Page 14 of Peak Cruelty

Vance

S he’s either asleep or pretending. I should be able to tell.

The fact that I can’t?

That’s what’s keeping me in the chair.

I lean back, arms crossed, eyes on her face.

She should be breaking. I’ve seen it before—dozens of times. The waiting does most of the work. But she just keeps watching the ceiling like it owes her answers.

Something’s off. Has been since the beginning. Since that first moment when she could’ve fought but didn’t.

At first, I didn’t think it was unusual. Plenty of them start out compliant. They think it’ll work for them. That, or fight, flight, freeze—and she chose the latter.

But this?

This is something else.

She’s not frozen.

She’s resigned.

And that, in all my experience, I’ve never seen.

I pull out my phone. Nothing new. No calls. No texts. No notifications. But the browser history’s still warm. I click over to her social media.

One thumbnail catches my eye.

It’s not her.

But it could be. Same eyes. Same mouth. Just…softer. Glossier. Polished in that influencer kind of way.

Caption: Help me find my sister.

I click.

Video loads. A woman—early thirties, frantic, polished, crying in a way that plays well online.

“She was last seen outside the hospital,” she says. “If you’ve seen Marlowe Holt—please call. She’s not the kind of person who just disappears.”

I freeze.

Marlowe.

The phone slips a little in my hand. I scroll fast. More videos. A GoFundMe. A Reddit thread. A goddamn press release from the sheriff’s department.

The woman in the spare bedroom is Rachel. Not Marlowe. The mother. The one with the sick kid. The one with the pattern.

But Rachel’s not missing. She’s crying her eyes out in the video that plays on loop in the palm of my hand.

Fuck.

I scroll deeper. Nothing for Marlowe in Rachel’s follower list. But two years back in her feed—there.

A photo of them together: Rachel, Marlowe, the kid.

Caption: Auntie Marlowe is the BEST!

Motherfucker.

Ava isn’t her daughter. She’s her niece.

That’s the kind of mistake that gets people killed. That’s the kind I don’t make.

Except I did.

I look at her again. Really look. The restraint. The silence. The things she hasn’t said.

And the worst part is—she knew. Not about the mistake. Not all of it. But she knew I had it wrong. And she let me keep going.

Why? To buy time? To see how far I’d go?

I sit back, run a hand through my hair, toss the phone aside.

And I start wondering who, exactly, I brought into this house.