Page 20 of Beautiful Scars

“You’re shitting me.” I can already see where he’s going with this. We used to keep the basement for parties and… other things when we were in our mid-twenties and lived for the weekend. It was a way of making sure the house didn’t get wrecked and people couldn’t snoop where they didn’t belong. But I’ve not been down here in years. I still remember what it looked like, though, and I’m not about to let him lock her up down there. “We’re not recreating the fucking Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cole.”

He laughs while he unlocks a padlock I swear wasn’t on the door this morning. “Nope. It’s better.”

The door opens with a creak and he pulls the cord to turn the single bulb on. The cupboard is rammed full with I don’t even know what, but I follow him along until we get to the second door.

Another padlock.

No good can come of this.

We have to duck so as not to hit our heads on the low hanging beams coming down the stairs, but as soon as I’m in the basement and my eyes adjust to the dim red—fuckingred—light I can see, quite clearly, that this is not the same room.

“What—When did you do this?”

“When you were in Manchester. Behold,” he says, bowing dramatically. He’s on drugs. The man has lost it.

This is so far away from the original plan I feel like I’ve just walked into another dimension.

I shake my head. “Not a fucking chance.”

“You’ve not even thought about it!”

“I don’t even need to think about it. I’m not a rapist, Cole.”

Because that’s clearly what he’s asking me to do.

It looks like I’ve just walked onto some high-budget porn set. Everything is red or black, from the walls that used to be cracked and are now covered in drapes, to the massive bed that sits against the back wall. The lighting comes from spotlights dotted along the floor and shining up, giving the whole place a sinister, rapey vibe.

“Okay, okay,” he says, nodding his head as he glances down at the little bundle in my arms. “I’ll do it then.”

Anger shoots through me at his suggestion and I have no idea where it even came from. I just know he’s not getting his hands on her. Not whenthisis the sort of shit he comes up with.

“You fucking will not,” I tell him. “This is crossing the line. And I’m not even talking about a moral line, this just doesn’t even make sense. We have the evidence. You saw the video. She wrecked the car, Derek did a grand job of getting hurt, it’s all on film. We don’t need to turn her into a fucking porn star on top of all that.”

He looks deadly serious when he stares me in the eye and says, “Why not?”

“Why not? Where does that end, hmm? Me coming home one day to find you knee-deep inside your own fucked-up snuff film?”

He lets out a sigh and holds onto my arm to stop me from walking away. Instinctively I turn away from him, wary that he’ll crush the little thing still fast asleep in my arms.

“If it came to that then I wouldn’t hesitate,” he says. “This goes further than her mum trying to cover up a bit of bad PR, Kill. Think about it.”

“I’m thinking, and I still can’t see any logic in this.”

“I know imagination isn’t your fortitude, but just imagine—”

I cut him off. “My imagination is just fine, Cole. Yours is the product of a bad acid trip.”

He laughs. “You’re not thinking far enough ahead. That’s your problem, Kill, always so black and white. The original plan has flaws. We show the evidence to Ford, she agrees to revoke the law, and then what? We just take her word for it? We wait? How long do we wait? Two months? Two years? This gives us what we need, and that is a deadline. She revokes the law passing within the month in order to save her daughter from her miserable life of sex slavery.”

I stare at him, still unconvinced.

“How hard have we worked for this, Kill? How long has it taken us to build this?”

I continue to stare.

“You’re forgetting what’s at stake. Our business will be decimated the day that law passes.”

I let out a sigh.