing, and I watch as Alex’s face goes completely white.
“He was spying on us in the chapel?”
“Everywhere,” I whisper and close out of the video so he can see all the images and videos Father Keaton has of us.
Alex runs his hand over his mouth and curses. “Close out of it, Celine. We are getting out of his office right now.”
“But, Alex… he has videos and images of Joanna and Bekah on here,” I say.
He turns to face me, his jaw tight. “Lunch is over, and Father Keaton could come to his office at any second. We are leaving. Now.”
The last word is spoken with such authority that Esther quickly moves from her spot and into the hall. She glances down the corridor and looks back at us. “Coast is clear. Let’s go.”
“Esther, get in my office.” Alex moves around the desk and heads for the door, pausing to glance at me. “Celine. Do not make me drag you out of here.”
“But the videos of the women… We can use them—”
“What do you expect us to do with it right now, Celine?” Alex stalks over to the opposite side of the desk, anger flashing in his gaze. “We can’t do anything, so leave it be, and we will figure something out.”
My teeth grind together, and my eyes dive back down to the screen.
I close out of the folder with my name on it.
If we are going to use this computer to bring Father Keaton down, there can’t be any evidence of Alex and me.
With the thought in my head, I drag my folder to the trash icon.
Opening the trash, I right-click on my folder and choose delete permanently.
“Now, Celine,” Alex orders harshly.
I watch the bar on the screen as the files are being deleted one by one.
After what feels like forever, the gray bar turns green, and when I get the pop-up that all the images and videos of us have been deleted, I let out a sigh of relief and slam the laptop shut.
Sliding the device back to where it was on his desk, I follow Alex to his office.