London

The first prison I ever saw was in the basement of my family home.

My father had turned the belly of our house into a hell. A cell where he kept the girls he’d stolen—where he tortured them. Until they were of no more use, then they’d stay down in that dungeon, starving in the pitch-black, until he ended their life.

He buried them under my mother’s garden.

She was dead, he said to me when I asked him why…how he could do it. A dead woman doesn’t care and neither should we, was his simple reply.

The first girl I found by accident. The anniversary of my mother’s death meant sadness. I wanted to cheer up her neglected flowers. My father was outraged when I showed him the decayed body…that’s how I knew. It wasn’t the rational response a person—a cop—should have when one discovers a corpse in their backyard.

And then I remember the shiny glint of the key. That damn key that always hung around his neck. It all rushed together, a crash of elements around my life that I never looked at too closely, but that suddenly unmasked a very ugly, malevolent picture.

The basement.

My mind leapt from detail to detail, stringing together connections, and I understood why I was banned from his private sanctuary. I suddenly knew what was down there.

For three months, I listened. In the still of the night I crept through the house, planted my ear to the floorboards, afraid to hear what my mind wouldn’t allow me to believe.

The faintest cry tore up through the ground and gripped my soul.

There was another girl down there.

I close my eyes now, just for a moment to center myself. The air is stuffy and humid in this part of the courthouse as the officer leads me to the cells, to where Grayson is being kept under heavy guard and surveillance.

“Please check your purse and any personal belongings,” the officer instructs, setting a plastic container near. “Then walk through.”

I unload my items and then step through the metal detector. I’m cleared and instructed to follow a short hallway to the last cell on the right.

I walk the length of the hall toward Grayson the same way I walked down those steps all those years ago. My heart constricted. My pulse firing shots through my blood.

I’m not allowed access to him; can only talk to him through the bars. That same cold iron that filled my father’s basement.

“You weren’t there today.”

I stuff my hands into my jacket pockets. “No.” That’s a lie. I stood outside the courtroom doors, my back pressed to the brick as I listened to the trial unfold. But Grayson already knows I’m a liar.

He stares at me from the other side of the cell, those watchful eyes sussing out the truth. “My lawyer thinks I can beat the capital punishment wrap.”

I suck in a breath. “Are you truly afraid to die?”

The corner of his mouth kicks up. “Doesn’t everybody fear death?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I’m no longer on the clock, doc.”

I stay silent and wait him out. There should be a pressing urgency to this discussion, as we’re running out of time. But there’s a strange calmness surrounding us.

“I don’t fear death,” he finally says. “Not in the way most people do. I was of the mindset that once they killed me, my life, my purpose…it would be done. Finished. There’s nothing to fear in that. I almost welcomed it, the chance to rest the relentless compulsions.” His gaze follows me, predatory and invasive. “And then there was you.”

“I fail to see how I have anything at all to do with it.”

He cocks his head. “You can’t fear losing what you never knew existed. You changed everything, London. Now I can’t simply cease—because I want you too badly. I want what we could mean together.”

“That’s delusional. Even if you live—”

“If?”

I swallow. “Grayson, we’ll never be together. You’re a serial killer behind bars. For life.” The echo of my voice carries, reflecting the truth of that statement back to me. “Besides, as I’ve stated before, you’re experiencing transference. Your feelings for me aren’t real.”

“Because I’m incapable of feeling.”

“Yes. You’re a manipulator. You manipulate emotions, and you’re confusing the two.”

He bounds off the cot. “Disempathetic,” he pronounces slowly. “I’ve done my research. Why didn’t you cite it in your evaluation? Why haven’t you mentioned it once when it’s fucking clear as crystal?”

I mock laugh. “Disempathetic type is a myth. It’s the dream of wives and girlfriends of psychopaths everywhere—a way to cope. Convincing themselves that the men they love actually love them in return.”

His face hardens. “Admit that it’s possible for me.”

“I will not ever.”

His stare becomes calculated as he watches my features. Reading on my face what I won’t voice. “Then what about you, Dr. Noble? If you feel nothing for me, why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” I admit.

But then that’s another lie.

His crooked smile reveals that wicked dimple in his cheek. “I do. You’ve come to find out if I’m going to tell the world your secret.”

I wet my lips. “I’m tired of this dance, Grayson.”

He moves closer, places his hands on the bars. “Tell me the truth of what happened, and no one will ever know.”

I can feel his excitement. The way his pale gaze shines with anticipation. He’s eager to witness me relive the past, to experience my kill through me.

“How did you find out?” he asks.

I press my hand to my forehead, squeeze my eyes closed, mentally willing the pain in my head away. “I’d be a fool to trust you.”

“But that’s part of therapy,” he says. “Trust. Patient and doctor. Trusting each other.”

A weak laugh falls from my lips. The details are insignificant. I recite them off like I’m reading from a grocery list. Removing any trace of emotion from my voice that he can glean pleasure from.

“I went into the basement and there was a girl,” I say. “She was my age, too dehydrated to cry, trembling and covered in angry, red lashes, her skin blistered and bruised.” I look up at him, embracing the memory. “She was beautiful.”

“I tried to set her free,” I whisper. “I knew it was the right thing to do. But I didn’t have the key. I never thought of calling the police, or running to a neighbor…”

“Because your father was the sheriff,” he provides.

“That, and I didn’t want anyone to know. No one would’ve believed me, anyway. Probably.” I shake my head. “I didn’t really believe it until I saw her. By then, it was too late to go back.”

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 hope 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.