Page 27 of Antihero (Tregam’s Fractured Souls #3)

Undeterred, Paige pulls herself off the car, and leans into my face.

“None. Of your. Business.” When she tries to turn and march off, I hold an arm out, barring her path.

She ducks under it, and I wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her back, anyway.

She thumps on my chest with her fists, curses at me, then spins on her heel to go off in the other direction.

Two steps, and I’ve caught up, picking her up in a bear hug.

“Just tell me,” I muffle against her fallen-back hood, grip tightening as she thrashes like a wild cat.

She slips down in my arms, bare skin becoming exposed against my forearms. She manages to twist and face me, finds her feet and throws her weight into my chest, so that I fall back against one of the cars, but I pull her with me and she lands against my chest. One of her hands, clawing its way inside my jacket as she tries to hurt me, slides further, unintentionally shoving it off my shoulder.

And just like that, her hoodie already pulled up to just beneath her breasts, my jacket half off, we’re undressing each other amid the shoving, the struggling and grunting.

I’m not gentle as I slam her down onto a shiny blue bonnet, tearing her pants off her legs in the brief moment that I step back. I’m shirtless, her hoodie is gone, the singlet underneath pushed up above her bare breasts. Her noises, somewhere between protest and visceral, only spurn me on.

“Fuck,” she grates out, then seems to remember she’s angry at me, and amends it to, “Fuck you.” But wraps her legs around my hips as she does.

“You’re argumentative this evening,” I grunt, finding myself, and bracing my feet to line my hips up with her.

“Because you’re such a giant…” Whatever she was about to call me chokes off as I shove inside her, silencing that and any protests as I thrust, hard, sliding her up the bonnet.

Her gasps echo around the garage, her head tips back and to the side with a long moan.

When I follow the tilt of her gaze, I only see our reflection in the mirror, separated by another, taller car.

I look down at her, humming a low laugh, and ask, “Do you like to watch yourself being fucked, Paige?”

Before she has time to answer, I lift her off the bonnet, leaving a suggestive smudge on its pristine surface, and pull her to the side of that car right next to the mirror wall.

Roughly turning her around, I push Paige forward so that her hands brace on the hood, and like that, with both of us facing the giant mirror, I shove my feet between hers.

I push her legs wider, revelling in the way my name leaves her lips in an excited gasp, and take her from behind.

When she’s close, I take a handful of her hair and lift her head.

Our eyes meet in the mirror. Her face twists in ecstasy, mouth open, throat long as her head arches back.

The primal movements between us become bigger and more needy, more violent.

I look at her face, and feel the surge of pleasure, the need for release.

Apparently, she’s not the only one who likes to watch.

Our mingled voices might very well have woken up the house by the time we’re both done, need meeting and undoing. But as Paige breathlessly straightens, letting me fall from her, and I slide her along to where we can both lean against the main body of the car, I don’t care.

I lean against her, her forehead on the top of my shoulder as she catches her breath. My legs feel weak as I rest a knee against the door. She might just drain me one day.

“Tell me,” I say with a heavy breath.

Her hands tighten incrementally on the sides of my shoulders, forehead rolling along my collarbone so that I think she’s shaking her head, denying me still.

But then she tells me, “He owns the strip clubs, the brothels in Tregam. All of them.” Another breath.

“Where the girls from the asylum went. Where some still are. Some he brings back here on Bunker night.”

I lull my head in a slow nod. “And he knows where they’ve come from?”

A humourless laugh. “He knows.”

“There’s nowhere left on the island for him to procure more girls?” I check.

Another slow shake. “No. Not since the orphanage burned.”

“It burned down before you could be sent to them,” I say.

She nods.

A pause. I don’t suggest that she was the one to burn down the orphanage.

“Now tell me why you’re upset.” She opens her mouth, probably to refute the suggestion, and I add, “I know it’s not just because I’m here.

Something else has you like this.” She doesn’t respond.

I press on a hunch. “You took documents from Pastryachi’s place.

What was in them that couldn’t be stored at the asylum? ”

Lips closing, the defiance comes back to her eyes. “I…”

“Won’t tell me?” I conclude.

“No.”

I sigh. “Tell me that one day you’ll speak to me about all of this. No more secrets.”

She blinks and wets her lips. “One day. If I’m alive, and you’re with me. I’ll tell you. Everything. As much as you want to hear.”

It doesn’t take a social genius, as I look into her eyes, to know that Paige is only saying that because she thinks that will never happen. Mostly, the her being alive part. I feel cold as I take understanding from this.

Nonetheless, her words are the best I can expect so far as guarantees of the future go, for tonight at least. And I’ll do everything in my power to keep her alive for that elusive future.

Somehow, I’ve gone from nearly killing her myself to protecting her. I frown, glancing at the posters. “You said all the lecherous ones were dead.”

“Lecherous in ways I can use. He doesn’t bother with any girls outside his clubs. Why would he? He’s got them practically on tap.” She lifts her head, meeting my eye, waiting for what I’ll do next.

I press my thumb to the middle of her chin. I should stop her, I know. But all I can think of are those girls, things taken from them that they never agreed to, mistreated, mutilated. Either sterilisation or lobotomy—what odds are those? What kind of world? Who ran it all?

Then finally, of Paige as one of them. Destined for some seedy strip club or worse before the untimely demise of the home and the end of their source of fresh meat.

If not for that, she would’ve been pushed into it for lack of other options.

Because what else is there for a girl who went from orphanage to asylum and then back?

And a man like the one who lives here, who happily took advantage of it all.

My brow softens. “You don’t need to keep so many secrets.”

She blinks up at me. “The world has known all of Needler’s secrets for years. Are you better for it?”

Fair point. I take a breath and press my forehead to hers.

I know what I’ll do next.

***

He comes down, whistling, sending a salute to the nude women on the wall as he spins the keys around his finger. A fat man, smelling of too much cologne as he passes me, unseeing.

He picks the BMW. Like we anticipated. It’s one of the three nearest the gate, and the only one with recent tyre tracks ahead of the wheels, the only one with a slight smudge on the doorhandle.

He throws open the door, noticing a speck on the roof and stopping briefly to shine it away with spit on his thumb before climbing into the driver’s seat. I stay close, just in case, creeping just out of sight.

The door closes. I wait.

It doesn’t take long.

The car rocks and jerks with his struggles, and I don’t need to look to see him thrashing in the driver’s seat, the cord around his throat pinning him back against the headrest, Paige behind it, holding the garrotte until his movements stop.

***

“You seem different of late. Brighter.”

I laugh, raising an eyebrow. “Are you calling me dim?”

Charlotte actually smiles. A small one, but still. She suggested taking our session outside today, since the sun is shining. We sit on a disused wooden bench that points off the end of the promontory towards Tregam; the asylum looming behind us.

“Have you found a purpose? Something to live for.”

I shrug. I feel easy today, and her questions don’t press anxiety into my heart like they usually do. Perhaps they haven’t been for a while. “I don’t know. It might not last.”

The truth is, I haven’t been able to wrap my head around the reality of Paige’s condition.

Her temporariness. My heart believes she’ll endure.

My head won’t see her as a sick girl. She just feels so…

vibrant. So alive. No matter what she tells me.

What will I do if she doesn’t endure? Can I take another loss?

Will I somehow be made responsible for that, too?

“The human mind can heal from many things,” Charlotte says, watching me, seeming to sense the depressing turn of my mind.

She’s good. She could’ve made herself rich on the mainland, catering to rich types who would put the wealth of Feston to shame.

But she doesn’t even serve Feston here. Just the asylum.

“It has to want to,” I point out.

“People find their reasons.” She takes a deep breath, the air fresh and crisp. “Let’s play a hypothetical.”

“Okay,” I say, only slightly wary. I came here to stop killing.

Not to heal, not really. But now… maybe I should give healing a chance.

Real healing, not distracting myself by chasing Paige all over the island.

Much as that has been something I needed.

She’s reminded me how to feel, how to want something for myself.

“Say you’re responsible for your sister’s death, as your guilt would have you believe. Would that be so bad?”

I choke out a laugh. “Would it be bad? ”

“Yes. Perhaps it was simply her time. Perhaps she was in pain.”

Was Cass in pain? Of a kind. But the way Charlotte suggests it… like she was on a deathbed, and I merely pulled a plug. No. I pulled a trigger .

“It wasn’t like that.”

“No?”