“That’s why you dragged me in here? To threaten me into helping you?” Her expression tightens. I can tell she does things her way nowadays, but I’m here to change all that. “What if I don’t agree?”
“Then this fucked-up fairy tale ends badly for both of us, and the location of those bodies will never be revealed.”
She sucks in a harsh breath. “Judge Harris will be fascinated to hear about how you kidnapped me off the streets when I was sixteen and sold me into hell!”
There’s that fire again.
“I’m sure he’ll be even more fascinated to hear his public defender is a—”
“Stop!” She holds up her hand, her chest rising and falling to a crashing beat.
I see the moment my little rose breaks. The moment the suit of armor folds away and the thorns snap.
I told her I’d come for her.
She lost faith.
“Be strong and courageous,” I say, straightening in my seat. “Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you...”
“...he will not leave you or forsake you,” she finishes, quoting the last line of the scripture like it’s physically hurting her to do so. “Deuteronomy 31:6.” A whimper escapes her lips. Is she remembering that these were the last words I said to her? “You weren’t God then, Luca,” she croaks, “and you sure as hell aren’t now.”
“No, but I am your lord,” I snap suddenly, the skin on my wrists chafing as I fight the chains that keep us apart. I need to touch her. To hold her. To turn her nightmares into something stronger. “I meant what I said. I will never leave you or forsake you.”
“You died,” she repeats, her voice cracking again. “I saw the knife. The blood...” A tear finally breaks free and rolls down her cheek. “You died.”
I grit my teeth. Ten years later, and I can still feel the hot white pain as the blade sank through layers of flesh and muscle. The coppery smell of blood still fills my nose and floods my mouth, the memory of her name drowning on my tongue as she ran.
Toward freedom.
Away from me.
I died so she could live. I died to repent. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
“She’s the one, ain’t she, boy?”
“No, sir.”
But the eyes are the window to the soul. They don’t lie.
Even when I carried her limp body into that church of evil, she was mine. They could do what they wanted to her body, but her soul was mine. It filled the holes in my heart created when the evil was burned into me.
By a life of darkness. Born into rain and flooded by storm.
“I died,” I chuckle at her words. “To you, yes. Isn’t that what you wanted at our beginning?”
“No. Yes. I don’t—” Shaken, she not only brushes that chunk of hair out of her face, she bunches it in her hand and closes her eyes. “Why, Luca? Why did you come back?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, cara mia. It doesn’t suit you.”
Her eyes pop open. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I came back for you. I’m here...” Shaking my arms, I rattle the chains binding me as a warm trickle of blood drips toward my elbow. “Because of you.”
She shakes her head violently, barely holding it together. “You’re here because of what you’ve done. You know I’m the best in the state. I’m the only chance you have.”
I laugh. For her. For me. For this fucked-up situation. For the kids we were and the adults we’ve become. But mostly, I laugh for the nightmare we’ll never escape from. “What I’ve done. Tell me, Madigan Bailey. Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Madigan
One Month Later
“My only love sprung from my only hate.”
That’s what Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet.
I used to think that Luca and I were lovers like that: divided by circumstance, yet somehow connected by all our messy flaws and contradictions. He was the black-eyed boy, and I, his blonde captive. He knew only darkness and solitude. I knew crappy first dates, movie theaters, and broken curfews. He kidnapped me and tormented my young mind because they told him to, but somewhere between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, he loved me whole again. He conditioned me for my indoctrination into the Divine Disciples of God, the cult he’d been born into—the only thing he knew—but in the end, it was he who gave me the courage to resist it.
Hate.
I hate him for crashing back into my life like this.
Love.
Not us. Not anymore. We turned to ash the day he died.
Only he didn’t die, and now I’m back feeling the invisible pull between us whenever I step into that room in Broward County Jail.
I’d damn him to hell if I didn’t think he was there already.
I’ve been living a survivor’s purgatory ever since, but it’s been my existence to squander. It sounds perverse, but I welcome my lack of friends, my estranged family, and even all the shitty names my colleagues call me because they’re my choices. I’ve chosen to accept the way things are.
This is what Luca excels at: taking all my choices away from me. Once again, he’s twisted our fates together like poisonous vines. He knows I’d never let him willingly expose the horrors of my past, so I’m in the fight of my life to set him free.
Rubbing my eyes, I stifle a yawn.
“You’re the last in the office again tonight, Bailey.”
I glance up from the mess of crime scene photos scattered all over my desk. One of our associate defenders, Jackson King, snaps his laptop lid shut and rises to his feet. Inky darkness is seeping in through the slats in the blinds. The edges are tinted a hazy orange from the streetlamps below.
It’s eerie.
Unsettling.
My body gives a violent shiver. “Thanks, Jackson.”
There’s a pause, and I feel his eyes drilling into me. “Tough case?”
“You could say that.” I pick up another photograph. Right away, bile is rising up from the pit of my stomach in a trail of heat and horror. The corpse of Cyrus Molesey is grinning at me.
Like he did that night.
Stone tablet.
Agony.
All twelve of them...
“It will only hurt for a moment, Mary, and then all your sins will be absolved.”
Liar.
They were all goddamn liars.
Sliding his backpack onto his shoulder, Jackson pauses by my desk and cocks his head to see what I’m working on. He’s only a couple of years older than me, and as I watch, a lock of his hair glides like melted chocolate across his forehead. He’s handsome in an Edward Norton kind of a way—smart and understated.
Nice. Normal. Safe.
All the things I should have settled for.
All the things I never will.
“You sure I can’t help you with this case?” he offers again, wearing his inner conflict as easily as his jacket. “I know the state’s budget cuts don’t allow for it, but if you want I can always—”
“I’m good,” I say, cutting him off abruptly, and then cursing my rudeness. I can’t remember the last time anyone offered to help me around here, but this is my burden to bear.