Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Daphne
Iwoke up in the dark curled up on the ground.
My brain swam in whatever cocktail those assholes had jabbed into my neck.
Shivering, I patted myself down. Same clothes. No shoes.
Thank God.
Blair had woken up from this part of her Initiation in only her bra and panties.
I pushed myself upright, my bare feet sliding against the freezing floor.
Sitting around waiting for something terrible to happen wasn’t an option.
I made it a few steps before walking straight into a wall. “Ow.”
I recoiled and ran my palm over the cold surface.
Glass … or plexiglass.
I knocked on it.
A harsh light flooded the room. I threw an arm over my face, every headlight from the Hunt rushing back into my memory.
When my vision cleared, a scream climbed up my throat. I swallowed it as I stared at the man strapped to a metal chair on the other side of the glass.
A black hood covered his head. Dark blood stained his white button-up and streaked his bound wrists.
His side of the glass was nothing but concrete. No doors. No windows. A microphone hung above him.
I turned. My cell matched his.
An old box TV sat in one corner. A table in the other.
I walked over to the table to find a pitcher of water, a note, and a gun. I carefully picked up the note as if it had anthrax on it.
If you hit your breaking point, there’s a single bullet in the gun.
I tossed the note back onto the table and ignored the gun before returning to the glass.
“Hello!” I pounded on it.
The man suddenly thrashed against his restraints.
I jumped back when a hidden panel slid open in his concrete wall.
Who walked in wasn’t what surprised me.
It was what he wasn’t wearing.
His mask.
Brooks stalked into the room dressed entirely in black. He didn’t even look at me. The man in the chair was the only person who mattered.
My mind raced through the horror stories Blair had shared about old Fawn diaries. A Son never participated in this phase of an Initiation. They sure as hell didn’t show their faces.
Dread crawled through me. Brooks wouldn’t expose his identity to someone he planned on letting walk out alive.
The man in the chair would be a dead one soon.
Brooks walked across the room, slamming his palm against the glass hard enough to make me jump before waving at me. A little wiggle of his leather-gloved hands.
I wanted to break every one of those fingers.
“Welcome to the show, Daphne.”
The tied-up man behind him stopped fighting, as if my name had already put a bullet through his heart.
Brooks winked at me, pulled his mask over his head, then turned away.
He’d wanted me to know it was him.
Not the man in the chair.
I searched every visible inch of the stranger.
Too broad to be my father.
His hands were bigger too.
Who the hell is it then?
“Hello, Daphne,” Brooks said into the microphone.
He ripped off the hood.
I knew that face.
My body reacted before my brain caught up. I stumbled backward, a scream tearing out of me.
Sinclair.
The red glow carved deep shadows into his terrified face. His eyes were wide and pleading as he stared toward the glass.
I had no idea if he could see me.
He quickly looked back at Brooks.
Brooks stepped behind him and ripped the filthy rag from his mouth.
“No, no, no, no!” Sinclair thrashed against the chair. “Please! Let me go!”
“Hello, Professor Sinclair,” Brooks said into the microphone.
“Who are you?” Sinclair stammered. “Why am I here?”
Brooks stepped directly in front of him. “You’re here because you like to touch things that don’t belong to you.”
I was the thing.
I should’ve known Brooks would find out about Sinclair.
A tiny, fucked-up part of me was relieved he had.
“What?” Sinclair shook his head frantically. “What did I do? Someone, help me! Please!”
Brooks stared at him like the confusion bored him before punching Sinclair in the face. Sinclair’s face snapped sideways.
I waited for Brooks to punch him again.
He turned and walked out.
A sharp click came from behind me. I spun around as a hidden door slid open, and Brooks entered my cell.
His glowing mask sent me backing into the wall, but he ignored me and went to the old TV. He pulled a remote from his pocket.
Static flickered across the screen before giving way to grainy footage of a prison cafeteria.
My stomach dropped.
“You have two choices,” Brooks said.
I gawked at him.
“Your father’s life or Sinclair’s.”
Anger swallowed my fear.
I wanted to deck the bastard.
I opened my mouth, but no words came. I couldn’t sentence someone to death.
Sinclair was a cheating, predatory piece of shit. I hated him.
I hated the way he’d touched me. Hated that he’d made me feel dirty when he was the disgusting one.
But hating someone and ordering their murder were two different things.
I wasn’t Brooks. I wasn’t the Night Sons.
I couldn’t say a name and watch someone die because of it.
“Fuck you,” I spat. “I’m not choosing.”
“You sure?” He held the remote up and tapped a finger against it.
My eyes immediately filled with tears when my dad appeared on the screen. He sat at a table wearing a prison uniform, eating a muffin and talking to another inmate.
He looked thinner than I remembered. Tired.
The cheap uniform hung strangely on a man I’d only even known in expensive suits.
For the first time, my father looked old.
Old and worn-out.
“There he is,” Brooks said like he’d just introduced the next contestant on a game show. “The man who tried to murder my father.”
The camera shifted.
A few tables behind my dad, another inmate held a shank under the table.
Dad laughed at something the guy behind him said.
He has no idea.
“Brooks.” His name broke in my throat.
“Choose, or we kill them both.”
“No.” Tears spilled down my cheeks as I shook my head. “I can’t.”
Brooks gestured toward Sinclair with the remote. “You have ten seconds, or I kill them both.”
“Please!”
“Ten.”
Dad lifted the muffin to his mouth.
The man with the shank stood.
“Nine.”
“Don’t do this!”
“Eight.”
I looked through the glass.
Sinclair stared back at me, frantically shaking his head.
Dad.
Sinclair.
I peeked over at the gun on the table.
What if choosing isn’t enough?
What if they make me do it?
“Five.”
“I can’t!”
“Then they both die.”
“Brooks!”
“Ticktock. Time’s up.”
He backed through the hidden doorway. The concrete panel slid shut between us.
The TV changed feeds to my dad walking alone down a prison hallway. A shadowed figure followed several steps behind him.
The man with the shank.
A scream ripped through the speakers from the other cell.
I turned toward the glass to find Brooks back in the room with Sinclair, a baseball bat in his hand.
He punched Sinclair in the face, making him scream.
“Stop screaming, or I use the bat!” Brooks warned him.
Sinclair clamped his mouth shut. His body trembled against the restraints.
Brooks grabbed the hanging microphone and faced me. “Make your decision, Daphne.”
He slid the bat under Sinclair’s chin and lifted his face. “You know this isn’t a game.”
My head started spinning when Brooks pulled the bat back like he was stepping up to home plate, then he swung.
I screamed as the bat stopped inches from Sinclair’s face.
A broken whimper came through the speakers.
I looked at the TV.
Dad.
Back through the glass.
Sinclair.
Dad. Sinclair. Dad. Sinclair.
I can’t do it.
Did that make me a terrible daughter? I wasn’t sure.
Hot tears flooded my vision, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
If I couldn’t stop Brooks, I could at least refuse to watch.
Footsteps pounded behind me. Arms locked around my body before I could turn, pinning me against a hard chest. My eyes flew open.
Brooks was still standing beside Sinclair.
Who the hell is this then?
Gloved fingers forced my eyelids open. I thrashed, but the Son held me still. They weren’t even going to let me look away.
Brooks shoved the end of the bat under Sinclair’s chin again. “You should’ve kept your hands off your students.”
Sinclair shook his head against the metal. “No! Please!” His voice cracked. “I’m a dad. I have a family!”
Brooks pulled the bat back, and the crack of bone blasted through the speakers. Blood poured from Sinclair’s mouth. Brooks swung again.
Something small and white struck the glass directly in front of me and dropped to the ground. A tooth.
“Stop!” I screamed, darting toward the glass.
The Son behind me ripped me back.
Brooks kept going.
Another swing. Another sickening crack.
Blood sprayed across the glass until Sinclair became nothing but a blurred shape behind the red.
I knew bully Brooks.
Cruel Brooks.
The Brooks who’d dangled me over a cliff and tossed me into the ocean.
But I’d never met killer Brooks.
And his mask kept me from seeing the only thing I needed to know.
Does he feel anything?
Brooks kept swinging.
When he finally cut Sinclair loose, his body collapsed to the floor.
Sinclair tried to crawl but didn’t get far. Brooks stood over him and raised the bat one final time.
I fought against the fingers holding my eyes open.
The bat came down, and Sinclair stopped moving.
My stomach twisted as Brooks’s warning came rushing back.
“Whoever did this will bleed for it.”
He’d meant it.
Blood covered Brooks’s mask when he faced me. He wiped a hand through the blood before walking toward the glass.
Slowly, he smeared Sinclair’s blood across it.
One curved line. Then another.
A heart.
He pointed the bat at me. “Your turn.”