Page 124 of He Sees You

"I should," he whispers. "I should end this now."

"But you won't. Because Celeste would never forgive you. And despite everything, you need her to love you. Or at least to pretend."

"She does love me. I'm her father."

"She loves who she thought you were. That man died the moment Morrison told us the truth."

The gun wavers. "Morrison was a liar."

"Morrison was many things, but his dying blinks didn't lie."

Sterling stumbles to what was once a velvet settee, now a skeleton of springs and rot.

He sits heavily, gun still in hand but pointed at the floor.

"I need to tell you something," he says. "About tonight. About the shipment."

I wait.

Men like Sterling always talk when they're drunk and desperate.

"I've been in this business for thirty years. You think I don't have contingencies?" He laughs, wet and broken. "If I don't make a specific call by two, the entire route changes. The girls go to a different location. The buyers are warned to scatter. Your little rescue mission becomes a wild goose chase."

I keep my face neutral, but inside I'm recalculating.

We'll have to keep him alive longer than planned, force him to make that call.

"Why tell me?" I ask.

"Because I want you to know that even when I'm dead, I'll still win. Those girls will still be sold. The business will continue. You can kill me, but you can't kill what I built."

"We'll see about that."

Car doors outside.

Celeste and Juliette are arriving.

Sterling struggles to his feet, holsters his gun. "How do I look?"

"Like a man at his own funeral."

"Good. That's what I am."

Celeste enters first, and the breath leaves my body.

Patricia's dress has been transformed on her.

What was once pristine white is now somehow both pure and dangerous.

She's added black ribbons that could be decoration or restraints.

The train trails behind her like spilled ink.

Her dark hair is up, held with pins that could double as weapons.

Patricia's ring catches the candlelight, fracturing it into rainbows that dance across the decay.

She's the most beautiful thing that's ever stood in this room of horrors.