I race to where the second, older girl stands and stumble upon seeing her. She’s in even worse condition than Ellie.
“My name is Viviane Roth, and I was caught by Eric and his pigs thirteen hours after I ran away.” She raises her head as if she’s proud of what she’s about to say next. “I’ve been here for one year and forty-seven days.”
Disbelief and horror crackle through my body, and I find it takes everything I have to keep my legs beneath me. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”
She laughs and digs a finger into her ear. “You can’t. And if you’re one of Madam Karina’s girls, you better get out of here.”
“How did they catch you?” Cain asks, startling me.
“We’re not sure. But one way or another, they always do.”
“Paula made it the longest, I think. Three days before they found her.”
“Four,” a quiet voice says at the end of the aisle.
“Okay, whatever, four.” Viviane continues talking, but my ears ring so loudly that I can’t absorb what she’s saying. Because now I’m moving down the cells, one by one, and trying not to lose control of my breathing. In each cramped space is a female, some young, some old. Their faces are shadowed and accusatory. Some are like the first girl, their bodies turned away, and all of them look broken, their spirits long buried. That doesn’t stop a handful from announcing the time they’ve spent imprisoned.
“Fifteen months,” one says.
“Two years and two months,” says another.
“Four years, four months, and thirteen days,” declares the winner.
My heart hammers against my rib cage, and my fingers fly to my temples. Wilson tries to speak, but I push him down with everything I have. I can’t think beyond what I’ve just learned. I can’t think beyond three simple truths.
I am Domino Ray.
I am afraid of nothing more than being alone with my mind.
If I try and escape Madam Karina’s clutches, that is exactly what will happen to me.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Snap
I race up and down the aisle, frantic, searching for anything that will open their cells.
“Domino, we have to go,” Cain says.
I stop and look at him like he’s crazy. “Are you kidding? We can’t leave them here.”
“You can if you want to live outside these walls,” Viviane says, but then her face falls like a thought has occurred to her. “Though…though maybe you can call someone. Tell the governor or something?”
A girl at the end laughs. “The governor? Oh, yeah, he’ll totally believe this chick.”
“The FBI then,” Viviane says, her voice growing more urgent. “There has to be someone.”
“No one cares about Pox,” the girl jeers. “Lie down and go back to sleep.”
But now Viviane is shaking the bars. Her body is coiled tight and her once-tired eyes are alert. “There has to be something we can do!”
I rush to her cage and clasp her hand through the bars. “I’ll do something. I’ll get you out of here.”
“Domino,” Cain says. The way he speaks my name causes me to turn. He’s standing next to the stairs and motioning for me to stay silent. My scalp tingles as I weigh how long we’ve been down here.
“I thought I heard something,” he whispers. “We have to leave.”
“What about them?” My voice quivers.
“I thought we could get one girl out.” He glances at Ellie. “But we need a plan to help them all.”
He’s right, I know he is. If they caught these girls within days of them escaping Pox, then how quickly would they find us if we ran together? I glance once more at the cells and say, “I will come back for you.”
Cain rushes up the stairs, and I follow him, closing the trap door silently. After ensuring the officer is still gone, he pushes open the door. We hurry past the desk, my chest tightening so that my vision blurs. I can feel the caged girls behind me, can feel their eyes watching my abandonment. If I were smarter, I could figure out a way to save them now. If I were braver, I’d try something. The only thing that allows me to keep going is what I told them. I will get them out of there if it’s the last thing I do in this miserable life.
The woman with the bubblegum nails is nowhere in sight when we fly by. We’ve made it into the parking lot before Cain looks back at me. “Want me to drive?”
My hands shake as I offer up the keys.
They’re almost in his grasp when the door behind us bursts open. Cain spins me behind him so that he’s blocking me. The police officer barrels toward Cain, his hand withdrawing a Glock and taking aim. Before I can think, I lunge out from behind Cain and throw myself in front of him. We look like idiots, the two of us clamoring to take a bullet first.
Mine!
No, mine!
I’m not sure what causes me to look back at Cain’s face. Maybe it’s the growl I hear in his throat. Or the eerie stillness that’s fallen over our circle of three. But when I do, I see something in him that makes my blood run cold. Rage twists his features until he’s unrecognizable. Gone are the wrinkles around his eyes that show themselves when he shyly smiles. Gone are the shadows that darken his features as he hangs his head. Now his chin is held high. And his eyes storm with unbridled anger.
“Pull the trigger,” Cain says.
His voice causes a shiver to engulf my body. In this moment, he’s not the boy I’ve grown to care for. He is not gentle or sympathetic. He is not fearful. Cain takes a step toward the police officer, and the cop yells for him to get back.
Cain tells him again, his words as unwavering as a stretch of pavement, to pull that trigger.
The officer’s arm begins to tremble, and when his eyes flick to me with indecision, Cain lunges. He slams into the cop in a heartbeat, his arms wrapped around his waist in a bear hug. He takes the man to the ground and pins his body there. The officer has only a moment to grunt his surprise when Cain springs on top of him and jerks his fist back.
He hits him twice, quick like pop rocks hitting the sidewalk. Crack, crack! The officer fumbles for his gun. Grabs it.
I charge toward the two, screaming. I yank on the cop’s arm to keep him from taking aim at Cain, but the officer yanks his elbow back and slams it into my nose.
There’s a sickening crunch as pain explodes inside my face and along my neck. I fall back, clutching my nose, blood seeping through my fingers. Cain pauses a beat, his eyes widening at the sight of me. And then all the rage I saw in him shatters and falls to the ground, broken. In its place is a mask of calm that rattles me to the core.
Cain’s gaze returns to the officer, to the gun in his hand.
With my vision blurring, I think to myself how Cain looks like a doll in this moment: vacant eyes, unfeeling skin, cold, lifeless expression. It’s like he’s kissed his mind good-bye, and so anything that happens from this second on cannot be blamed on him alone.
Cain wrestles the gun from the officer and flips it over in his hand. He slams the Glock against the officer’s head once, twice, three times. He’s like a machine, a robot working on commands.
“Cain, stop!” I holler.
The officer tries to shield himself, but it does little to help. Cain tosses the gun and rears back for another blow. His closed fist drives into the officer’s ribs, his chest, his gut.
“You locked those girls up,” Cain roars, though his face doesn’t mirror the frustration. “You held them there like dogs!”
Cain hits him again, and I scramble forward, pleading for him to stop.
Please stop. Please stop. Please stop.
Cain works his left fist now, pummeling the officer on his uninjured side. I reach Cain at the same moment that he says to the officer, “You deserve to die.”
The stone giant locks his hands around the man’s throat, and I scream Cain’s name. When he doesn’t respond to the sound of my voice, I form a fist with my own hand, cock my arm back, and drive it across Cain’s icy face.
But slowly, Cain returns to me. The muscles in his face relax, and his hands drop to his sides. He glances down at the barely conscious officer, and then back at me.
“We have to go,” I tell him, pulling on his arm. “Someone’s going to come.”
A weakness strikes my knees as I guide Cain to his feet. He stares down at the officer like he doesn’t understand how he got there. And then, as a second thought, he points at the man and says, “You heard a sound outside and came to check it out. Someone in a mask beat you up and took your wallet. That’s your story, understand? Because if Madam Karina finds out you aired her dirty laundry, you’ll be hurting a lot worse than this.” Cain nudges the man’s shoe with his. “Say you understand.”
The man clutches his side and groans that, yes, he understands.
Cain rips the man’s wallet from his pocket and shoves it into his own. Then he picks up the car keys off the ground and places them in my hand. My skin prickles at his touch, and the back of my neck burns. Blood has stopped flowing from my nose, but pain and shock still course through my body.
I open the car and get in the driver’s seat, and Cain drops down on the opposite side. It’s a long time before either of us speaks, the car moving silently through the night. I glance over at Cain and find him staring at the thin layer of dried blood on his knuckles. He seems surprised and horrified by its presence.
I want to comfort him, but at the same time, what I saw back there is enough to keep me quiet. It’s enough to keep Wilson quiet, too.
“My father taught me to turn things off,” Cain whispers. “It’s like a light goes off in my head, and all I can feel is anger. And then I feel nothing at all.”
I try to form a response, but Cain speaks before I can.
“I would never hurt you, Domino.” His voice catches, like the thing he’s most terrified of is someone being afraid of him.
I lick my lips. “Is that what you think? That I’m scared of you?”
“You should be.”
Though it takes me time to recover from the whiplash of his transformation, eventually, I regain my bearings. After all, I’ve seen the dark sides of enough people to know everyone has one.
“How are you so sure?” I finally ask. “How are you sure you wouldn’t hurt me? Because back there… Cain, you really lost it.”
“Because I chose to,” he says. “I pulled the switch. When I took those burns for my brother… The only way I could do it was to turn everything off. Survive.” His voice grows small. “I still hurt my brother in the end, though.”
“You didn’t kill your brother on purpose,” I say. “And you pulled your switch back there because that man had a gun, and he’s doing a very bad thing by keeping those girls locked up.”
Cain wipes his hands over his knees. Gently at first, then rougher and faster like the officer’s blood is a venomous thing, like it’ll rot the skin from his bones.
My scalp tingles when I realize what I’m about to do, what I’m about to admit. But if I don’t do it now, here, I will never do it. I’ll carry around my secret like a cancer, let it eat me whole, one mutated cell at a time. “Cain, I’m going to tell you about my dad. And how him leaving changed my mother, and then me, into something terrible.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
I Won’t Abandon You
As we drive—the sky purple, the stars quiet as they eavesdrop—I tell Cain everything. Wilson wails inside my mind the entire time, making it difficult for me to recount the story. This isn’t something he wants me to share.
I can hold this for you, Wilson complains, wounded by my admission. You don’t need anyone but me.
Though he is insistent, I speak past his complaints. I tell Cain how my mother brought unsuspecting men home, how I learned the best way to make a person writhe in agony, the best way to cover their screams so the neighbors didn’t hear. The graphic details…I can’t recall. Wilson keeps them hidden in the recesses of my brain. He swirls the key around his index finger like he’s taunting me, but the look on his face speaks the truth.
He doesn’t want me to remember the worst bits.
He doesn’t believe I can handle them.
Cain doesn’t interrupt me once during my midnight confession. He only stares ahead, his hands still on his knees.
When I’m finished, I ask him for one single favor. “Please don’t tell anyone. I know you won’t want to be around me anymore, but don’t tell, okay?”
Cain pulls in a deep breath and lets it out. He runs a hand over his shaved head, and his face scrunches. “Is anyone looking for you? Or your mom?”
I shake my head. “Not that I know of. Mother was always careful.”
“And you don’t know what happened to them in the end? Those guys?”
“I know,” I say, my voice hardly above a whisper. “I just can’t remember.”
“You were twelve years old,” Cain states.
“I was sixteen before I left.”
“Holy shit, Domino.” He shakes his head back and forth. “Holy shit.”
“Now you know why I can’t possibly think of you as a monster.” I’ve held back as long as I can, but now tears thicken my voice. “Because I see one in the mirror every day when I wake up.”
Cain looks at me as I drive, as tears slip down my cheeks. I peek at him from the corner of my eye and see that the color has leached from his face. His jaw hangs open, and he stares at me as if I’m someone he’s meeting for the first time. His gaze travels to my hands, no doubt envisioning the things they’ve done. The tools of suffering they’ve held. He runs his own hands over his head and mutters “Holy shit” over and over until the words lose their meaning.
And then something happens. He falls back in the seat and stares up at the roof of the car, pulls in long breaths through flared nostrils. The nervous energy leaves him, and in its place settles a calm sort of resolve.
“Listen to me.” Cain’s voice is heavy and sure. “What happened to you was messed up in the most horrific way possible. When we leave here, you’ll need to talk to someone. I probably will, too. But this was not your fault. It was your mother, for crying out loud. Your mother. She manipulated you. She didn’t give you a choice.”
“No,” I argue. “I had a choice. And I did the wrong thing. It’s unforgivable.”
“To who? To who is it unforgivable?”
I gasp for air, trying to stop the emotion from welling up again.
Wilson, I need you, I think.
I’m here, he responds at once. I’ve got you.
Wilson tows my memories back toward him like a sailor hauling a rusted anchor from the sea. Relief washes over me, making my body feel light and warm.
“I’m not going to abandon you,” Cain says softly. “So you can get that thought out of your head right now.”
I briefly clench my eyes against what he’s saying. It’s almost too much to hope for.
He reaches over and grabs my elbow, squeezes it awkwardly. A soothing current engulfs my entire body at his touch. “I mean it. You and I, we’ve started something, even if it’s only in each other. I feel different when you’re around. I feel like maybe I could move past the things I’ve done and focus on the things I could do.” He hesitates. “Do you feel the same way?”
I don’t know how to respond. Cain does make me feel different. If I can tell him that I partook in torturing men and he can stick by me, that’s got to be something. Then again, maybe that’s the definition of being screwed up. That we’re so damaged that regardless of what the other person says they’ve done, we just shrug and say, Hey, as long as you don’t leave me, we’re square.
Instead of answering him, I say, “What are we going to do about those girls, Cain?”
He studies the side of my face, and my knuckles
whiten from gripping the wheel. “We need cash to get out of here. If those girls were caught quickly, it’s probably because they stopped too soon. We need gas money to get us far enough away, and extra in case something happens to the car along the way. No chances.”
Cain grabs the wallet he took from the officer and looks inside. He frowns and shoves it in his pocket. “Empty.”
I sigh. “The only way I can get access to the money I’ve earned is by applying to leave.”
“And you can’t do that.” Cain rubs his jawline. “Maybe we could ask Angie for help.”
“No way. We can’t drag her into this.” I focus on the road ahead. Madam Karina’s home rises on the horizon like a corpse pulling itself from the earth. Chills race down the back of my neck as we move closer to the place I fear most. But this is one thing Cain and I are in agreement on. We must return to Madam Karina’s Home for Burgeoning Entertainers. Until we have a proper plan to escape and decide how to free the girls from their cells, we have to play our submissive roles.
“Do you have any ideas?” Cain asks.
I do, but I don’t want to say it aloud. I don’t want to think about what Jack will ask me to do for a pocket full of cash versus a bronze coin.
“I’ll get us the money we need,” I say.
Cain glances at me in the safety of the dark, his brow furrowing when he understands what I mean.
“Domino, I don’t want—”
“You really aren’t going to leave me?” I ask, my voice so small it could be swallowed by a crow.
Cain resumes rubbing the officer’s blood off his palms. “I’m here as long as you want me to be. For better or worse.”
Me, too, Wilson adds quietly.
I pull in a deep breath. “I’ll get us the money. You just convince Madam Karina that nothing has changed.”
Cain tells me to park the car in the exact spot we found it, and after I kill the engine, we both stare up at the house, dreading going inside. I’m about to speak, to reassure him we’ll be okay, when another vehicle pulls up alongside ours.
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