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It’s one thing to threaten me, but the thought of Calvin going after my grandmother is more than I can take. It’s made me desperate, and perhaps a little psycho, but that’s what happens when you mess with someone I love. You get the psychotic bitch who’ll do whatever she has to do.
I type a separate email, this one only to Father Damon, and attach a selfie I took earlier—from my jawline to just above my bare breasts. No message, just the image. He’ll be angry, no doubt. Perhaps even uncomfortable and embarrassed. But I guarantee he’ll stare at the photo for far longer than it takes to simply delete it.
Tomorrow is my scheduled rendezvous with Calvin, and I can hardly stomach the thought of the ruthless prick’s hands on me. I haven’t eaten all day because of it.
Yet, if I opt not to go, he’ll show up at my work, the nursing home, or, worse, at my apartment again. I’ve already burned one set of sheets, and I can’t really afford to burn another. This place is the only sanctuary I have, and the moment he feels free reign here is the moment it truly becomes my cage.
Gathering up my bags, I close my computer, feeling ever the manipulative bitch as I head out the door for work. But it’s like I said before, I’ll be whatever I have to be to keep those I love safe.
* * *
Pushing a cart stacked with medical records through the aisle, as I stop to file one away in its proper sequence, a buzz at the door stiffens my muscles.
Few people tend to ignore the sign out front, but one in particular makes me nervous as all hell, and the last time I opened the door to him, I ended up selling my soul. A sickness twists in my gut as I abandon the cart, hoping if it’s Calvin, I can make him leave without much incident.
Breath held, I swing back the door to a much more handsome, but clearly pissed-off, face, and the air whooshes out of me like a deflating balloon.
“Father Damon? What are you doing here?” Okay, sure. I expected him to email me back. Maybe even show up at my apartment. Never in a million years did I guess he’d show up at my work.
“You knowexactlywhy I’m here. How about we find a place to talk.”
“There’s an old office down the hall. We can talk in there.”
Perhaps the only safe place to talk about murdering someone. It was the old pathologists office before they moved the morgue to the other side of the basement—a transition I welcomed wholeheartedly—and no one tends to go down the hall for much of anything these days, believing that half of the corridor to be haunted.
As I push out through the door, he takes a step back, allowing me to pass, and follows after me down the hall like a storm cloud about to wreak havoc. Every muscle in my body is trembling, my chest closing around my lungs in a tight fist of excitement and fear. I brought this on myself, and he’s undoubtedly here to set me straight. Except, I don’t plan to fold so easily, as he’ll find out soon enough.
I enter the dark room, flipping on the light as he slips past, and the moment I turn around, all the argument escapes me, when he rolls his sleeves up, revealing a network of veins crawling up his meaty forearms.
“If you think showing up to my job is going to make me back down, you have gravely underestimated my tenacity.”
His cool demeanor is unnerving. Like a mafia guy just before he puts a bullet square in some poor sap’s skull. “You’re a smart girl, Ivy. Today’s move was well played.”
“Does this mean you accept my request?”
“No. No, this doesn’t mean that, at all. But while we’re on the topic, why don’t you tell me exactly what you had in mind?”
“What’s the point? If you’re not going to do it?”
“Because I don’t think you’ve thought that part through. I don’t think you realize what happens when you kill someone. Even if you’re not the one doing the killing.” The crossing of his arms draws my eyes to his massive biceps, a reminder of how easily he could throttle me, if he wanted. “So, let’s start with how you think this will go down. Have you even gotten that far?”
“Every day. It’s simple really. I tell you where he lives. I give you the code to enter his house. You kill him, and my nightmares end.”
“Do they? Because I’ll be the first to tell you they don’t. Every day that I look out my window, I’m reminded of a life I extinguished. Every night when I go to sleep, whose face do you think I see, with such vivid clarity, it makes me sick? I don’t think you’re the kind of person who can live with that, Ivy. I don’t think you have enough blood on your hands to accept those consequences.”
“And you do?”
He strokes his hand over the shadow of stubble scattered across his perfectly chiseled jaw. “You know very little about me. But one small thing I’ll impart is that I didn’t have a clean slate when I entered the priesthood, and I’m no stranger to killer’s remorse.”
“What is this? Why are you here? What’s the point of this? To guilt-trip me into giving up? To tell me to accept this shitty situation until the asshole dies of natural causes?” Now I’m the one crossing my arms, shaking my head in refusal. “I can’t. See, tomorrow? I’ll have to go his house and play whatever twisted little game he wants to play, for two and a half hours, because that’s the deal I made to keep him from pounding down my door in the middle of the night.” I won’t even bother to tell him the last time I was there he made me go down on him while he listened to some fucked up audio of the Toy-Box Killer. The time before that he decided to play gynecologist and made me his patient. And those are relatively mild compared to what he’s made me do in the past, but not even I can confess that shit aloud.
Something dark clouds his eyes as he stares back at me—darker than the usual broody Father Damon stare. “This is what you’re forced to do to keep him away from you?”
I don’t even bother to answer that, considering I’ve already blackmailed a priest. “Whether it’s by your hands, or mine, I’m cutting him out of my life, one way, or another.”
“One of my parishioners owns a security company. Perhaps he can—”
“I’ve had the locks changed. Cameras installed. A number of things I can’t afford to do, but I do them, anyway. Somehow, he gets in. Somehow, he snakes his way back into my life. You want to know why I’m so cunning? I know how it feels when someone emails your boss.”
