He'd saved her life that day, the day Brian broke everything. But it wasn't enough to make up for bringing her here. He'd made further attempts to help her, but the guilt shining out from his eyes every time he looked at her was too much to deal with on top of everything else. She didn't want his guilt. She wanted to be free.
She wanted to reverse the foolish decision that had brought her here.
But it wasn't just the house. There was no free. Even if they decided to let her go, Brian would follow her into her dreams. Even death might not free her mind from him entirely. That was how deeply he'd dug into her soul that day, tying the worst parts of himself to her indefinitely. A shadow, permanently attached.
Her fingertips found the edge of the longest, most brutal scar, and traced it across her back until she could reach no further. When Brian had finished, he'd untied her and left the cell without a word. Just another day to him.
She'd made it somehow to the ground before she'd lost consciousness. The next thing she knew, she was in bed, her entire torso bandaged with the doctor looking down at her.
He should have let her bleed out on the dungeon floor. It would have been a far kinder fate.
Shannon went back into the bedroom and slipped into a robe. The clock on the wall read 1:30. She hated when the dream came this early. It was impossible to get back to sleep. She couldn't stop seeing it. All that blood. All her blood. How had there been enough blood left inside her to keep going?
How had there been enough of anything inside her to keep going?
How long was she going to lie to herself and pretend anything would ever get better for her? It was only getting worse. The men at the house hardly played with her anymore. They'd adored her before that day. And after, for a few years they'd made a good show of not being bothered by the marks that marred her.
But she wasn't in her twenties anymore. And the girls who came to the house just seemed younger and younger next to her. She kept getting older, and they kept being twenty. What charms she may have had in spite of Brian, were slowly but surely fading. And every day the lie that somehow things would work out... somehow she would be loved, died a little more.
She was fading into the background. Nobody noticed or wanted her. There was no escape from any of this. Except one.
She'd thought about it over the years, but it had always been a passing thought. Nothing more serious. Shannon wasn't sure what was different now except that she had hit a moment of absolute realization. Before she'd somehow always been able to convince herself that things could get better. She'd held out hope that maybe there was still someone out there for her. Somehow. In her mind, Mina had stood out like a beacon of what was possible. But unlike Mina, Shannon's rescue never came.
The fantasy was getting harder to hold together. She'd known for years. Somehow she'd managed to put off dealing with the truth until now.
But she'd decided. She was leaving this house. Tonight. No, she couldn't go out the normal way. Although she'd figured out the security codes long ago, a metal security bracelet was locked around her wrist. It kept her inside the perimeter and would deliver a nasty shock if she stepped outside it. And it wouldn't stop until she either stepped back inside the perimeter or passed out.
But there was more than one way to leave this place.
Shannon crept down the stairs to the main floor. She stopped inside the kitchen. Phyllis had made her famous chocolate cake. Every bit of the recipe, including the frosting, was from scratch.
Shannon took a fat slice, poured a tall glass of milk, and sat on a stool at the counter and ate. When she was done, she left the plate and glass on the counter. She dragged her finger through the remaining frosting on her plate and smeared it on the shiny stainless steel.
Her last act of defiance, and neither Brian nor anyone else in this house would be able to punish her for it.
As she made her way down the hall to the spa, she passed the fitness room and heard the treadmill whirring away. Shannon tensed. Brian.
Sometimes he ran in the middle of the night. Whatever demons haunted him, it wasn't about anything he'd done to anyone else. That part of him was dead inside. But there must have been a moment when he was innocent and someone had broken him. That moment, whatever it was, kept him running on the treadmill in a futile attempt to escape his own demons. Shannon couldn't be bothered to give the first beginnings of a damn about anything that haunted him.
Whenever she thought of Brian's pain, all she could think was: Good.
She scurried past the open door of the fitness room and continued on.
When she reached the spa, she went into the room she'd set up as an office. She took a key from the bottom of a planter and unlocked the bottom desk drawer and pulled out a pill bottle.
Lindsay gave out sedatives like candy—some he'd given to her. Instead of taking them, she'd slipped them into an empty pill bottle she'd found in Lindsay's office trash can one day. She'd been collecting them for a while. Sometimes if he left his office unlocked and she could get to them, she'd sneak one or two extra but not enough that he might notice. Sometimes she feigned an inability to sleep and got them from him that way.
But even when the inability was real, she resisted the urge to take them. They were too important to squander.
She wasn't sure how long they were potent, but in that bottle full of pills there had to be enough that still worked. She was finally ready to sleep—a dreamless peaceful sleep that Brian wouldn't intrude on.
Wherever she woke—if there was an afterlife—she'd be free.
She took the bottle to one of the massage rooms and turned on soothing spa music and a burbling fountain. She lit all the candles on the long counter running the length of the wall.
Let the fucking house burn to the ground for all she cared. Not her problem.
She took a water bottle from the mini fridge and started to swallow the pills one by one. When the bottle was empty, she lay on the massage table, pulled the blanket over herself, and went to sleep for the last time.
It was well into the night when Lindsay got back to the house. He'd considered staying in the city, but he'd already bought more flowers for the spa. If he didn't get them into vases tonight, they wouldn't be as fresh or last as long.
Plants had been his one lasting love affair. His commitment to their proper care and feeding had been absolute.
He stopped in the kitchen for a cup of tea, but was distracted from that mission by the dirty plate and glass left sitting out. A long fat smear of chocolate frosting trailed halfway down the counter. It looked quite intentional.
Strange.
One of the new girls? Testing boundaries perhaps? None of them were allowed in the kitchen at all after it closed for the night, so that was already one rule broken—even before considering this one. He left the mess for someone else to discover and deal with, deciding against bothering with tea so late.
When he reached the spa, he laid the two large bouquets of flowers on the counter. He was about to empty one of the vases and put in fresh water but was stopped by music coming from one of the spa rooms.
Shannon never left the music on. She ran the spa like a pro and closed everything down in the evenings. As he got closer, he saw the door was open a few inches. A warm glow of light flickered inside.
She wouldn't leave candles burning. Maybe someone else...