by Stella Hart
I headed back inside, slipped my shoes off at the mat, and padded upstairs. The power still seemed to be out, which meant I could check out the forbidden rooms—Alex’s bedroom, and his study.
I went to his bedroom first. It was big but sparsely decorated. Lots of grays and charcoals, sharp lines and understated furniture. Certainly not the red and black sex dungeon I’d been picturing. I briefly checked out his walk in closet, but there wasn’t much there aside from clothes and shoes. I was more interested in the study, anyway.
I left the bedroom and crept toward the home office down the hall. The thick door opened right up to me, and I said a silent grateful prayer that the power was still out.
The room was lined with shelves, all stacked with thick books and medical journals. On one side there was also a large filing cabinet, and in the center on the left wall, a dark wooden desk with a computer, printer, and various papers lying in messy stacks.
For a second, I thought about trying to get on the computer, but then I remembered it wouldn’t work with no electricity. Instead, I turned to the filing cabinet and tentatively approached it. I knew it was wrong for me to go through Alex’s stuff, but I still felt like he was holding things back from me. He’d been trying hard to give me what I needed over the last few days, and I appreciated that, really, but it didn’t mean he’d opened up. I still barely knew anything about him, other than the few shreds of information I’d gathered over the weeks.
I wanted to know more.
Crouching down, I checked out the lowest drawer first. My hand flew to my mouth as I saw what was inside it. All the photos of the tortured girls with carved circles were there, along with printed out information sheets regarding the men Alex had previously captured, tortured and killed. Circle members. There were newspaper clippings too, all about the Heartbreaker case.
When I closed the drawer, I noticed a small circle sticker on it. I hadn’t noticed it before, but if I had, it would’ve tipped me off about the contents. It was the drawer he kept all his serial killing research in, along with any other Circle-related information.
The top drawers were all boring property, banking, or tax-related things. I left them alone and padded over to the bookshelves. I’d just noticed that there were two lower cupboards on one of the shelves. Curious, I opened them to see some covered boxes. One had my name printed on it in neat handwriting.
Frowning, I lifted the lid off the box and sorted through its contents. There were photos of me that Alex must’ve printed off my Instagram account, the heart charm bracelet he once gave me, and various other mementos which belonged to me. A teddy bear. A copy of my second semester class schedule from last year. A book which had gone missing from my house about five months ago.
I sat back, my heart racing. Either this was where he’d stored objects related to me while he was stalking me for all that time, or he intended on giving some of these things to me one day, as a reminder of my old life. Knowing him, he probably thought it would be romantic.
My eyes fell on a box next to the one marked with my name. This other box had the same scribbled handwriting on it, but a different name. Evangeline.
I lifted the lid off that box as well and slowly sifted through the contents. At first it seemed a lot like mine. Keepsakes, little teddy bears, bits and pieces of jewelry. There were also several photos of a petite girl with strawberry blonde hair and dark brown eyes. She had the long, coltish limbs of a teenager but a more mature, heavily made-up face, so I figured she could be anywhere between the age of fourteen and twenty when the pictures were taken. If I had to hazard a precise guess, I’d say eighteen.
I picked up a necklace which lay coiled on top of the photos. It was a star-shaped locket which opened up to reveal another tiny photo of the girl. On the back was an inscribed name—Evangeline Gibson.
I delved deeper into the box, pulling out more photos. What I saw made me feel ill all over again. It was the same girl in shorts and a bra, posing for the camera against a white background with her head bowed. There were several in the same set, showing her from different angles, each one displaying a different scar or injury. On her back, there were fat purple lines which showed that she had been severely whipped till she bled in the past. The front-side photos showed massive bruising all over her chest, stomach and legs, so extensive that almost every inch of her tan skin was dark purple and blue.
At first I thought she had to be another Circle victim, but then I realized she had no circle scar on her stomach like all the others. Whoever tortured this girl wasn’t a Circle member.
Besides, if she was a Circle victim, her photos would be in the drawer in the cabinet like all the others.
My hands shaking, I dug deeper and pulled out a folded piece of paper. A letter. In spidery, scrawled handwriting, it said: I know you love me, Alex, and I love you too. But I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t stay here. I have to go. I’m sorry. Please believe that I’m sorry. Love, Evangeline.
A lump formed in my throat and something gnawed at my stomach as I read the girl’s words. Then I picked up one of the first photos where the girl was unscathed and seemingly happier, wondering why it suddenly seemed so familiar to me. It finally hit me. There was a carpet below her—a beautiful Persian rug with an intricate pattern, exactly like the one in the smaller sitting room downstairs. In the photo, I could even see that it had a little frayed part on one corner.
The one downstairs had the same fraying. It was the same damn rug. These photos had been taken by Alex, in his own house.
I sat back on my knees again, staring at nothing, my eyes no longer focusing. My mind was a whirling dervish, blowing from thought to thought. Then a flare of uncontrollable fury shot through me, erasing any happiness I’d built up in recent days.
Whoever this girl was, Alex kept her with him. Kept her captive. Just like me. He lied when he said I was the only one he took. Looked me right in the eyes and fucking lied.
What else was a lie? What other betrayals lay in store for me?
And the things he’d done to that poor girl… my god. Those photos. He must’ve done the same to her that he did to me—kept the punishments severe enough to hurt like hell or begin to mentally break a person, but not enough to maim or permanently scar them. Then, after god knows how long, he upped the ante. He flogged and beat her so severely that she scarred and probably suffered internal bleeding, judging by the enormity of the bruising. He made her want to die.
The look in her eyes in those later photos was so broken, so haunted. The girl’s spirit had been crushed till she was nothing but an empty shell. Till she was so low she wrote him a letter saying she just couldn’t do it anymore. I can’t stay here, she’d said.
I could only presume she left him the letter before trying to escape. For a long time, she was probably torn between her love for the man who loved her back but hurt her so much at the same time, and her chance at living a life without horrible pain. The need for freedom finally won out, and she tried to leave him. Maybe she even killed herself, just to escape him forever.
Or maybe Alex killed her, growing tired of what she’d become, no longer wanting a broken toy. No longer wanting to deal with her escape attempts and therefore her disloyalty.
I swallowed bile as it rose up in my throat. Not only did Alex lie to me about never taking another girl apart from me, he might’ve also lied to me when he said he’d never kill me. For all I knew, that could be bullshit designed to lull me into a false sense of security, and one day when I was completely broken, he’d dispose of me too. After all, where was this Evangeline girl now? Certainly not here anymore, even though she clearly had been at some stage. Even though Alex loved her, like the letter said….
Clearly, I couldn’t trust a word he said. He’d always been so damn convincing, and he was capable of looking someone right in the eye and telling all sorts of lies. In fact, if it weren’t for my own regained memories, the photos in the filing cabinet, the video of my father raping a girl, and the
fact that I’d heard evidence from Dan Vallone in person, I would’ve been inclined to believe that Alex invented the Circle in his own imagination.
Obviously, the Circle was real, but Alex was a hypocrite. He hurt girls too. Maybe not as terribly as them, but still pretty fucking terribly, it seemed. He might’ve even killed Evangeline. Hell, I wasn’t even sure she was the only one. Perhaps there were others before her, and I just hadn’t found the corresponding boxes.
I wondered when my turn would come. When he would begin to punish me so hard, so severely, that the pain outweighed the pleasure and I wished for death.
Shaking, I put everything back in the boxes, save for one photo of Evangeline. I wanted to take it with me and hide it in my room so I could look at it whenever I felt as if I were falling more and more for Alex. It would remind me that I couldn’t trust him anymore. Remind me that I’d been deluded when I thought this would last, and that he’d never hurt me badly.
Apparently, he would.
The other day, I’d actually wondered what it would take for the twisted battle in my mind to end; the battle between wanting freedom and wanting to be a captive. This was it. The new knowledge that Alex couldn’t be trusted at all, and that he might kill me one day, was enough for me to start wanting my freedom again, outweighing the part of me which got off on being a victim to him.
I heard a car coming down the driveway a moment later. Shit. Alex was home already. I stuffed the boxes back in the cupboard, closed it, and crept downstairs and into my room. The photo of the other girl went under my mattress.
I curled up on the armchair with my book again, blinking away the tears threatening to spill out. I affected an innocent expression as heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. Alex appeared in my doorway a moment later.
“The power is out. Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Yes. I went and found the backup generator for the greenhouse,” I said nonchalantly. “I hope the short cold snap won’t affect them.”
“It should be okay, if you did it quickly enough.” He paused and crossed the room. “How long’s it been out?”
Long enough. “Oh… not long. Maybe five or ten minutes,” I lied. I didn’t want him knowing it’d been out for at least an hour now, or he might be suspicious about everything I got up to during that period of time.
He nodded. “There’s actually a backup generator for the house, too. It’s supposed to automatically click over during outages, but I guess it’s not working.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” I said. As grateful as I was for the outage and the clarity it had given me, I had wondered why the greenhouse had a backup generator and the house didn’t seem to. “Do you want me to come help you fix it, sir?”
“No, I’ll take a look myself. You enjoy your book. What’s that one about?”
I blushed. “Oh, it’s a bit ridiculous, but I love it. It’s a romance set in some medieval-style fantasy world. For some reason there’s aliens in it too.”
He smiled indulgently at that, like I was a good little pet who’d just performed an adorable trick. “Sounds like fun.”
“It is.” I affected my most innocent expression yet. “Sir… can I ask you something? It’s about what you said the other day.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “Okay. What did I say?”
I figured I should at least ask Alex whether he lied to me or not, instead of immediately jumping to conclusions. But at the same time, I didn’t want to directly quiz him about what I’d found upstairs, because then I’d have to admit I went through all his things and face the punishment for that. I had to be sneaky about it.
“When you said it was only me, and that I was the only girl you ever took and kept… is that true?”
He hesitated for a second too long before answering. “Of course it is,” he said, looking right into my eyes. His own were slightly narrowed. Liar. “Why?”
I held up my book. “Oh, it’s just this story that got me thinking about it,” I said. “The guy in it lies to the woman and tells her all these things he thinks she wants to hear. I wondered if that’s just something all men do. I’ve… I’ve never had a boyfriend before, so I don’t really know.”
“It’s not. And besides, I’m not all men.”
“So I’m really the only one?” I batted my lashes.
“Yes. I’ve had lots of other relationships in the past, years ago, but they were just casual. Never moved past dates and sex.”
Oh, really?
He went on, his brows furrowing. “I don’t lie to you, Celeste. I thought you knew that.”
Yeah, so did I.
There wasn’t a hint of guilt in his eyes. He’d fooled me the other day with that same guiltless expression. I had no idea what else he’d lied to me about in the past, either.
I knew I could just tell him outright that I found my box along with Evangeline’s; make him admit he had in fact kept another girl here before me. Possibly others too. But he’d already lied right to my face, so it seemed clear there was no point asking. It would only get me in trouble, and if he was willing to tell me the truth, then he would have already done so when I gave him the chance. Better yet, he wouldn’t have lied in the first place.
Anyway, if I told him what I knew now, he’d probably just lie right to my face again; make up some excuse.
“Okay. I’m glad,” I said softly, giving him a faint smile.
“I’ll go fix the power.” He turned to leave, but then he turned back around with an unreadable expression on his face. “Celeste,” he began, drawing my name out slowly. “When you noticed the power was out, did you go into my office?”
Damn. I thought I was being sneaky, but not enough, apparently. He suspected something. However, the fact that he was asking me that exact question solidified my opinion that he had lied to me about keeping other girls. If he hadn’t, why would he even worry about me going into his office? If he had nothing to hide from me, he had no need to be concerned.
“I…” I was about to lie and say I didn’t go upstairs, but I quickly realized he would know. He always seemed to be able to tell when I was lying. I decided to tell a lie coated with the truth instead. “Yes,” I said, lowering my face shamefully. “I’m sorry, sir. But please let me explain.”
“Fine,” he said crisply. “I’ll give you one chance.”
I forced crocodile tears to my eyes. “I thought maybe I could get on your computer. Not to ask anyone for help or try to escape, I swear. I just…. I miss my friends. I wanted to go on Facebook and see what they’re up to. I was going to use private browsing so no one would see that it was me viewing their profiles, and I wasn’t going to talk to anyone. I just wanted to see….” I let my voice trail off for a second. “But then I realized the internet wouldn’t even work while the power is out. So I left and came back in here. I’m so sorry, sir, I know I was bad. I know you’ll want to punish me, and I deserve it.”
I wiped the faux tears from my eyes. My face was flushed, and I knew I was bright red. He would think it was from shame, when really it was out of fear of the possibility of being caught lying.
I waited for him to tell me how I would be punished. How many strokes of the cane or whip or crop or whatever the hell he’d use. Instead he sighed and kneeled in front of me. “I’m sorry, angel,” he murmured. “I understand that you miss them. I wish you didn’t have to.”
My eyes widened. Was he actually giving me a free pass because he felt bad? Or was this more of the irrelevant leniency trick he used when I first arrived, designed to confuse me? I couldn’t tell, and even if I asked, it wasn’t like he’d answer honestly. I’d at least established that.
“Sir… I really am sorry,” I whispered. The worst part? I actually did feel bad. A huge part of me was still so entranced by him, so taken with him, that I felt real, palpable guilt over what I’d done. I wasn’t sure why—perhaps my need for submission was stronger than I thought. Or perhaps I was still clinging to the irrational hope that if I pleased him enough, he’d a
ctually set me free one day. As if I would be the one exception.
He nodded. “I know.”
“So… you aren’t going to punish me?” I asked softly.
He hooked his finger under my chin and raised it so we were eye-to-eye, me in the chair and him crouched before me. “I didn’t say that.”
My heartrate picked up, and I waited silently for his judgment.
“As punishment, you can sleep alone tonight,” he said quietly. “Use the time to think about what you did.”
My heart sank. He knew me so well by now. Knew exactly how to hurt me, and exactly how to punish me—by withholding the affection I craved so much despite all his lies and betrayal. I hated myself for thinking and feeling it… but I actually would’ve preferred the whip.
11
Celeste
I chopped lettuce in silence, stealing glances at Alex every few seconds. He was going through the fridge, looking for the jar of capers he needed for tonight’s dinner—chicken piccata and salad. I was helping him make it, tasked with preparing the salad ingredients.
He looked at his watch and sighed. “I better take something to Baldwin,” he muttered. He looked up at me. “Can you finish chopping all the vegetables and put them in that?” he asked, pointing to a large silver salad bowl on my right. “You can add whatever else you want to it. Dressing and so on.”
“Yes, sir.” I nodded. “How about feta and olives? So it’s a sort of Mediterranean salad. I won’t add too much.”
He smiled. “I trust your judgment.”
With that, he grabbed some food out of the cupboard and headed outside. I watched him head for the shelter through the kitchen window. The sky outside was dimming, turning from a mixture of gray and turquoise to glowing indigo.