Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 114260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“I know you. I—I knew your parents, too, I think. Is that why you’re here?”
I look to Cain. He nods. Sometimes he has an agenda. Today, we just need answers.
“It’s one of the reasons. Why don’t you tell me about my parents and how you know who I am.”
“You’re the girl with the violet eyes. Name’s Violet, isn’t it?”
I nod. “It is.”
“Your mother had the same color eyes.” His voice is high-pitched with fear. “I remember her. That was a long, long time ago. A lifetime ago.”
A cold shiver runs down my spine. No one in my entire life has ever told me that. “Did she? What else can you tell me about her, Gray?”
My voice is not my own, sounding distant and disembodied like I’m a ghost speaking to someone on Earth.
“I—I didn’t know her.”
Cain shakes his head like a disappointed father. “Now, now, Gray,” he says, while he pushes himself to standing from his seated position. “We won’t allow lying. We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to come here today, and we want answers.”
His phone buzzes. He glances at the screen and scowls. Cain’s voice drops to a menacing octave. “And the intel my men just sent me makes it a lot easier for me to put the screws to you if necessary.”
“Tell me.”
His eyes quickly dart to mine, then back to Gray. “Those accusations? Some were true. We have court-verified intel and eyewitnesses. And some of the women were minors at the time.”
Fucking hell. My hands clench into fists when I see the wide-eyed terror Cain’s words bring out in Gray.
He’s guilty as fuck.
“Now tell us, please, before we have to get a lot more unpleasant. Did you really not know my parents?”
Gray clamps his jaw shut and looks away. Cain moves as if by instinct. He walks to the jacuzzi, flicks the chrome handle, and water begins to pour into the tub. “Something tells me you don’t like water, Gray. Is that true?”
His face is red, his eyes beady as he shakes his head from side to side.
“He’s lying,” I tell Cain.
The water in the jacuzzi’s already a third of the way to the top. Cain shuts off the taps and steps toward Gray, who shakes his head from side to side. “I didn’t know them! I swear, I didn’t—”
Cain ignores him, picks him up bodily, chair and all, and drags him over to the jacuzzi.
“No! No, don’t, please!”
“Tell me, Gray,” Cain says, his lips a thin line of fury. “Is that what the girls you molested said to you when you took them into your home?”
Without another word, he dunks the minister’s face in the pool of water. I want to look away, but I don’t. What Cain does and who Cain is are inexorably intertwined. If I love him—and I do—I love all of him, even the cruel, vindictive parts that lurk in the shadows. Those are the parts that make all of him whole.
I watch Descamps struggle, thrashing in the chair he’s secured to until I know he can’t breathe. My own air’s constricted in my lungs until Cain brings him up. He hasn’t even broken a sweat.
“Anything more to tell us, minister?”
A pause. He’s breaking. When he doesn’t say anything, Cain submerges him in the water a second time.
The first time I saw Cain torture someone, I had to look away. I hated that I did. I wanted to face the cruelty he inflicted, because it was always, always justified. With ruthless determination, he gets what he wants when he wants it, but he always has good reason. He doesn’t torture for sport and never without a damn good reason.
This is why I hired Cain. This is what we came for. I need these fucking answers.
Bubbles emerge from the water. He’s got Descamps right on the edge.
Cain looks in my eyes as the minister faces his own mortality, and I feel that stark, honest truth to my very soul. We don’t speak. We don’t blink. We stare in solidarity of a shared purpose, and I love him for it.
He lifts Descamps out of the water. A rivulet of water floods his eyes and face, his hair dripping onto the cold concrete floor below. The light blue dress shirt he wears is soaked from the collar to the first three buttons, his pants still untouched. Cain slams him back on the floor.
“Answer.”
“Fine! Fine,” he says, crying softly to himself. He glares at Cain, and his words feel like venom. “I had an affair with her mother when I was newly ordained.”
Now that, I didn’t expect.
Ew.
“And?” Cain stands with his arms crossed on his chest. “If you think we have all day, minister, I can speed things along—”
“No! No,” Descamps whimpers. “I… I knew her well. We ended what was between us and went our separate ways. I began my ministry and she… she married Violet’s father. They had her less than a year after they married, but I always kept in touch with Anya.”