Page 19

18

PLAYING WITH FIRE

DIYA

M y ears rang.

“... connection to the recent murders.”

What did he just say?

Frowning, I shook my head, staring at Vincent with shock. He was glaring at Asher, his fists clenched, trying so hard not to give into his rage. There was no mistaking his intentions—he wouldn’t rest until Asher was in handcuffs, dragged through the streets, and hanged for his alleged crimes.

It made me remember the night Detective Knight had knocked on my door to take me in for questioning.

Even though I knew what he had on me would likely be circumstantial, I was scared. Helpless. I hadn’t been that powerless since Martha and Max.

That whole night and the next day was kind of a blur, until I walked out with Layne the next night, tired, sick to my stomach, worried. It was what made me run; it was what made me stop taking out the trash that still littered the streets of New York.

I hated it; I hated knowing the monsters still frolicked around while I was stuck in this prison I made for myself, but it was the price I had to pay for freedom.

“Wait, wha-what?” That wasn’t the intelligent response I wished I had. “That is…” I stammered, my eyes on Asher. He stood there, his shoulder relaxed, his expression a mix of delight and derision, his arms out, waiting for Vincent to handcuff him.

“Vincent, can we talk about this, please?” I asked, my voice desperate.

He didn’t look like the man I had gone on a date with. That man was full of charm and warmth. This one looked cold and unapproachable.

“You’re the one who said you won’t talk about your patients. You don’t have to, but I’ve got to do my job,” Vincent said, voice brusque.

“Why’s he a suspect? Breaking in is much easier than breaking out. Someone could have come in and killed Doctor T. That’s also possible, isn’t it?”

“We’ll find out soon enough. I’ve requested the CCTV footage from Nurse Becca.”

Oh, sweet Krishna!

The words hit me like a sledgehammer… My body tensed as I took an unsteady step back. Shit. I had massively fucked up this time.

If he saw the recording, he’d see me walking into Asher’s room at night. Of course, there was no camera inside the room, but there was one in the corridor.

If he found something, my entire career would come crashing down.

I couldn’t live without killing and a job. I’d go insane.

When I met Asher’s eyes, there was no fear in them.

“Will you give me a moment?” I asked, and Vincent shrugged, walking out of the room.

“Aren’t you… worried?” I asked.

“I’m not, but you look like someone just clocked you. What’s wrong?”

“The CCTV. I came to your room and…”

Asher waved a dismissive hand, his expression a mix of indifference and contempt. “This place is a dump,” he said with a shrug. “No one here gives a damn about how anything works. The cameras are outdated dinosaurs. I don’t think Sheriff Asswipe will get anything useful from the footage.” He leaned back, a smirk playing on his lips.

“What if they do work?”

Asher shook his head.“They don’t. I promise you’re safe.”

“Did you do something?” I asked, and he nodded.

“I did, just in case. I am good at hacking. Not hands, just computers.”

The hit of relief was so intense I slumped on the chair.

“When did you…”

“After you came to my room,” he said, handing me a bottle of water. “I knew Vince would come poking around sooner or later, and...” he trailed off, staring at me with a strange look in his eyes.

“I was so focused on you that I forgot everything else. I’m not usually this careless. I don’t leave evidence.”

But I almost did.

The flash of his grin was so brutally charming that my heart stumbled for a second. I wanted to grab him by his neck, slam him against the wall, and kiss him to show him how grateful I was.

It still surprised me to see him like this. Just a week ago, I would have laughed if someone had told me Asher knew how to smile like that.

“I’m glad you find me so fascinating that everything else just slipped your mind.”

“You’re enjoying this too much, Maddox.”

“Well, should I not? You bragged about being a professional,” Asher said.

“Shut up, just shut up.” I stood up, storming toward him.

“You were so smug, darling. This should teach you not to underestimate me. Doctor T was my second kill, but I have a plan, and I’ve prepared for it for eight years.”

The bastard was reveling in his twisted sense of superiority, savoring every moment of having the upper hand against me, and I was drinking his pride like a hungry vampire.

“Second?” I asked, taking a step back from him. If I stayed any closer, Vincent would find me either kissing Asher or killing him. “What do you mean?”

“The dead body I found after coming home? Well…”

Becca told me he had witnessed another murder five months ago, and that triggered a mental breakdown.

“You killed him?”

“Bingo.”

“Why?”

“He was the one who started this domino effect. He got Riley addicted to drugs.”

“Oh. How did—”

The door slammed open with a deafening crash, and Vincent stormed in, lunging toward Asher. Grabbing him by his shirt, Vincent shoved him onto the couch with such force that the old springs groaned under the impact.

“What the hell did you—” Vincent growled.

“Vincent, stop. You’re hurting him. STOP.”

With a curse, he punched Asher. Asher sat there, still as a statue, his eyes unchanged as he let Vincent punch him again.

“I know you did it, you piece of crap. You tampered with the CCTV,” Vincent spat. His hand raised… and then stopped. I could see how much it took him to stop punching Asher again.

“How could he have done anything? This place is ancient and the cameras don’t—” I started. Vincent cut me off with a shake of his head.

“I told you, Diya. You don’t know a damn thing about him. He’s freaking mad,” Vincent said, glaring at Asher. “You think you’re untouchable because you’ve locked yourself in this shithole? You’re sick, alright, but therapy can’t cure you. Just you wait, Asher. I’ll drag your sorry ass from this place straight to county jail if it’s the last thing I do.”

“I’m scared, Doctor Sharma,” Asher said, voice weak. “I-I can’t bre-breathe.” He clawed at his throat, looking like he’d faint any moment from the pressure.

“Please, sheriff, you should leave. You can’t assault him like this.”

“Oh, fuck it,” Vincent grumbled. “I’m done.” Kicking the chair aside, he strolled out without another look at either of us, before slamming the door closed.

“That wasn’t professional,” Asher said with a grin.

“He won’t back off now,” I whispered, staring at the door still rattling from the force. “I know exactly how it feels to be under constant scrutiny. It’s… horrible.”

“Oh, he can’t do shit. I’m not losing any sleep over Vincent,” Asher said. “Sit down, Diya. You’re shaking.”

I took a deep breath.

“You should. He won’t let you out of his sight after this. You won’t have the freedom to stalk, hunt, or kill. He’ll be breathing down your neck until you feel like you have nowhere to run. After a few days, you’ll feel him even when he’s not around. You’ll feel his eyes through the dark, constantly watching you, warning you. He’ll go wherever you go, he’ll not rest until you go crazy and…” I rubbed my face, my fingers trembling as the air around me grew scarce.

“Vincent is not Detective Knight, Diya,” Asher said, grabbing my hand in his. “Take a deep breath. You’re here, and he won’t come anywhere near you.” He cupped my throat with a hand, softly rubbing the side with a thumb.

“Vincent might not be Knight, but he can still make your life a living hell,” I said, pushing his hand away from my throat. “How will you kill anyone with Vincent on your tail? He won’t let this go. He’ll station someone at the main gate just to keep an eye on you, and…”

“I don’t use the main gate, and I know every nook and cranny of this town. I was born here,” Asher said, softly tapping a finger against my palm.

“So was Vincent. He was your friend, and he knows how you think.”

“Exactly, and that’s why he’ll never catch me.” He smiled. “I have you now. My perfect alibi,” he said, rubbing his jaw with a wince. “Shit, that hurts like hell.”

I pulled my hand away, frowning at the darkening bruise on his jaw.

“Why does he hate you so much?” I asked. “You said you were friends. What happened?” I rubbed his jaw, and he flinched back. “Sorry. Wait.” I went to my drawer and grabbed the first aid kit.

He closed his eyes when I applied the ointment to the bruise.

“Riley was so close to her parents. They died when she was in high school. She started acting out, taking drugs, and he broke up with her the moment he realized she’d spoil his golden boy reputation.” Asher rubbed his forehead. “She needed him after her parents’ death, but he gave up. And I tried, but she needed him.” Asher wiped his face.“It was too much for me after a while and… I left too. I… we killed her.”

“I’m sorry.” I took his hand. He gave me a smile that was broken around the edges, and I wanted so badly to fix the broken parts of him.

“Just be careful, okay?”

“Are you scared for me, Diya Sharma?” he whispered, looking at me like he wanted me to care.

“Fuck no.”

“You’re lying. You are scared. For me, for my safety. These lines on your forehead… Why?” He ran his fingers, tracing my eyebrows.

“Because I’ve come this close to fucking you after months of dreaming about you, and I’d rather you not end up in jail before that happens,” I said with a grin, and he let out a sharp laugh.

“You can always arrange for a conjugal visit.” His voice was suggestive. “Or… we can make it happen right here, right now.” He hooked a finger into the neck of my sweater and tugged until my nose was pressed against his chin.

“Fuck you, Maddox,” I said. “Who the hell are you and what have you done with the grumpy one?”

He shrugged as he stood up. “I should probably go, right? Everyone will be wondering about all of this.”

“You should, and don’t go out tonight. Just stay in.” He didn’t answer. “Come on. Just for a few days.”

“Hmm…” he hummed.

“I’ll find more information on Doctor T and Hannigan.” He nodded, and I scoffed. “You have no intention of staying inside, do you?”

“I’ll stay inside.” He gave me a wave, turned and left, leaving me staring at his back, wondering what the fuck I had gotten myself into.

I took a look at the clock, and grabbed my coat. I had a session in ten minutes. I quickly picked the upended chair back up and sat down, fingering the diary, waiting for Millie to come in.

“Hi, Millie. How are you feeling today?” I asked when she came in with Shelly.

She gave me a nod, clutching the sketchbook closer to her chest.

“What have you got there? A new picture? I saw you gave Asher a picture,” I said with a smile as she sat down. “It was beautiful.” Haunting.

She nodded again, her smile shy but proud.

“Nothing for me?” I said. She stiffened before her eyes went to her sketchbook. She hesitated, tapping her fingers against the book. “It’s okay. You don’t have to give me anything.”

“I want to,” she said, leafing through the pages before she stopped. Her eyes narrowed, and she gasped before she ripped it off and handed it to me. “I don’t… this…” Her fingers trembled as I took the picture from her.

Sweat trailed down the side of her cheeks.

“This…”

“Where’s this place, Millie?” I stared at the thick woods.

“Deep in the woods where nobody goes…” she bit her tongue. “Dark. You can’t see. Everything… so dark. You can’t run.”

“Did you have a nightmare, Millie?”

She nodded. “Nightmare.”

I studied the picture with a frown. Dark and disturbing, with violent black and gray lines. There was a faceless girl in the middle of it all. Vines, black and gnarled, twisted up her body in a relentless grip. Some of them cut through her flesh, and came out of her chest, leaning toward the sky, as if begging for release.

“Do you want to talk about the nightmares?” I asked. She hated talking about them, but sometimes, you had to rip open the band-aid to heal. “You don’t have to be scared. I’ll be right there with you.”

“In my nightmares? You’ll save me?”

My heart clenched.

She closed her eyes, a soft whimper leaving her lips.

“I don’t want to be there.”

“No? Okay, it’s okay. You’re okay. We don’t have to. What did you eat today for lunch?”

She scratched her cheeks, her lips trembling. “Salad,” she whispered. “I keep running. There’s nowhere to go. Everything… is dark.” She gripped her pencil tighter until it snapped. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

She closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “Someone’s following me. It’s so dark… and cold. I see trees with hands and claws. They want my blood.” She bit her nail, shaking her head. “No, my… my feet hurt, and I—he won’t stop following. I don’t run, no… no use. He catches me. He always catches me.”

She was only sixteen when she came to Hollowhaven.

“I’m sorry, but this time he won’t catch you, Millie. You can escape.”

“You-you don’t understand. You-you don’t. No.” She slapped her head. Again and again. “Not in here. No. He is… he chases me until...” Her fingers shook as she waved her hands in the air. “Let go, let go.”

“You’re fine. Look ahead. Do you see me? I’m waiting for you. Let’s wake up together. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I promise.”

“Let-let go. I-I won’t talk. Le-let go. I can’t run anymore.” She shuddered. “I CAN’T RUN.” She clawed at her closed eyes as if it would somehow stop the nightmare.

“Listen to me, Millie. Hold my hand, and I’ll get you out of that place. You trust me, right? I’ll keep you safe.”

She looked so young right now… so fragile. Not thirty-two. Like she was still sixteen.

Maybe she never grew out of it.

I gently touched her shoulder, making sure not to startle her, and her eyes fluttered open. The vacant look she gave me made me want to hunt down the man who did this to her, and hang him by his own fucking entrails.

“Millie? Millie. You’re with me. Look. You’re safe.”

She blinked, touching her cheeks wet with tears. She looked confused, staring at her fingers. “Doctor Sharma.”

“Millie,” I said, relieved she was back, and angry he was still out there somewhere, living, while she died in nightmares.

Millie’s kidnapper kept her locked up for three days—the whole town searched for her and didn’t find her. After three days, she somehow escaped, and walked all the way home, her body beaten, and when she finally reached home, her mind broke too.

Millie retreated into a prison she made to protect herself from the horrible memories. She never came out of it.

The PTSD after the incident erased parts of her memory, but she was left with shadows of the horror she couldn’t fully remember, and could never fully escape.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine, D octor Sharma.”

She was never fine. She’d never be fine.

She was me, and we were all her at some point in our lives.

I wanted to kill him. Not quickly. No. I wanted to hurt him, inch by inch, savoring his suffering. I wanted him to feel her pain, her suffering. And yet, it would never be enough. He’d never understand what it was like to have your soul torn apart while the world carried on, indifferent to your pain.

It was unfair, but fairness was only a myth.

The world had always been stacked against women. Men with feeble egos had spent millennia ensuring we were kept in a cage we barely fit into, to protect their toxic souls, their own insecurities.

Because they believed their dicks made them strong, made them powerful.

But they were never really strong, and their power hinged on our silence, our unwillingness to fight back.

I learned the truth about how truly helpless men were the moment Layne, Trina and I said, Fuck it.

When we fought back, they all cried before they died in the end.

Our foster father snuck into our rooms some nights. He’d run his hands over us as we pretended to sleep. He knew we weren’t asleep, but why would he care?

And, in the morning, our foster mother would tell us it was our fault as she fed us breakfast.

After months of enduring it, I knew we had to stop being afraid, stop begging for a moment of kindness, of relief, a moment of sleep that wasn’t haunted.

We knew it wouldn’t come unless we fought back.

“Kill him,” I whispered. “We must kill him.”

Trina was crying. She was still too young, and we had to protect her.

“If we don’t… he’d do the same to her,” I said to Layne.

Layne nodded, her eyes determined, and in that moment, she looked older. We all looked older.

I had always been very interested in plants—my birth mother loved growing flowers in our garden and used to tell me which ones to avoid.

‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’ She’d smile. ‘But they are poison, darling. Don’t play with them.’

Oh, I wanted to play with them so bad.

By thirteen, I could name every single poisonous plant and flower.

That night, we went to his room. We didn’t give him the chance to come to ours.

I still remember how his face looked. Pale. Stricken. Sweating like a pig.

“What are you—” he slurred. The poison I had added to his food was already working.

This man was supposed to protect us. Instead, he broke us, little by little, until we were nothing but empty shells of the girls we once were.

That night, we became something else.

We became weapons. We became power. We became his hell.

“We’re taking our power back. It comes… with your death.”

“Never. I’ll hurt you for…”

He was massive, but the dose of poison in his blood made him weak, vulnerable, and for once, powerless.

I could have added the entire dose into his food and killed him quietly—but I wanted to, I needed to, look him in the eyes as he died. I needed to feel his last breath.

My hands gripped his shoulders while Layne pried his jaw open. He fought us—tried to throw us off, cursing at us, telling us we would never be free of him.

But he underestimated us, as men like him often did.

Trina tilted the bottle of poison between his lips… the poison I’d collected from the Aconitum. He gagged, his eyes wide with terror as realization dawned.

He started to cry then. Great, heaving sobs that shook his entire body. He begged, pleaded—promising things he’d never deliver, spouting apologies he didn’t mean.

I didn’t feel sorry for him. He deserved to cry, to beg, just as Layne and I had cried and begged for mercy.

“Pathetic.” I laughed as Layne punched him in the stomach.

“You’ll not get away with…” He gasped, his fingers clawing against his throat.

“Oh, but we will. When the cops come, they’ll find poison in your food, and Martha will be dead beside you. She’ll write a letter telling the world what a monster you are, what you did to us. She killed you because she wanted to save her girls. Us. Martha has got to at least do that for us.”

“Please, save me, Diya.”

“Well, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.” I shrugged.

That night, I learned something unforgettable.

Men like him only survived because they convinced us that we were powerless from when we were young. They would manipulate, gaslight, and abuse because that was the only way they could maintain the illusion of control. But the moment a woman understood her true strength, it’d be over.

The power dynamic would shift, and they would crumble.

Oh, how gloriously he crumbled.

“Adieu then, bastard. You’ll go straight to hell.”

For once, the fear wasn’t ours. It was his.

And it tasted like freedom.

It was freedom.

And we’d never go back into the cages.

I survived what happened to me with my mind intact, but I wasn’t any different from Millie—no different from a million other girls just like me.

Every time I thought I’d finally outrun my past, it would catch up to me in my nightmares.

My foster father would leer at me, his skin slick with sweat, his hands gripping my hair. I’d wake up drenched in the sickening realization that no matter how fast I ran, I’d never escape him.

When the session was over, I sat with the picture Millie gave me, my heart breaking into a million pieces.

For Millie.

For Layne and Trina.

For Riley.

For myself.

For every girl whose inner child was killed too soon. For every girl who had to trade tea parties and fairy tales for fighting the real wolves. For those who had to learn too young that good men were rare, that most men were opportunists.

For all the girls who had been forced to carry burdens far too heavy for their small shoulders.

This world was cruel to us, and the only way to take some of our power back, to take back control… was to kill the monsters, bury them in their own blood, and dance on their graves.

To choose violence.

I wiped my cheeks.