“Nothing.” I’m shaking.
“It’s no different than an autopsy, Juliana. Steady cuts.”
“No.”
“It’s okay.” Andrew sounds like he’s choking on the sounds he’s trying not to make. “Do what he says, Jules. I love you. I forgive you.”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
Suddenly, Reid sighs. He leans forward, slices across Andrew’s throat, and says, “There.”
The blood splashes me. Andrew’s blood. I feel him die, smell it, see it. The man who has been my lover, who comforted me time and again, is dead.
I can’t move.
Reid pulls me up and leads me toward the bathroom. He points at the tub. “In.”
“Please . . .”
“In the tub, Juliana.”
“I did what you said.”
He lifts me. I’m scrambling to get out of his arms as soon as he touches me, so when he drops me in the tub, I flail. My head thunks against it. I’m in a clawfoot tub, covered in Andrew’s blood.
I’m going to die.
Like they died. Like my nightmares.
I try to get out. Push to my feet and throw myself forward. I’m not even clear of the tub before he has me back in it.
The water comes on, freezing cold and pouring from the shower head attachment. I shriek.
“Be a good girl.” Reid hits me along the shoulder with the shower attachment.
When I cry out, he aims the water at my face while he holds my head steady with a handful of my hair. I can’t make a sound because of gagging.
“Be a good girl, Juliana, and I won’t have to hurt you. Do you understand?” He loosens his hold just enough that I can nod.
“Hold out your leg. Over the edge of the tub.”
“Please, I don’t—”
The water hits my face again. I obey. I think of the things I know his victims endured, and I don’t think I can survive as long as some of them obviously did.
Reid turns off the water.
I’m soaked, shivering, still bloody from Andrew’s murder, bleeding from where Reid hit me, and terrified.
Reid lifts a restraint attached to a chain and fastens it to one leg. Then he stands and looks down at me. “Be a good girl, and I will take care of you. My brother took my wife, so once I deal with her, you can be my new wife.”
“I won’t ever—” My words die as Reid’s hand covers my mouth.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Juliana. I’ve been lonely. None of them understood me. Tess did. You do.” His hand stays over my mouth. “I’ve read everything you’ve said about me. You have questions, and I can answer them. I’ll teach you to be a good wife. Better than Tess.”
His other hand caresses my breast, my stomach. His fingers slide down and open the button of my jeans.
I try to squirm away. There is nowhere to go inside a tub. There is no way to get away from him.
“I won’t hurt you if you’re good.”
I pull my knee up to try to kick him. I can’t move the other leg because of the restraint, but I can move one. Maybe it’s stupid. I don’t know. All I can say for sure is that in that moment, I can’t just lie there and let him touch me.
Reid doesn’t react beyond smiling.
“I don’t mind hurting you if you like it. Some girls do. Tess did eventually.”
Then he stands. He gets a shirt and tears it. “I don’t have any coke. Usually that helps." He ties the shirt over my mouth so tightly that I can’t speak. “For now, this will have to be over your mouth.”
I stare at him.
"Later, after I handle Tess, I’ll go find some coke. It'll help. Once you get high, you'll enjoy our time together more. Once I take it away, you'll do anything to get a taste of it. I know how to train you to be good. I learned when I was a kid. That's what my mother did for me. She taught me to be a good boy.”
He wraps a hand around my throat. The other hand trails over my cheek, my chest, my stomach, and stops between my legs. He stares down at me.
"The pretty things were distractions." He sighs. "I had a wife out there somewhere. I couldn't marry again until she dies, but after today, I'll be a widower."
I choke on my sob and close my eyes.
"You'll learn to be a good wife, and I won't make the mistakes I did with Tessie." His voice catches. "I can't. My son is dead. I need a child, Juliana. And a wife to give me that child."
I open my eyes at that.
He confirms that Andrew was actually his son. Then he leaves me there, chained and gagged in a tub, and closes the door behind him.
41
Tess
Andrew is dead on my sofa. That’s the first thing I notice when I walk into the house, with Michael is behind me. A part of me thinks that I should tell him to go, but the rest of me knows that it’ll go worse for me if he does. Michael is about to discover how far I will go to survive.
I step to the side and reach back to lock the door behind us. “Reid’s here.”
“Reid? Your—”
“Husband,” Reid cuts in as he comes out of my bathroom. He stares at me, and for a moment, it’s not rage I see. He looks at me like he’s been too long without sight, like I’m something he’s coveted and been denied.
I can’t speak. I’d like to pretend it’s only fear stopping my words, and underneath there is a sea of terror churning. It's more than that, though. He trained me to never disappoint him, to please him, to feel guilt at my flaws. He taught me to love him more than I loved anything, anyone.
He trained me to belong to him.
But the fear rises up through the rest. I don’t think I could look upon him and not feel fear. Reid taught me the depths of that word in a way I couldn’t comprehend before I became his. I still wake screaming because of him. I turn on lights because of him. He is the thing that haunts me. I was essential to him, the air he needed, and I see it now in the way he studies me.
Maybe I’m broken in the ways people think. Maybe I’m weak after all.
“I missed you.”
He looks weary in a way he didn’t used to be. Tiny lines stretch from the corners of his eyes. Strands of grey hair twine into the darker pieces. Reid has aged since I left. He’s still fit. I can tell that even though he’s covered with a wet, bloodied shirt. A hunting knife is in his hand. It’s not one I remember, but it’s similar.
“Do you want me to wash that before the blood sets in?”
Michael reaches out to grab me, to pull me away or stop me from going to my husband. I’m not sure.
I look back at him. “I’m a good wife.”
Reid laughs. “You’re a whore. If you were a wife you wouldn’t have been hiding in this cesspool.”
“New Orleans is not a cesspool.”
“You’re still a whore.” Reid points the tip of the knife at me for emphasis.
I’ve never claimed to be an angel, even before I started at the Red Light, I had a list of sins attached to my soul. Now, there were a few more. I wasn’t about to waste my energy arguing over it. There are only a few ways things could go from here. My husband has found me; worse still, he’s found me with another man. My best hope is that he decides I’m too useless to drag home. The only other future that can exist is one in which he kills me.