I’ve inched closer to the bars, and Grayson’s hand now covers mine. His finger stroking mine. His touch my anchor. “You knew you were going to kill him.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’d been fantasizing about it during those months. Obsessing about the different ways…how it would feel—” I cut myself off. “I didn’t sneak down there. I knew he was aware, that he’d follow me to the basement. I brought him down there on purpose.” I turn my head away.
Grayson reaches through the bars and forces my face toward his. “How did you plan to kill him, London?”
“I was going to throw him down the steps.”
His finger trails my jaw. “But you failed the first time.”
“He was bigger. Stronger. And I saw it in his eyes. That gleam. Like he’d been waiting for me.”
Shame blankets me. I don’t have to say it aloud; he doesn’t make me. I was sixteen. The age of the girl in the cage. My father had been waiting for me.
“He strangled her,” I power on. “He didn’t kill her right away. He toyed with her. His eyes watched me while he choked her. My punishment for threatening him, I suppose. I would be next,” I say, the cool room suddenly scented with the same dank smell of that basement. “I just knew. Somehow I understood. He was going to kill me. So I took his life instead.”
His thumb traces the contour of my cheek before he touches the scar along my palm. “But not before he took something from you.”
My humanity.
I glance at the scarred skin, stained with black ink and makeup. “He wanted me to be a part of it. I thought at the time he was trying to salvage…” I look up and curse. “I wanted to believe he loved me. In his own sick way, he wanted to make me a part of his secret so that we could share it. Or that I wouldn’t be a threat to him. Reflection over the years has clarified the moment he put that knife in my hand and used me to end that girl’s life. Years of studying mental illness and disorders revealed that it excited him. That’s all. Nothing more.”
His gaze flicks over my face. “Were you excited?”
I bite my lip until the metallic tang of blood fills my mouth. “In that moment, experiencing the raw power of taking a life…yes. I wasn’t just a voyeur,” I admit. “I felt every stab of the blade. The way the knife sliced through flesh, the vibration when it hit bone. I was lost in the sensation before I willed myself back—ripping my hand free of his. The blade cut through my hand here.” I turn my palm over, revealing the healed over scar.
“He let me kill him.” I pull my hand back. “Maybe he was shattered that I refused him, or maybe in the end he was tired of his sickness…but I never should’ve been able to overpower him.”
“But you did.”
“He came after me. He’d left the knife behind. He had no weapon. I let him wrap his hands around my throat. Get close enough…before I grabbed the key and drove it into the one spot that would give me time. I went for the knife, but it wasn’t needed. I’d torn through his jugular. He bled out quickly.”
I glance at my hands, recalling the blood.
“Then you hid the kill.”
I shake my head. “No. I didn’t stage the accident to hide my crime. I had planned to die in that wreck. To end the deviant legacy, but when I awoke in the hospital, injured but alive, it was…a rebirth. A new life. A new chance.” I look into his eyes. “I’m not that girl anymore. She died, Grayson. I killed her, too. And there’s nothing you can say or do to bring her back. My own father failed, and so there’s no ho
pe for you. My will is stronger than my sickness.”
He pulls away, breaking the connection. “Your pain didn’t die with your father, and neither did your compulsion to kill. You’ve been able to channel that need through your patients, but it’s getting harder, isn’t it?”
I wipe at my face. “I’ve told you what you wanted to know. Now I need to know that it goes no further than here.”
His smile long gone, he looks down and traces the design of a puzzle piece along his inner forearm. “You might be justified. You might even be considered a hero for what you did. But you still took the law into your own hands, which inherently in this justice system is wrong. You’re no better than any of the murderers you’ve treated. You’re a hypocrite and a narcissist. You loathe me, but you despise yourself more.”
“Swear it to me!” I shout.
His heated gaze flicks up. “I could never share you with another, London. I’m too selfish.”
Chin lifted, I straighten my jacket, smoothing my hands over the pleats. “Then this is goodbye, Grayson. I’ll see you in court tomorrow for the last time.”
I walk away from the cell and from him, leaving behind a piece of myself. He has my secret, that dark and frightening monster I keep hidden from not just the world but myself. Whether or not he’ll keep it, I can’t know. He suffers from sadistic symphorophilia, he’s a psychopath who loves to stage and watch disasters.
And destroying me? That would be the ultimate disaster for a sadist like Grayson.
16
Perjury