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‘We’ll be quick,’ Petros said.
There was little in the room except the furniture, so I made my way across the room and opened the other door. Inside was a neat little space with a load of lockers, some benches and a toilet cubicle. It wouldn’t have been out of place in a home gym. Hell, maybe that’s what it had been built as.
But one filing cabinet stood out like a sore thumb. The drawers were stiff with disuse but begrudgingly gave way under force. A number of brown manilla folders lay within each of them. Opening them revealed details of various men and women. Names, ages, and known family members. Pictures too. Smiling at the camera or beaten and teary. Clothed and sitting on my father’s knee. Naked and degraded. Fury had the folders creasing between my fingers as Petros and Harriet joined me. I handed the file back and heard Harriet gasp. This is what she had been searching for. Real, solid proof.
File after file hit me with fresh waves of anger and revulsion. My life had been built on this absolute hell. For my father to have been involved, there would be more behind it than coercive sex, he had all the sex he could ever have needed. It had to be about more. About power, or money.
‘We should turn these over to the police,’ I said, opening another drawer and feeling broken with each new face that greeted me within the files. ‘They can track them down, give their families either hope or at least a conclusion.’
‘It’s too late,’ Harriet replied. ‘They’ll either be dead or gone. The men like your father don’t hold onto them. They have their fun and sell them on. These guys are bulletproof. Their friends are lawyers, judges and police chiefs. At maximum, they might do a few years. Most likely, they wouldn’t even suffer an inconvenience from an investigation. It would be quashed quicker than a bug beneath their boot.’
A heavy file was the last in the drawer I was looking through, and opening it sent a dagger to my heart. Harriet was younger, but the pretty face in the bar was unmistakably her. Then there were pictures. So many fucking pictures. One caught my eye because I recognised my younger self behind her. Partially slumped over her back, my eyes were unfocused and bleary. The camera was primarily on her face, her tears visible and her mouth contorted in a forever-frozen cry. My father’s hand was on the back of her head, pinning her down to the pearl-clad table.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered, closing the file and handing it to Harriet. She didn’t open it.
Sickened at my younger self, I opened the final drawer. Photo after glossy photo filled it. Each one showed a man in an uncompromising situation with someone from the other files, showing them very clearly enjoying hurting people. At the bottom of the drawer lay a tiny notebook embossed with the same fox symbol. Inscribed in my father’s neat handwriting were names, locations, and crimes. Each page was for a different man, headshots pasted into the corners.
There were a dozen. Some had dark inky crosses blocking out their page. Six remained.
‘Do you recognise them?’ I asked Harriet, looking up as she leaned over my shoulder for a better view.
‘All of them.’
THIRTY-THREE
HARRIET
The folder felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as I carried it back through the castle, the little notebook clutched tightly against it. All those years, I’d sat sandwiched in a drawer with the others. I hadn’t realised that returning to Rosenhall would affect me so thoroughly. The hidden room had torn me apart, sending ripples of anxiety coursing through me. Nothing good had ever come from that despicable cell.
Until now.
As much as being there had set old wounds seeping afresh, I’d claimed the power back in that room. It wasn’t only a place of tragedy. I had one small victory over it. I had their names. I had evidence that was irrefutable. We’d shut the other files back in the hidden room, leaving them for Alfie to deal with later when we’d decided the best course of action. Not until after those six men were dead.
We neared the end of the corridor, and Alfie paused ahead of us.
‘We can double back on ourselves and take the fire exit stairs,’ he said. They’d both seen my reaction to the room, the intense power it still held over me.
I hated that anything could throw me back to that scared, defenceless girl I had been. I wasn’t her anymore.
‘No,’ I said, striding forward and brushing past Alfie. ‘It’s fine.’
Beyond the emotional devastation, the room was beautiful. The double-height ceilings had an ornate oval window covered in stained glass roses and thorns. Rich reds tangled with the barbed greens high above me. I’d never noticed them that night. I had barely been able to see through my tears.
I relinquished my files onto the mantelpiece and faced the room, breathing in long, ragged breaths. The memories swam at the edge of my vision, vying for attention like dark little wraiths. I needed to vanquish them.
‘I need to force the memories out,’ I muttered, as much to myself as anyone else.
‘You can’t,’ Petros said. He came to stand beside me, his fingers resting against my waist.
‘You can replace them with new ones.’ Alfie stood at my other side, and I tipped my face at his words. ‘You can replace them with ones where you control what happens. Where you are the person in charge. Where no one can hurt you.’
My pulse picked up in my throat at the nearness of both of them, their body heat close enough to warm me.
‘I can go and leave you two to make better memories here,’ Alfie said, reaching out and grazing a finger over my forearm.
Petros cleared his throat to talk, but I spoke before he could continue. ‘No. You two have your own thing, and I can’t force myself between that. Petros doesn’t owe me anything. I don’t need his pity.’
‘It’s never been pity,’ Petros said, cupping my chin and pulling me around to him. ‘You are the strongest person I know. I’ve watched you suffer through some of the worst things that can happen to a person, and you came out swinging. Even then, you didn’t run or hide. You hunt down the fuckers who hurt other people. You became their saviour, and you never asked for anything in return. I don’t pity you, Harriet. I worship you.’
