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“He ordered me to my room to get changed and I… I couldn’t… I’d been putting up nails to hang pictures and the hammer was in there, and—”

“You don’t have to say the rest unless you want to.”

I nod, gulping in a breath. “He was holding Mum’s arm hard enough to bruise, lecturing her in the voice he always used when he was correcting us. That was his word for it. And I couldn’t stand it, not again. Not when we’d tried so hard and gave up so much.” I clamp my lips together, gathering strength. “He was calm, the way he always got before he really hurt me. I hit him. A lot. I killed him.”

My mind goes slack with horror. It’s the first time I’ve said it aloud and I can never take those words back.

“Then we… neither of us knew what to do. We dragged him into the garage, but we couldn’t really lift him. I had to string ropes through pulleys on the garage beams to get him into the freezer. Mum went out to move his car and grab a pack of cigarettes. An hour later, she sent a text telling me she needed time to think. A few days.” The part that still hurts most of all. “She never came back. I later found she’d taken most of her stuff and I hadn’t noticed. She still won’t answer my calls or texts.”

Kincaid rests his forehead against mine. “You’re okay now. You’re safe.”

“I don’t deserve to be safe. I murdered him.”

“You spared him far worse.”

I stare, not understanding.

“Freckles, if that man were still alive today, I would hunt him down and torture him to death so slowly, a few bangs on the head would be a treat in comparison.”

A tear rolls down my cheek and he gently wipes it away.

“You spared him days of agony, and I can assure you, if anyone even thinks of hurting you like that again, they won’t be as lucky.”

The dam breaks. All the grief of the last few months comes spilling out, reducing me to a soggy mess against Kincaid’s chest. Even when he must feel more like a tissue than a human being, he doesn’t pull away.

There’s more I should tell him. About my attempts to get the mess sorted, the man I contacted, the one I asked to kill Kincaid. Better to be upfront now than explain later. And he deserves an explanation for why I pawned the beautiful bracelet.

But the prospect is too complicated. Too many words for my tired brain to string together.

Instead, I fall silent, and Kincaid holds me tight, rocking me until the spent secret drains of all its poison, and I finally fall asleep.

CHAPTERTHIRTY

KINCAID

A few hoursbefore dawn I untangle myself from Francesca’s sleeping embrace and dress, leaving a note on the bedside table. After slipping quietly from the room, I sneak down to the basement garage.

The drive is easy this time of night and I soon pull into her driveway, taking a torch from the glove compartment with me when I enter her house.

I stop just inside the doorway, head tilted, alert for any sound.

There’s nothing. Even the active mice must have had enough of the day and gone to sleep.

Torchlight turns the garage into a horror movie set, full of shadows and dark spaces. I prop it on a shelf opposite, directing the beam at the freezer, then pile the paint cans, plywood, and bricks to the side, opening the lid.

A man fills the space, limbs bent to fit, ice flowers blossoming on his exposed skin and crystallising in his eyes, so he stares at the world through thick petals of frost.

Blood is frozen in gory patterns on his head and shirt, the caved in appearance of his skull showing the blows that Francesca inflicted.

I grab the flashlight from the shelf and shine the beam at the ceiling, finding the pulleys she must have used to lift his weight into the freezer. Her mother had likely gone by then, leaving on an errand she never intended to complete.

My uncle has the facilities to dispose of this man. He’ll be defrosted enough by tomorrow evening to bend him into my trunk and drive to the abattoir, disposing of the body without a trace.

All I need to do is ask his permission and pay the consequences.

Any job he demands in payment will be worth the price.

Returning to the freezer, the light picks out another pattern. Deep scratches mar the inside lid where fingernails gouged the lining. The man wasn’t dead when he went in there, no matter what Francesca initially believed.