Chapter 31
Birdie
My mind claws its way out of the grave of sedation. The fog peels away in strips. It leaves residue behind my eyes. A metallic taste is thick on my tongue. When I try to swallow, my throat protests with a raw burn that makes me gag.
I’ve always hated this feeling. It brings bad memories.
Nausea rolls through my stomach. My limbs are so heavy I can’t move them. Is it the sedative or am I pinned to another table?
Panic flares on mute. The drugs are still in my system, dulling everything. Even fear feels like it’s inside someone else.
Where am I now?
I force my eyes open and blink against soft light. My vision swims, then slowly focuses.
Books.
Shelves and shelves of books. Floor to ceiling. Walls lined with them. Old leather bindings. Gold lettering. The smell of paper and aged wood.
A library. I’m in a giant library.
Perhaps I’m hallucinating, tripping. Perhaps I’m still sleeping and dreaming of a happy place.
The resurrected aching in my shoulders begs to differ. Slowly, I turn my head—moving fast makes the room tilt—and take in more details. High ceiling. Ornate molding. Windows with heavy curtains drawn shut. A Persian rug beneath what looks like an antique four-poster bed.
The bed I’m strapped to.
My wrists and ankles are bound to the posts with leather cuffs. Not as brutal as that table of horror but just as effective. I can shift about six inches in any direction, but that’s it. And I’m still naked.
One nightstand on each side of the bed. More books on them with annotated sticky notes. A desk on the other side of the room with multiple monitors. They’re facing away from me. Whatever they display isn’t for me to see. A gun next to them.
A chair sits across from me. In it lies proof I’m neither in a happy place nor hallucinating.
The fucking black hoodie and the butterfly mask.
Butterfly Man, who is definitely not Jacob Torrance because Jacob has just tried to save me and failed, is…drawing.
A sketchbook in his lap, pencil moving in fast lines, he’s focused entirely on his work, as if he’s possessed.
My head races to orient myself, to remember what happened after the needle. The explosion. Did I hear an explosion? Or did I dream it?
“Buonasera, my sweet Angel. Slept well?” he says without looking up from his drawing, his voice still distorted.
“What?”
“Tino and Angel, chapter forty-eight. Isn’t that what he said to her when she woke up after their first night together?
He was painting her, too. He couldn’t let that perfect moment, when she was tied up in his bed, her virginity blood drying on the sheet and between her legs after finally making her his, pass by without capturing it.
” He throws a glance at me. “Isn’t that your favorite book, your favorite daddy? Your favorite stalker?”
He turns the sketch around. The image steals my breath.
It’s me and him. A recreation of that scene from The Italian Obsession: Tino sitting naked next to Angel while she’s bound to his bed, painting her while she sleeps.
It’s perfect. Every detail. Except Angel’s face is mine, and his face is blank.
Just the butterfly mask where Tino’s features should be.
“Delusions are taking over again, aren’t they?” My voice comes out hoarse. “Exactly how insane are you? What I write is fantasy, not despicable atrocities I secretly want in reality.”
“Yeah?” He drops the pencil and sifts through his sketchbook until he finds something in particular. He shoves the drawing in my face. “What about this?”
It’s me again with his depiction of himself, in another scene from a book of mine. My wrists are crossed above my head, my back against a door, and he’s on his knees, eating me.
Just like Tristan and I were in that inn. The clothes are the same. The room details, too.
“Isn’t that from The Nightingale’s Whisper, his favorite?” he asks. “Did he come in his pants for you, too?”
I swallow. He chuckles.
“You were watching?”
“I’m always watching, darling, so don’t bother lying to me anymore.
It’s borderline insulting.” He tucks my hair behind my ear.
“What you write isn’t fantasy or despicable atrocities.
It’s your secret desires that are so dark and depraved you question your sanity, and I, shamelessly and devotedly, will fulfill each and every single one of them with you, for you. ”
“What happened to Jacob?” I force the words out to change the subject. “Where are we?”
He moves to another drawing and shows it to me. Dom and Nicky. The blue room scene. Same perfect recreation. Same masked face where the hero’s should be.
He shows me another. And another. Eighteen total. All of us. All reenactments of my own stories. All with him faceless behind that mask. “Which one do you want to start with? The darkness you write but never speak. Which one do you want to live first?”
A lump clogs my throat. My arm throbs, the right one, but my gaze flashes to the left. There is a small bandage exactly where my birth control implant is. Panic cuts through the drug haze. “No.”
“The IV came out clean. No more needles. I’m going to feed you and take care of you properly myself.
But this isn’t really what you’re concerned about, is it?
” The back of his hand caresses my arm. “You always glance at your left arm even though the most pain comes from your right. At first, I thought it was a distraction so you wouldn’t answer my questions, but now I know why. ”
“What did you do?”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small.
A rod. Thin. About an inch and a half long.
My birth control implant. And it’s fried, as if someone has poured acid on it.
“You’re always making sure you still have this.
” He holds it up to the light. “Nexplanon, right? Etonogestrel. Lasts three years. You had about eighteen months left on this one.”
The room tilts again, but this time it has nothing to do with the drugs.
“I’ve read all your books, Reagan. Every single one. And I noticed something interesting. Unless the heroine has a breeding kink, she always panics when the hero comes inside her. Always. There’s that moment of fear. Of consequence.”
He sits on the edge of the bed. I try to pull away, but there is nowhere to go.
“But you,” he continues, turning the implant over in his fingers, “you never panicked when I came inside you. Even though you have no breeding kink yourself, obviously, you never once worried about getting pregnant. I wondered why, and then I found this.”
“You had no right—”
“I had every right. You’re mine now. Every part of you. And I won’t have barriers between us.”
I swallow against the nausea. “What happened to Jacob?” I ask again, my voice stronger. The drugs are wearing off enough for anger to break through.
He sets the sketches aside and sits close enough I can feel the heat of him through the sheets underneath me. “Jacob Torrance and everyone with him,” he says, savoring each word, “went kaboom.”
“What?”
“I’ve prepared for every contingency. When they breached our sanctuary, I detonated. The whole structure collapsed. Buried everything and everyone.”
“No—”
“He’s dead, Reagan. I watched from the boat. Saw the explosion. Saw the cliff face come down. No one survived that.”
The room shrinks. The shelves press in, sucking the air out of my chest, ripping my heart.
Jacob is gone? Butterfly Man killed him?
No. This can’t be happening. This is not what is supposed to happen.
All this time, Jacob was a good man. This monster was trying to mess my head up so I’d turn on him.
Jacob was the last thread to a future without pain.
Without him, there’s nothing left but a predator’s shadow, circling, hungry, and I’m the pinned butterfly under glass with no escape. “You’re lying. You’re lying!”
“When have I ever lied to you, my little butterfly?” He leans in closer. “And the man with the motorcycle is next. I’m going to make sure Tristan Morra understands what happens when someone touches what belongs to me.”