Page 65 of Collateral Claim

The answer to how I’ll sleep next to the creepy nursery tonight is: I won’t.

The sugar I consumed in the double chocolate cake, coupled with an irrational fear of dolls and ghosts from Endo’s past, who might want to murder me, fed my brain lavish ideas and fantasies.

At least ten times, I’ve pictured a doll climbing onto the kitchen counter and taking the knife Endo left me and then sneaking into my bedroom. The only thing that chases away that fear is the other thing I can’t stop thinking about: Donatella and her baby.

What happened to her baby?

Where is she?

Did she give up the baby? Or should I assume the worse?

Something terrible must’ve happened. Endo doesn’t seem like the type of human who would let go of his child. Or evenhis woman. And I doubt he would build a life with someone he didn’t want to build a life with, so he must’ve loved her.

Unless she was trapped here like me, and the story of how she peacefully passed away a few years ago is a lie. Still, where is the baby?

I hear a noise. It’s in the room. I freeze. Cannot. Move.

I listen. I’m sure it’s in the room with me.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Cold sweat washes over my body.

I hear a whoosh of a door opening and someone closing it. I dare a side glance at the bedroom door, but that hasn’t moved.

I don’t breathe.

The curtains sway. Light from the outside brightens my bedroom.

I shut my eyes and recite a prayer.

“Can’t sleep?” Endo asks.

I sit up in bed, my heart pounding.

He stands in front of the reading chair in the corner by the window. Casually, as if being here in the middle of the night is perfectly normal. As if he owns this space. Come to think of it, he does own this space. He can be here in the middle of the night because this is his house, and I’m his captive.

But damn him. Just because you can, it doesn’t always mean you should.

Also, he’s barefoot, in black silk pajama bottoms. His hair is mussed, as if he tried to sleep but couldn’t, so he came for a visit. I know he visits me at night, but I forgot about it when I ventured out tonight.

Good thing I didn’t try to run. He’d find me within minutes. I have to keep his nightly visits in mind for when I do escape.

I sigh and lie back down on the bed, scrubbing my face. “I ate cake, so the sugar is keeping me up.”

Endo mumbles something, and I prop up on my elbows just as he sits down in the chair.

What’s this man doing? “Make yourself comfortable,” I deadpan.

“Thank you. I can’t sleep either.”

“Try.”

Endo smiles. “I did, but a certain someone snooped around the house and kept me up past my bedtime.”

“It was you who was in the nursery, then.”

Moonlight shines over one side of his face, the other covered in darkness. When he smiles wider, he appears as villainous as I know him to be. He enjoyed scaring me. He really did.

“It was me.”