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Her parents briefly pause their conversation to look at her, then start talking amongst themselves about the fucking décor of all things.

“Helene, you’ve outdone yourself with this room since the last time I was here,” Mrs. Leroux says, sipping from her wine glass and examining the literal death nailed to the walls.

My girl twists with more energy than she’s had previously, so I let her go to cause damage to her monsters. She runs before her feet are even touching the ground and I smile when she pulls her arm back, fingers tucked into a fist, and firmly connects with her father’s jaw. That’s my fucking wife.

She’s perfect.

Her father isn’t though. He’s a prick who raises his fucking hand towards my wife. I grab the back of her hoodie to pull her away from his hand. My voice comes out as steel as I push her behind me to make sure she’s out of harm’s way. “Put your hand down, Harkin.”

Helene decides to be useful as she stands beside me, giving her own order. “You are in my home. Do not forget your place.”

She must be suffering from some psychosis that makes her a loyal whatever the fuck she is.

I don’t know if she’s my grandmother, my biological mother, or some creep that’s lying to me.

Lennox will be able to tell me the truth, but my head hurts as I try to work out if he would be my uncle or my brother.

So I don’t focus on it. I don’t even allow it to occupy space in my mind; instead my mental faculties are honed on Harkin as his face turns red and he slowly lowers his fucking hand. The weak little cunt was going to slap Delilah when she punched him. Pathetic fuck.

One day I’ll walk with her, hand in hand, directly to her father and she can take out every bit of pain he caused her.

Today is not that day. She crumbles as her grandparents enter the room, flattening against my back, her cheek pressing against the lashes.

Her father is a monster, a rapist, yet she kept her anger in front of him.

Whatever her grandparents have done is worse—worse than rape and neglect, worse than taking her baby away from her.

Tremors work through her entire body when her grandfather stops beside me and he smiles down at her. “Mon biquet, have you finally learnt how to be obedient?” He lifts his hand to stroke her hair.

I pull her with me as I turn, keeping her behind me. “Delilah belongs to me now.” I meet each of their eyes. “No one will touch her, speak to her, or look at her without my permission. She is an animal that you gave to me, and animals do not require interaction.”

These twisted cunts aren’t going to die of natural causes. I don’t care what it takes, I’m going to make sure it’s painful. They add more reason as her grandfather says, “We all have our techniques to break the ones we’re given.”

Bite your fucking tongue.

Helene continues being useful as she calls out, “You may serve us now.”

It brings the conversation to an end. Whether that’s good or bad isn’t obvious until Anna stands at the door and we follow her through the house to another room. There’s no padlock on this time as she slides them open easily, unveiling a large banquet table with more people I’ve never seen before.

Some are standing against the wall dressed in all black, wearing mirrored masks.

Even their hands are covered. Others are dotted around the table.

They all stand when we enter. Apart from one woman who looks like the definition of frail.

There’s barely any meat beneath the skin over the back of her hands, showing every bone and tendon.

Yet it’s her eyes that are fucking with me.

They’re stark white and her chair at the head of the table is higher than the others around it, like she’s lording over them.

Helene takes her seat at the other end, which is even higher, sitting back like she’s royalty.

Her fingers curl over the edges of the lion’s head engraved into the armrests.

There are serpents carved into the spindles at each side of the back of the chair, resting above her head are ram’s horns and it’s not until I walk around it that I see the fucking lion’s head attached to the back of the chair.

Its eyes are open, nostrils flared, like it’s on guard and watching everything.

Not a carving or a wooden structure. A real lion’s head is mounted to the back of her chair.

The horns must be real too, making me think that the leathery black snakes are also another fatality of her taxidermy obsession.

Helene looks at the seat beside her, then to me.

I sit Delilah next to me, then take the one she looked at in the hopes it will get us on her less evil side so we can escape.

Once everyone is seated, she looks around the table, cataloguing the position they’ve chosen, and lifts two fingers.

The masked people come to life and they lay silver trays covered in cloches in the middle of the table.

The smell isn’t the same as the previous meal—if it can be called that —we attended with this sick bitch.

She smiles, warmly, like a grandmother should.

“My mother’s appetite has changed in age, so this is to appease her. ”

I look at the frail woman again, trying to work out how she can be okay with this shit.

In my head I always thought grandparents were warm, that they’d dote on their grandchildren, and they’d have hobbies like knitting or some shit.

Not forcing their maid to go down on them while in a gimp bodysuit, performing experimental surgery at the kitchen table, or demanding rape as entertainment at a wedding.