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I tear myself from the pictures posted on the wall and glance around further; behind her are empty cages, built into the cellar walls. Some are familiar, appearing in the photographs, but there’s one in the corner that seems untouched.
The door is locked, though I can see through the iron bars. Plastic-wrapped bricks of what I can only assume to be cocaine—given I’ve never seen any packaged like this—stacked in tight columns around the cell.
Am I in a church basement, or is this Hell?
“What’s going on, Mom?” A chill grips my skin, goose bumps popping up in the waves, and I back away until my spine presses into the cool, wet cement wall. Beside the collage of horrors.
My pulse skyrockets, because up until this point I didn’t think she’d actually hurt me. Not physically, at least. Mothers are supposed to be your champions, the ones least likely to cause you harm. But the scar tissue in my heart says otherwise, and I’m beginning to realize how naive I was in thinking she brought me down here for any other reason.
She could’ve broken my spirit more among the crowd, could’ve humiliated me beyond belief in front of the whole town. Yet, she brought me down here.
Where we’d be alone, and I’d be afraid.
Her favorite color on me.
Holding up a little black Tracfone in one hand, she angles the camera toward my face and holds still for a beat. “Just a little temptation to get your lover down here as quick as possible.”
“Mylover?” I blink, unease sloshing around in my stomach. “What do you want with Kieran?”
Setting the phone down, she fixes me with cold, unfeeling eyes. They remind me so much of my father—of how he held a knife to me while Caroline had him at gunpoint, the blatant disregard for something he helped create entirely too evident.
How I’d begged her to shoot him, even if it meant taking me out in the process.
This situation is so similar, I feel dizzy, whiplash an invisible force that whisks the air from my lungs and blurs my vision. My hands press into the wall as if trying to dissolve into it, wishing for that cloak that I always seemed to don in my parents’ presence.
The one that made me so insignificant, they never paid me any mind.
Somehow I’ve ended up on the receiving end of a death threat from both of them.
Shrugging one shoulder, she places the gun gently on the wood, keeping her fingers on top of the handle in case I make a sudden move. “What don’t I want with him? He’s only wrecked my entire life’s work, destroyed any claim to wealth and fame I’ve accumulated over the years. I want him to pay for it in blood.”
My chest heaves with each breath as they become labored, the deep pre-hyperventilation gasps I’m all too familiar with. I can feel the terror pumping through my bloodstream, edging out the oxygen, and try to focus on keeping her talking while I figure a way out of this.
“What do you mean, your life’s work? I didn’t think you’d ever had a job.” My eyes dart around the room, over a plethora of guns stored in containers, scrap metal pieces, junk from the church attic. An old nativity scene sits beside the main door, the face of Jesus completely worn off and molded.
“You never were very observant. Always so wrapped up in your little personal bubble, oblivious to the things going on right around you.” She tilts her head to the side, blue eyes boring into my soul, and it makes me shrink slightly.
Bravado is much harder to keep up in the face of the person who destroyed it in the first place.
I swallow over the knot in my throat, wishing I had the pocket knife that Caroline had given me.‘Keep it tucked in your underwear,’she’d told me, but I didn’t think I’d need it at a fucking christening.
“Do you honestly have no idea what’s going on here?”
“No, but I’m starting to worry you think you’re a real life movie villain.”
Getting to her feet, she keeps her aim trained on my forehead, and after a few silent minutes where she paces back and forth in front of the cages, I can start to feel the threat of a bullet burn a hole in my skin.
“You’re just collateral damage, darling. It’s nothing personal.”
“Holding someone at gunpoint certainlyfeelspersonal.” I clench my jaw against the fear pulsing through me, trying to remain calm. “Jesus, Mom, whatever personal debts you have, I could’ve been left out of this.”
She shakes her head, coming closer to me. Pausing at my side, she stares up at the wall of gore, the hint of a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. I inch away, putting distance between us while she’s distracted and advancing on the door.
“Unfortunately, I can’t seem to kill the Ivers boys, though not for lack of trying. Your Kieran certainly did me a favor, getting rid of his brother all those years ago. I had been starting to think he was gonna blow my operation.”
“Operation?”
One long manicured fingernail taps against a picture of a group of girls, standing outside of what looks like an abandoned warehouse, with its silver garage entrance and ancient beige siding. There’s no business marker on the building, no way for it to be identified, and I can’t quite wrap my brain around what she’s suggesting.
