Page 28 of Penance

Draco

I lie beside Mercy, her soft breaths singing to me in the silence. She sleeps peacefully, blissfully unaware of the nightmare I’m planning for her. I watch her, a knot of guilt twisting in my gut, an unfamiliar feeling that gnaws at me.

What have I done?

I’ve always been at home in the darkness, thriving in the shadows, but tonight those shadows feel colder, heavier.

As I watch her, her eyelids flutter, a small sigh slipping from between her lips. I hold my breath, waiting for her to wake up, but she stays asleep. She stays lost in dreams—dreams that are likely far purer than any I could ever hope to have.

She trusts me.

She doesn’t think I’d hurt her.

I hate myself for it, but I plan to.

I plan to strip everything away from her until she only has me.

The realization hits me like a punch to the gut. Her trust in me is a burden I never asked for, yet here it is, a weight pressing down on my chest. I can’t help but wonder what she would think if she knew the truth—if she saw the horrible things that I think about when she’s not watching.

Carefully, I roll out of bed and stand up. The mattress creaks, and I freeze, listening for any change in her breathing. There is nothing but silence. Mercy stays asleep.

Good.

Not that I’m all that surprised.

She’s always been a heavy sleeper.

I don’t think she would be pregnant now if she wasn’t, even with the added help of sleep meds.

I move silently as I cross the room, stepping out into the hallway and pulling the bedroom door closed behind me.

A pang of guilt stabs at me, but it’s quickly pushed down and buried deep among the other emotions I refuse to entertain. They died a long time ago, anyway.

This is necessary, I tell myself. There’s no turning back now. I need her to need me, and this is the only way she can.

The guilt, the remorse—they’re foreign emotions, unwelcome intruders, but I push them aside, focusing on the plan.

I did too much just to back out now.

I’ve gone too far already.

Everything is already set in motion.

I push open the door to the spare bedroom and the familiar hum of the computers greets me.

The room is bathed in a dim, ethereal glow, the only light coming from the faint illumination of RGB lights.

The shadows are deeper here than in any other part of the apartment.

They live here, like rabid animals that I keep in chains and muzzles.

My hand lingers on the doorknob, my grip so tight that the cool metal bites into my flesh.

Finally, I turn the lock, the faint click like a gunshot in the stillness.

She can’t find out.

She can’t catch me in here and ask what all these monitors are for.

I turn away from the door with a sigh. The air here is cooler, uninviting. It’s a stark contrast to the warmth of Mercy’s body, the soft rhythm of her breaths as she slept beside me.

I could go back. I could turn off the computers and slide back into bed with her. I could bury my face in her neck and drink in the scent of her like a poison that would ultimately be the death of me.

No.

No, I can’t.

“Focus,” I scold myself. “Fucking focus.”

I plop down in the computer chair and turn towards the monitors, reaching up and tapping the button that brings them to life. The screens stare back at me, and when they finally warm up, they show me my sins written out in plain black and white. Its bright white, and I can’t hide from it.

The screens show me Mercy’s apartment, except now it’s quiet and lifeless.

My fingers brush against the keyboard, and the plastic keys are cold beneath my fingers. I begin to type, the clack of the keys like the scurrying of a thousand beetles in the blackness.

I call up the command prompt, the black screen waiting for me to swallow these goddamned emotions and grow a pair. Sighing hard, I force myself to do it, and my fingers dance over the keys.

C:\ *KillSwitch*

C:\ *Override*

C:\ *Initiate Lockdown Sequence Mercy.Apt*

The code streams across the screen, a flowing river of green text on a black background. I can see the cameras in Mercy’s apartment blinking out one by one, the feeds turning to static before disappearing altogether.

They’re shut down internally now. Their hard drives have been wiped clean. Now, if anyone finds them—which they won’t—there will be no proof to link them back to me. I’ll go up there and find them all, smash them to pieces and get rid of them as soon as I can.

With that done, I shift focus, calling up the camera feeds from my own apartment. I lean forward, my elbows on the desk, my chin resting on my interlocked fingers. The feeds from the living room, the kitchen, the hallway—they all flicker to life, showing me my own darkness.

It’s like a mirror, and I hate the reflection it’s showing me.

I don’t want to look at it, but I know I don’t have a choice.

With a deep sigh, I turn back to the keyboard. I type out another code, this one quicker—only a few button presses.

The kitchen blinks to life on the main screen, the image of Mercy standing in the doorway, her hands twisting as she watches me.

Her head is bowed, her long chestnut hair hanging over one shoulder like a frayed rope.

The soft hazel of her eyes is glazed with unshed tears, and her lips recite words I know so well, but I can’t hear them now.

I don’t want to hear them.

I don’t want a reminder.

Why are you doing this, Draco? A voice in my head asks. Just delete it. Delete all the footage. You have her. Enough is enough. Just love her. Love her like she deserves.

It’s true.

I have her, but she’s intact. I haven’t broken her yet, and that’s why I have to do this.

I have to take the final steps.

Why?, the voice in my head asks. Why do I have to destroy her?

To make her love me, I say back. She has to have a reason to never leave.

On the screen, I see myself entering the frame, and I see the way my lips move as words are exchanged.

I don’t have to hear them to know what I’m saying.

I’m telling her to beg, to crawl to me, and she does.

She drops to her knees and I see the curve of her hip, the way her hands shake as she drops to the floor and comes towards me.

You don’t have to do this, the voice reminds me. You can still turn back.

I grit my teeth, my fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Clip the video,” I growl. “Clip the fucking video.”

And I do it, selecting two timestamps, and then after a flurry of keystrokes, everything else fades away.

The footage plays back, Mercy’s soft pleas, and my cold responses fill the room.

I shake my head.

Mute it.

I can’t listen to that.

Save it.

This moment, this vulnerability, it’s all a part of my plan. A necessary stepping stone towards the finish line.

I have to do this.

If I don’t break her, she’ll—

She’ll what?, the voice in my head sneers. She’ll know she’s too fuckin’ good for you?

I shake my head and continue on, saving the video and then bringing up the saved footage again. I type in a new command and the bedroom video flickers to life.

I can see Mercy asleep in my bed.

Right where I should be, laying beside her.

I force myself to look away and type in a few more lines, and I’m suddenly staring at a scene that’s both familiar and disturbing.

The room is bathed in the soft glow of a single bedside lamp, casting long shadows that dance on the walls.

Mercy’s form is small and fragile, sitting on top of me, and I watch as I flip her, pin her to the bed.

I watch myself, leaning in, whispering words that make her shiver as she wraps her long legs around my waist.

Look at her, I think, my eyes fixed on Mercy’s face. She’s perfect in every single way. It’s not fair. That’s why I have to do this.

A lightning bolt of pain echoes through me, something uncomfortable and unwelcome. Guilt, perhaps, or a shred of decency, trying to claw its way out of the cesspool that lives where my heart used to be.

I mute this footage too, and I clip it, just like last time.

My fingers are shaking as I save it, and then I bring up both videos at the same time, and splice them together.

It’s a short clip, maybe 30 seconds long, but it’s enough.

It’s enough to prove my point.

When it’s done, I lean back in my chair, staring up at the ceiling.

I try to think of that day 15 years ago, and the pain I felt.

I try to think of the blood and I the way that I screamed—or would have, had he not shoved something in my mouth to muffle the sound.

I think of the look in her eyes and the way she turned away from me.

I think of her refusing to look at me, refusing to tell the truth when I told them what had happened to me.

Then later, I remember the way she refused to speak to me, and when I asked why, she said that I was… unclean.

Dirty.

A broken thing.

I try to bring up the pain and the anger, but all I feel is a hollow throb from somewhere deep down, and it hurts.

“Damn it,” I mutter, running a hand through my hair.

She deserves this, I tell myself. After everything she did to me, she deserves this.

I reach into the desk drawer, my fingers brushing against cold metal until they close around the USB drive. I pull it out and it feels heavier than it should as I plug it into the computer.

Just a few more clicks and it’s done.

The screen prompts me to save the file, the cursor blinking expectantly. I hesitate for a moment, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. This is it—the point of no return. Once I save this footage, it becomes real, tangible evidence.

It becomes everything I worked for.

It becomes her downfall.

But I don’t have to do this.

I could let her go.

I could shove her away, but I won’t.

I can’t, because I’m selfish and I want her.

I want her to be mine.

I type in the file name, shaking the guilt away.

Mercy_Killian_Edit_Final. EXE

The progress bar appears, the green line inching forward, a visual countdown to my inevitable betrayal. I watch, holding my breath, as it reaches the end.

**File Saved Successfully**

My gaze shifts to the bottom of the screen where a row of dated folders stares back at me.

I need to be reminded.

I double-click on one labeled Mercy_Killian_Raw_Footage_Night_1.

I hit play, and the footage begins. I watch as she climbs into bed, and then time crawls by, and before long I can see that she’s asleep, and a shadow looms in the doorway.

It’s me.

I watch as I climb into bed beside her, that first night just lying beside her, staring at her face, and listening to the steady beat of her heart. I didn’t touch her, not then, but there was no doubt it was still a violation.

Yet, there’s a part of me that recoils, that hates the image on the screen, a fragment of humanity that still clings to something inside me.

I’m a fucking monster.

I should be fucking shot.

I could stop at any time, but I don’t. I reach up, grab the USB, and rip it out, tossing it back into the drawer and pushing it shut.

I push away all thoughts, all emotions as my fingers dance over the keys, the commands for wiping the hard drives ingrained in muscle memory.

A black box with a question pops up on the screen.

**Are you sure you want to delete all data? This action cannot be undone.**

A flicker of hesitation stirs in my chest, a tiny, insignificant flutter, like a moth fighting to keep flight in a storm.

I could call the police.

I could turn myself in.

I could—

“There’s no other way.”

I slam the Enter key and turn away from the screen. The hard drives whir to life as they begin to purge their memories.

In a few seconds, it will all be gone.

The evidence of the stalking, the manipulation.

The rape.

It will all be gone, and no one will know.

When their hard drives are wiped, the computers will be gone too. I’ll take them apart, piece by piece, and scatter them into the dumpsters around town. The world will never see the web I’ve woven in the dark.

They’ll see me as the victim, the way they should have all along.