He presses close to the bars, hands gripping the iron until his knuckles bleach. “Then tell me what happened,” he says, his voice edged with a dark threat, “and I’ll carry your secret to the grave, London. No one will ever know.”
I can sense his excitement, the way his pale eyes glint with anticipation, hungry to experience the kill through me.
“How did you discover the truth?” he asks.
I touch my forehead and squeeze my eyes closed, willing the ache at my temples away. “I’d be a fool to trust you.”
“This only works if there’s trust, doctor,” he counters, using my own words against me. “I trust you not to harm me, and I won’t harm you.”
A shaky breath escapes. “Shit,” I mutter, glancing down each end of the hallway for the guards.
“They have me where they want me,” Grayson says, coaxing. “No one’s listening.”
I meet his eyes and whisper the sordid details of how I found the body, the girl—the monster that my father truly was. I strip every trace of emotion from my voice, denying him any satisfaction as I recount my story.
“The girl in the cage was the same age as me,” I say, pausing here. “She was too dehydrated to cry, covered in angry lashes, her skin bruised.” I fall into the memory. “She was beautiful.”
I’ve moved closer to the bars, and Grayson’s hand now covers mine, his thumb stroking gently over knuckles.
“I wanted to set her free,” I whisper. “But I didn’t have the key. I didn’t even think of calling the police or running to a neighbor.”
“Because your father was the sheriff,” he provides.
My eyes close in shame, his touch my anchor.
“I told myself no one would believe me,” I say, shaking myhead. “That it would be too late by the time I found someone who did, that he was too powerful…” I trail off.
“You knew you had to kill him.”
“Yes,” I admit, my voice breathy. “Before I dared to go down there, I’d been fantasizing about it, obsessing about the different ways…how it would feel—” I cut myself off. “I didn’t sneak down there, I made sure he heard me, that he’d follow me to the cellar. I brought him down there on purpose.” I turn my head away.
Grayson reaches through the bars and forces my gaze back on him. “How did you plan to kill him, London?”
“I was going to throw him down the steps, make it look like an accident.”
His finger trails my jaw with gentle strokes. “But you failed the first time.”
“He was bigger. Stronger. And I saw it in his eyes, that gleam.” I shiver at the memory, at his touch. “I didn’t trick him. He’d been waiting for me.”
I don’t say it out loud, and mercifully, Grayson doesn’t make me. I was sixteen. The age as the girl in the cage.
Releasing a heavy breath, I power through the rest. “He strangled her, but he didn’t kill her right away. First, he toyed with her, his callous eyes watching me the whole time.” The cool air is suddenly scented with the same dank smell of that cellar. “And I knew he was going to kill me. Maybe not right then, but soon. He’d torture me first, and he began that torture right then. So…I took his life instead.”
His thumb traces the delicate contour of my cheek before he lowers his hand and touches the scar along my palm. “But not before he took something from you.”
My humanity.
I glance at the scarred skin, stained with faded ink and makeup. “He tried to make me a part of it. At the time, I thought he was trying to create some warped bond, I don’t know…” I look up and release a soft curse. “I wanted to believe that, in his own sick way, he loved me. Like, if he involved me, I wouldn’t be a threat to him. Yet reflection over the years has clarified the moment he put that knife in my hand and used me to end the girl’s life. Years of study into psychopathy revealed that it excited him. That’s all. Nothing more.”
A dark flame ignites in his gaze as he searches my face, a hunger there. “Were you excited?”
This is the part Grayson most wants from me, and it excites him.
I bite my lip until the metallic trace of blood fills my mouth. “In that moment, my father’s hand guiding mine, experiencing the raw power of taking a life…yes,” I confess, knowing he understands, that he’s the one person who won’t judge me. “I felt every stab of the blade. The way the knife sliced through flesh, the vibration when it hit bone. I was lost in the sensation before I willed myself back, ripping my hand free of his. The blade cut through my hand here.” I turn my palm over, revealing the healed-over scar.
“He let me kill him,” I say as I pull my hand away. “I’ve analyzed it…and it’s the only explanation, though I don’t know why. Maybe he was tired of his sickness. But I never should’ve been able to overpower him.”
“But you did,” Grayson says, still wanting more from me.
