“Please! Don’t hurt her! I’m begging you!” Emerson cries out from the floor, unable to lift himself into a sitting position, much less to his feet.

I pause indifferently with the blade still on her tongue.

“I know what we did was wrong,” Emerson speaks out through troubled breaths and painfully twisted features. “Paul threatened her,” he goes on. “Said if she ever left him and their daughter, that he’d make her life a living hell. That he’d take custody of Abigail and force her to pay child support.” He stops only long enough to catch his breath and let more pain shoot through his legs. “The plan was my idea. To accuse him of molesting my daughter. We just wanted him in jail. Out of the way. It was better than killing him.”

I shake my head with disbelief.

“Better to live a life banished by society and by his own daughter because he wears the label of a child molester?” I laugh lightly and press the blade a little harder against Bennings’ tongue, drawing blood. She cries some more, her eyes opening and closing from exhaustion and fear, but she doesn’t dare struggle knowing that one wrong move could take her tongue off.

Emerson has no rebuttal.

“Do you see me, Mr. Emerson?” He looks up at me from the floor, pushing through his pain. “Tell me, what do you see when you look at me? Be completely honest. I won’t hurt you for telling the truth.”

Bennings’ eyes move back and forth, at me and in the direction of Emerson, but he’s too low against the floor for her to see.

Emerson appears baffled by the question, and leery of it just the same. It takes him a moment, but finally he begins to stammer. “Y-You’re a man of justice.”

I look upward in an annoyed and disappointing manner.

Dorian laughs from behind.

“That’s f**king hilarious,” he says. “He’s being kind—I’ll give you an honest answer.”

“I didn’t ask you,” I say without looking at him.

“Well, I’m just sayin’, you want the truth, I’m your guy.” He laughs again and says below his breath, “A man of justice. Fucking hilarious.”

I look only at Emerson.

“I said I wanted the truth.”

“But…that is the truth.”

With deep aggravation, I release Bennings’ tongue and she gasps sharply, sucking back the saliva that had accumulated in her mouth that she could not swallow.

“You tell me the truth, Miz’ Bennings.” I know she’s the only one of them that will. “What do you see when you look at me? This is your chance to get it off your chest without any repercussions.”

Bennings sneers hatefully. “You’re a sick f**k—that’s what you are. Deranged. Demented.” She spits on the floor again. “I bet you cut people into little f**king pieces for enjoyment, don’t you? When I look at you I see a man who’s not right in the head. A sick f**k.”

I smile gently and take a step away from her.

“What you’re really seeing,” I say, “is a man created by people like you. Evil incarnate who dance their way through society dropping poison on the tongues of the innocent. You deface, despoil and destroy the light in those who are still too young to control their own paths, by stripping them of their light and leaving only darkness.” Me. Izabel. Cassia. “You’re an infection. A malignancy. And you’re right, Miz’ Bennings, I am a sick f**k. I revel in what I do. I covet it. And I’ll never stop because being a sick f**k who takes pleasure in torturing people like you who made me this way, is the only thing I can ever imagine being.” I stab my knife into Bennings’ uninjured hand, straight through the bone and the tendons and into the wood of the chair arm beneath it.

“FUUUUUCKKK!” she cries out.

Emerson cries out too, reaching a hand out to her, but still unable to move.

Casually, I step backward and out of view of the hidden camera and turn to Dorian.

“You might want to go wait in the car,” I tell him.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” he says, shoves his gun into the back of his pants and heads toward the exit.

“Jesus!” I hear him say to himself as he gets farther away. “I’ve got to get a reassignment.”

The tall metal door closes behind him and I look back at Bennings and Emerson who know that this night has just taken an unfortunate turn.

I waste no time and get right to work.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Fredrik

“How is she?” I ask Greta over the phone, sitting in my car at the airport after just arriving back in Baltimore.

“Well, from the video feed,” Greta says, “she’s doing just fine. But I don’t feel right about this, Mr. Gustavsson. Cassia knows I’m here and it must be confusing to her why I haven’t been down to see her yet.”

“She’ll understand.”

Greta hesitates, likely rearranging the words she had been about to say, and says instead, “Will you be returning soon?”

“Yes. I’m already back in town. I have a few things I need to take care of and then I’ll head that way. Expect me no later than midnight.”

“Yes, sir.”

This is it.

This is the moment in which I have to make a decision. I can’t go back to that house until I figure it out. I can’t because one look at her and my mind and emotions and decisions will be dictated by her and all my reason will leave me.

My hands tighten around the steering wheel as I stare out the windshield at the cold evening where exhaust swirls chaotically from the tailpipes of running cars. I watch people come and go from the airport parking lot, dragging their wheeled suitcases behind them through a lightly dusted snow-covered sidewalk. Businessmen. Couples returning from vacation or arriving here to spend the holidays with family. All normal rituals catered to by normal people. I’ve never dreamed of being like they are. You have to know a normal life before you can miss it and dream about having it again.

The only life I miss is the one I lived with Seraphina.

I leave the airport and find myself in the same diner I was in a few nights ago, and for the same reason—I can’t go home. And the very same waitress who served me that night is also here on this night. She steps up to my table with a bright white smile and average-sized br**sts and long, dark hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of her head.

“Back again so soon?” she says, holding an order pad in the palm of her hand. “Can I start you off with some coffee?”