I shouldn’t be surprised he followed me. He’s been looking at me for two days like he knows I suspect something.
My poker face has never been particularly good.
“Turn around and close the door, sweetheart,” he says. “Believe me, that’s the best thing you can do here. Close it and forget this.”
My eyes follow the light to the corner.
“Is that…” I gasp when I see movement in the corner on the bed that’s there.
“Yeah,” he says, kissing the top of my head.
“Not dead?”
It sure smells like death.
“No. He’s not dead.”
“Vi?” I hear croaked out.
My stomach lurches. It is him. His voice is weak, but I know it’s him.
“You’ve had him down here this whole time?”
Killian says nothing.
“How? What the hell? When?” I pull away from him. I’m trembling.
“I had someone give his mother money to bail him out. And then waited to catch him.”
“You’ve had him here this whole time?” I step back. The stench is getting stronger. It smells rotten.
“I have.”
“When? When did you put him here?”
“A few days after you told me about the double-sided coins,” he says.
I gasp. That long ago?
Ray laughs. “I won. I had her first. She loved me first, you piece of shit bastard. ”
I bristle.
Killian doesn’t react to Ray’s jibes.
“He’s been torturing me, Violet,” Ray says weakly from the corner. ”Dunno if you’re really here or if I’m dreaming again, but in case you’re real… he’s been showing me videos of you… Playing videos of you. Making me listen to him fuck you, Vi, on a loop. He feeds me dog food. He beats the fuck outta me. Shot my knee. Pissed on me.”
“Shut your face, Ass-wipe,” Killian snaps.
My eyes travel to Killian. He’s staring at Ray’s shadow coldly.
“He’s got cameras on you all the time, Vi. He shows me footage. Footage of you two fucking.”
“Keep talkin’, asshole. See how it goes for you later,” Killian warns. “Don’t listen to him, baby, he’s skewing things. Like he always has.”
My blood runs to ice at his words, at his demeanor. I back away.
Killian catches my hand. “Baby.”
“You lied,” I say.
“Yes, I did,” he replies matter-of-factly.
I’m in shock. I can’t process this, especially not with his green eyes cutting through me, showing me what looks like the epitome of I give no fucks.
He has zero remorse. Zero.
Is that possible?
“I can’t believe you did that.”
Without hesitation, he replies.
“Believe it. I would lie; I would say anything to protect you. I’ll lie to anybody, you included, to keep you safe. To keep you happy and carefree. To protect you from how I know you feel right now.”
“Killian.” His name sounds like pain. Agony. Like shock.
“Violet,” he replies coolly.
It’s true.
He did this.
He actually did this.
“Let’s go upstairs. I don’t want you breathing this filthy air,” he says calmly, glaring into the space.
And then he reaches for the knob to shut the door and as I hear Ray laughing, Killian casually locks all the locks. Like this is normal. Like it’s not the most fucked up thing ever.
I lift the lid to the trash bin outside the door and see discarded first aid supplies. Bandage wrappers. Antiseptic wipes. I also see dog food cans. Cat food tetra packs. Water bottles. My stomach bottoms out and bile creeps up the back of my throat.
“Let’s go talk.” He reaches for my hand, but I recoil, the taste of vomit in my mouth.
His eyes change and go from cool to concerned, I think. I don’t actually know. I can’t fully seem to… compute.
He takes the lid from me and puts it back on the trash bin, gesturing for me to go.
As much as I suspected something was up, as much as I had the feeling it had to do with that door, as much as something told me it was bad, I wouldn’t let myself ruminate on what it could be. I couldn’t let myself go where my brain was trying to take me. I couldn’t conceive of the notion that Ray would be in that room. I just didn’t let myself get there.
All I knew was that something wasn’t right. But I never realized it was this wrong.
But now I’m there.
And the rotten stench, the chill in this basement, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget how I feel in this moment.
As I drove here, as I decided to sneak here and do this, I felt guilty about it. Very. But I also knew that I needed to know what was behind that door.
He rushed us home Sunday morning and while as soon as we got home, he acted normal, I couldn’t. I could not stop replaying things from the weekend in my head. The space down here. His reaction. How he was down there dressed in the middle of the night.
So, I took the set of beach house keys this morning. They were sitting there inside his desk drawer in the home office nook of our bedroom with the cute keychain of a lighthouse I’d bought for it from a convenience store just before we went to Vegas. He’d left early for work, so I grabbed them and stuffed them in my purse. I drove to work and then a couple hours into my day I made an excuse that I wasn’t feeling well, that I had to leave.