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“I’m sorry, Sir. I’m feeling anxious.”
Aidan’s gaze softens. “I know you’re scared, little one, but you said you wanted to be challenged.”
I did ask him to challenge me. I just didn’t think he’d start tonight, or with something so terror-inducing.
“How long do I have to stay in here?” I ask him.
“For as long as you can stand it.”
“Then I might as well leave with you, because I won’t last ten seconds in here alone.”
Aidan scrubs a hand along his jaw, his expression thoughtful.
“What if I gave you an incentive?” he asks.
“Like what?”
“If you can stay in here, by yourself, for two minutes, I’ll grant you a reward of your choosing.”
I squint. “My choosing?”
“Within reason,” he says.
My mind swims with the possibilities. I want to do this for him, but I also want to do it for me. If I can learn to temper my body’s reactions to tight, dark spaces, I won’t have to compulsively check that every room I enter has at least one window or two exits.
And I already know how I want to be rewarded.
“All right,” I tell him. “I’ll try.”
I don’t make it more than thirty seconds before I’m practically hurling myself at the door. Thankfully, the latch doesn’t stick this time.
Aidan is waiting outside, just like he promised.
“I can’t do it,” I rasp, tears streaming down my face.
He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to me.
“Not today, perhaps,” he says. “But you’ll try again tomorrow.”
The next morning, after breakfast, Aidan tells me to join him downstairs.
I know where he’s leading me. I don’t want to follow, but I don’t want to disappoint him either. As we enter the laundry room, coming to stand before the entrance to the wine cellar, I feel my stomach start to seize.
“Please don’t make me go in there again,” I say.
He eyes me thoughtfully. “Why does it scare you?”
“You know why.” My pulse throbs at my temples; I’m already short of breath.
“And you know that my wine cellar isn’t the closet your mother used to put you in. So why does it frighten you so much?”
I pinch my eyes shut as the memories flood my senses. Darkness all around me. The scent of fabric softener and my own urine. The sound of my mother crying, and my father shouting. Her begging him to stop, to show her mercy.
My whole body going taut—
“I heard him beat her,” I say. “I heard it all and I did...nothing.”
Aidan’s hand comes to rest on my shoulder.
