Chapter 10 #2
Jake is sobbing now, blind and broken, trying to cover his ruined face with his broken arms.
"You touched her." Cain grabs Jake's right wrist, positions it on the floor, and brings his boot down.
The fingers crunch like dry twigs.
Then the left hand, each finger individually snapped. "You put these hands on her body. Tore her clothes. Hit her face."
"I'm sorry," Jake whimpers through broken teeth. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
"Shh." Cain strokes Jake's hair like he’s comforting a child.
"I know you didn't mean it. You couldn't help yourself.
Men like you never can. The entitlement is built into your bones, trained into your muscles.
You see something beautiful and you have to possess it, break it, make it small enough to fit in your hands. "
Then he starts cutting lower.
Jake's screams reach pitches I didn't know human voices could achieve.
Cain works slowly, carefully, removing Jake's dick with the same precision he used on Roy.
But this time, he doesn't let Jake pass out.
Each time Jake starts to fade, Cain slaps him awake, brings him back to feel everything.
"You tried to rape her," Cain says, holding up what he's removed. "With this pathetic thing, you thought you could mark her. Own her. Show her what a real man was."
He pulls out a needle and thread from his jacket pocket.
He came prepared.
Almost like he knew this would happen.
Maybe he's been waiting for it, watching Jake circle closer, letting him build up the courage to try.
"Celeste," Cain says without looking at me. "Come here."
I stand on shaking legs, approaching them.
Jake's blind face turns toward my footsteps, mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air.
"He needs to understand," Cain says, beginning to sew Jake's severed organ to his forehead with neat, precise stitches. "He needs to know you're not a victim."
He offers me the knife.
It's heavier than expected, warm with Jake's blood.
"Where?" I ask.
"Wherever feels right."
I kneel beside Jake's ruined body.
He's trying to speak, maybe begging, but blood bubbles from his mouth with each word.
I think about all the years of looks, comments, "accidental" touches.
All the women he's hurt that we don't even know about.
All the women he would have hurt if Cain hadn't stopped him.
I think about Sarah, seventeen years old, trying to report what Jake did to her.
My father convincing her to drop the charges.
The system protecting Jake instead of his victims.
"You thought my books were just porn," I tell him. "But they were prophecies. I was writing about the man who would save me from men like you."
I press the blade to his throat.
Not deep enough to kill quickly, just enough to open the carotid.
Jake has maybe minutes, probably less.
Blood fountains up, spraying across my face, warm and metallic.
"A unicorn," Cain says when he's done sewing. "The last of his kind. Or maybe not the last, but definitely one fewer."
Jake stops moving somewhere during the final stitches.
His blind eyes stare at nothing, his mouth frozen in a final scream.
He looks like something from a nightmare, or from one of my books.
A monster turned into art, a predator transformed into a warning.
"We need to deal with this," I say, surprising myself with how steady my voice is.
"Yes." Cain stands, pulls me against him, examining my split lip with gentle fingers. His thumb traces the bruise forming on my cheekbone. "He hurt you."
"Not as much as he wanted to."
"Still too much." He kisses my forehead, soft and reverent. "No one will ever hurt you again."
"I know."
We stand there for a moment, surrounded by blood and death, holding each other.
This should be the moment I break down, realize what I've become, run screaming.
Instead, I feel... free.
Protected.
Loved in a way that transcends normal definition.
"What do we do with him?" I ask.
"I have ideas. But first, we need to stage this properly." Cain surveys the room with professional eyes. "He broke in. Attacked you. You defended yourself."
"With what? My bare hands?"
"With the knife he brought." Cain pulls out a second knife, a cheap one, the kind Jake would own. He presses it into Jake's dead hand, getting prints on it. "You struggled. He cut you."
Before I can protest, he makes a shallow cut on my arm.
It stings but not badly.
Then another on my shoulder, and one across my ribs—all defensive wounds, the kind you'd get fighting off an attacker.
"Then your boyfriend arrived. Found him assaulting you. Did what any man would do to protect the woman he loves." He looks at me. "Can you sell that story?"
"My father will know you did this. The violence, the mutilation—"
"Your father will see what he needs to see. His deputy was the killer all along. Jake had access to everything, knew the victims, had the training. And now, trying to hurt you, he revealed himself."
"But the others—Roy, the women—"
"Were all Jake's victims. He was smart, careful, until his obsession with you made him sloppy."
Cain starts arranging evidence, pulling items from his pockets that I don't even want to know where he got them.
A woman's earring.
A driver's license.
Trophies a killer would keep. "Your father will want to believe it. The town will want to believe it. Case closed, monster caught, everyone safe."
He's right.
It's a narrative that makes sense, ties everything up neatly.
Dad can be the hero who solved the case, even if his deputy was the killer.
The town can sleep peacefully.
And Cain and I...
"What about us?" I ask.
"We'll be the survivors. The couple who stopped a killer. Heroes, in our own way." He smiles, dark and beautiful. "And then, when enough time has passed, we'll disappear. Find somewhere new. Start fresh."
"And keep killing."
"Only those who deserve it." He cups my face in his blood-stained hands. "Only those who threaten what's ours."
Ours. Not mine, not his. Ours.
"I need to call my father," I say.
"In a moment. First, we need to make sure you look the part."
He musses my hair more, tears my shirt more strategically.
Has me scratch my own neck to leave marks.
Rubs dirt and blood under my fingernails like I fought hard.
When he's done, I look like a woman who barely survived an attack, not like someone who helped kill someone.
"Now," he says, handing me my phone. "Call your father. Cry. Be hysterical. Tell him Jake broke in, tried to rape you, and your boyfriend saved you. Don't say my name until he asks."
I dial, and when Dad answers, I become the actress this moment requires.
"Daddy?" My voice breaks perfectly. "I need you to come home. Something happened. Jake—Jake's dead."