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I take several steps back. He moves toward me so fast to close the distance that I just keep backing up until I hit a wall. I look up to see the sword hanging right over me.
He seems oblivious to the weapon right above us and cages me with his hands.
“Maddie, what did you just say?” His voice is hard and dark. Deadly.
“I-I don’t know.” And I don’t. I’m racking my brain trying to figure out what I could have said to set him off, and I know how deeply in trouble I am with this man. If I had the slightest thought that somehow I might be safe, that he might not hurt me... that hope is gone now.
“Weird.” He practically growls the word at me.
“I said this was weird! I’m scared, Aidan. I didn’t call you weird.”
“You did. Hundreds of times when we were kids.”
He’s right. I can’t even pretend I didn’t.
“What did you expect? You followed me around all the time. That’s not normal behavior!”
He takes a long slow breath as though he’s trying to hold back violence. He is so unhinged. I want to scream at him, but I’m too scared to do anything but cower. The tears flow down my cheeks, and I’m trying to keep my crying quiet, but there’s no point in hiding, he sees them, and I can see he’s disgusted by them.
Aidan turns away from me. “Get in the bed.” He points imperiously at it as though I don’t know what the fuck a bed is and couldn’t figure it out without his direction. Must be my dumb blonde genes.
I don’t argue. I get in and pull the covers over me.
He gets in on his side and I flinch when I think he’s moving toward me, but he’s only turning off the lamp. The only light in the room now is from the dying fire in the fireplace.
“Please, don’t hurt me.” I hate myself for how weak I sound right now, but even a grown man wouldn’t have much of a chance against this guy. He’s just got too much power. Too many resources. Too many people who will kill for him without question. To be so physically strong on top of it is just too much.
“I’m not going to touch you. I’m going to sleep. I’ll figure out what to do with you in the morning.”
He turns away from me.
Oh God, what does that mean? Is he going to kill me? Let me go? Move me to my own room and just keep me like some pet? I wonder how thin these walls are. Did one of his guards hear him raise his voice to me just now?
I take several slow shaky breaths trying to determine what I’ll do and how I can get out of this alive. I’ve always been afraid of Aidan Stryker. He may not be weird anymore, but right now he’s the most dangerous he’s ever been.
Fourteen
Aidan
The wedding night.
* * *
Part of me knows I’m asleep. It’s an awareness just at the edge of everything, but I keep forgetting and falling back into the illusion so I can’t control it or wake myself up. I keep repeating Father Rossi’s murder at the aquarium over and over. And each time I do the satisfying thing—the necessary thing so that I can remind myself that it is truly done.
I cut up the body. I leave the wedding reception… just drive off and dispose of it myself. I pretend it wasn’t my wedding day to the woman I’ve been obsessed with since I could barely write my name in shaky block letters.
Suddenly Maddie doesn’t exist in my reality at all… the wedding is forgotten, she is forgotten in the need to complete the ritual. I go home, I strip and burn my clothes. I shower. I go to the secret room. I put on fresh clothes. I mark out his face with the red marker. I mark out his name. I rewrite this obsessively over and over in my mind because I can’t accept this change in the routine. I think I might completely break down over the fact that I can’t confess this murder to Father Rossi. Of course he knows I did it, he was there, but I can’t say the words, the rote words I didn’t realize until now how much I need to say for it to feel… complete. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I cannot be absolved by him.
I need to confess. I need to get this out of me. I need to claw it out of my skin before it squirms deeper into my soul, before it possesses me and erases me, leaving only a hollow shell in its place.
Why didn’t I leave Father Rossi until last? Brian and Mina handling cleanup was the only way to do it. It was the smart way. It gave me an alibi because after all, I was at my own wedding. No one would imagine that I would have time to do everything in that short window of time I was away. And no one could imagine I would have an actual reason to kill the priest who officiated my wedding only hours before.
Maybe no one but Maddie even realized I was gone. And she was probably happy about it.
The dream finally changes, breaking the cycle, revealing the truth of what actually took place. As soon as I’d changed back into my original clothes and turned the kill site over to Brian and Mina, I could think of nothing but how my routine broke. The rest of the party went by in a blur. The only thing I fully remember was removing the jackass who wanted me to smash cake in Maddie’s face like one of those piece-of-shit losers who obviously hates the woman he’s marrying… resents her because he knows she’s so much better than him.
I know Maddie is better than me, but she is the only good thing. I would be a fool to resent the sun.