Chapter Twenty-Seven
When I step out of the bed and breakfast, Damon is leaning against one of the black SUVs. There’s something incongruous about the sharp cut of his suit and the wide-open sky. About the shiny glint of metal set against a brownish rural expanse.
His expression doesn’t change as I come outside and approach him.
I’m wearing one of my old well-washed pair of jeans and a Smith College shirt this morning. I wish I had cargo pants like the mercenaries. Or at least fuck-you boots like Hiro wears. Instead I’ve got faded sneakers that are coming apart at the seams.
“You waited for me,” I say, unable to hide my surprise.
Without answering he steps away from the vehicle and holds the door open.
I climb into the passenger seat, marveling at the chivalry. It’s a far cry from mocking me from the throne of a sex party. Then again maybe it’s not so different. Damon has always been a rare combination of refined depravity.
He sits in the driver seat, pulling out of the dirt driveway in a smooth motion. I realize with a start that I’ve never seen him drive. Partly that’s because I’ve gone to see him at the Den. Even when we leave Damon has drivers. He has security. He has house cleaners and staff, the way only rich people do.
No cook, though. That part he does himself, and I very much missed his cooking as I ate the oversweet muffins and stale coffee served in the floral dining room this morning.
“How long is the drive?” I ask as the road levels out to a single lane each way.
“Two hours and twelve minutes.”
That’s very exact. “Have you been here before?”
“No, but I’ve seen the schematics.”
“Oh. Can I see them?”
He gives me a sideways look. “They’re in the back.”
I rummage through a black duffel bag before finding a roll of yellow paper with thick and thin lines. Wharton County Prison. My throat tightens. “I thought you said this was an asylum.”
“It was decommissioned as a prison a long time ago. A private medical firm converted it to a mental institution for high-risk patients about five years ago.”
The schematics show a large decagon, a shape with ten sides, built into a forest. The closest thing for miles is a small national park. I wonder how many hikers know what’s nearby? Cells are marked off along each side of the polygon. At the center there’s a hexagonal room marked Security Headquarters.
“Why was it decommissioned?” I ask, wondering if anyone ever escaped.
“The Quakers designed the prison to punish its inmates, basically creating solitary confinement for each of them. Unfortunately their idea of religious penance literally made men crazy.”
I suck in a breath, imagining staring at the wall every single day. Alone. “Did they renovate it when they turned it into a mental institute?”
“Possibly, but this is the last floor plan we can find.”
Indignance rises in my throat. “It was considered too cruel and unusual for criminals. How could they keep patients here? This is supposed to be a place that helps people.”
Agitation becomes a physical thing, my heart jolting and batting against my ribcage, nerves pinging around inside me. Hearing about this hospital only makes it worse. Only makes it real.
His profile looks severe. “Private institutions aren’t subject to the same oversight that government-run prisons have. And with the amount of money this place charges, people aren’t likely to complain.”
My eyebrows press together. “What does that have to do with it?
He glances at me, dark humor lighting his black eyes. “Do you think celebrities don’t have a crazy uncle? Or that the top politicians never had anyone in their bloodline go insane? These people need to disappear. And death—well, that’s far too public.”
Shock washes over me like ice water. “You’re saying these people are being held against their will.”
“Aren’t all permanent residents of a mental hospital there against their will?”
“This is different.”
“I’m not sure whether these people are a danger to themselves or to society. I’m not sure whether they’d walk out the door if it wasn’t locked. What I do know is that Gabriel Miller paid a great deal of money with the assurance that my father would never have access to personnel.”
“So what happened?”
“What happened is that it’s impossible to guarantee that. Someone has to bring food. Someone has to administer medicine and clean his cell.” His voice turns bitter. “And there are other inmates. Someone who thinks she’s just like him, someone who has no idea she’s a mouse living in a lion’s den.”
“Maybe she did know,” I say softly. “Maybe she didn’t have a choice.”
The way I didn’t have a choice when I worked at the diner for pennies. When I was forced to bring Jonathan Scott a piece of pie, even knowing that I was serving a predator.
“A lot of good that did her,” Damon mutters.
I stare at him, realizing he’s talking about someone specific. “Did you know one of the inmates?”
He glances at me, eyes widening in a brief and unlikely moment of shock. Then he turns back to the road, the moment over—or maybe it never happened. “Not here.”
A wooden sign battered by decades of storms and neglect. Weeds coming up around it. I can see the picture clearly in my mind, the place where Jonathan Scott took me.
The place where his son rescued me.
“Tanglewood Mental Hospital,” I say, a chill running through me.
“Yes.” The word is hard. Almost a physical blow.
The more he pushes me away, the more I’m sure that he’s where I need to go. That night is a blur to me, which is a small relief. I remember some parts clearly. I remember Jonathan telling me that he raised Damon in that terrible building, abandoned and dark and littered with torture devices they once thought might actually help.
Had Damon had a friend there? Had there been some young nurse that he was friends with? The thoughts send a course of jealousy through me, which is wrong for so many reasons. Not the least of which Damon is almost ten years older than me. He would have naturally been with another woman before I was even an appropriate age for him.
And wrong because I have no claim on this man. If he was able to find any solace in a horrifying situation, that’s a good thing.
He shakes his head once, sharp. “There was no one.”
The words strike me in the soft flesh of my heart. No one. “Then who—”
“My mother.”
A knot forms in my throat. “You never told me about her.”
“I never tell anyone about her.”
I reach across the console for his hand and squeeze. I’m convinced he’s going to pull away. Probably send me a scathing look for daring to touch him without permission, but he does something I don’t expect. He squeezes back.
“She had schizophrenia,” he says softly. “At least that’s my best guess according to the records from the doctors. They had no idea what to do with her at the time. Mostly they just locked her up and tried every kind of barbaric treatment they could come up with.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“Sometimes I think, can you even blame her for falling for Jonathan Scott? Her family had abandoned her. The doctors basically tortured her. He would have been the only man to show her any kindness.”
“God. I’m sorry.”
“And other times I think, maybe my father actually loved her back. They were both fucked up, both trapped. The asylum didn’t want it known that they had let a patient get pregnant, especially one who was sixteen, so they kept it quiet. Had them married in secret as if that could erase the fact that she couldn’t consent.”
“How old was your father?”
“Twenty five.”
About the same age difference between Damon and me. What a sad way for him to come into the world. My eyebrows press together. “Then what happened to you?”
“I stayed there,” he says simply.
“A child. In an asylum. With actual patients.”
He flashes me that signature smile, and I realize how much pain it hides. “Not exactly an idyllic childhood. They didn’t actually treat me that badly, even though I think all the doctors assumed I would be batshit insane.”
“That’s terrible,” I whisper.
God, no wonder he wouldn’t send anyone else into the asylum to die there. And no wonder he wouldn’t agree to blasting it to pieces, with the innocent patients inside. Patients like his mother. The only option was for him to come himself.
“I don’t have very many memories. Running down the hallway. Sleeping in the same room as my mother. She would sing songs at night, but during the day her condition got worse. She wouldn’t stop screaming. Wouldn’t stop fighting.”
We pull onto a paved road. A sign that’s clearly new and crisp proclaims that this is private property, no trespassers, violators will be prosecuted. We must be close. “What happened?”
“They tried this new treatment. All of the inmates got daily exercise in the pool. They thought her wildness was a choice, that they could punish her out of it.” He gives a laugh hoarse with grief. “They would hold her under longer and longer. Until she finally drowned.”
My eyes close in pain, but not before I see the trees lined up in a neat row on either side of the road. We’re about to go inside a building almost everyone would try to escape. And our only goal is to kill someone. Not just someone. One person in particular.
“That’s when my father really snapped. News of her death came out in the press, and the place was shut down. Maybe we could have had a normal life, but he completely lost it after that. He believed that everyone was out to get him. That we would only survive by fighting, by stealing. By killing. And the worst part is, I understood. Even that young I knew that my mother was gone, and I knew exactly why. God, I understood him back then. What’s sick is I understand it now.”