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.
It’s a red Honda Civic, and there’s a woman in the driver’s seat. When I squint, I make out who’s in the passenger seat. “Duck!”
Cain follows my lead and lies down flat against the leather seat. Our bodies cross each other, my face pressed against his taut stomach. Slowly, Cain wraps his arm around my waist. Almost immediately, my pulse slows. I hear the sound of a car door opening and closing, and then quick steps leading away. The car backs over the gravel drive and out the gate.
Cain and I wait five minutes before lifting our heads and checking to ensure Mr. Hodge went inside. Even after I see that we’re in the clear, fear still racks my body, sending tremors through my limbs.
“What does he think he’s doing?” Cain says. “It’s one thing to do it on the sly. But to have that woman drop him off in front of the house? Madam Karina will kill him.”
Would that be a bad thing? Wilson asks.
Hush.
No, really. You should ask him. I’d like to know his response.
I roll my eyes at Wilson, and remember that though I’ve told Cain the secrets I carried about my mother and the things we did together, there’s still one I’ve kept to myself.
Don’t you dare, Wilson warns, hurt flooding his voice. Don’t you tell him about me. Please.
“Hey. Are you okay?” Cain asks.
I gaze up at the house. “We’ve got to be quiet when we go inside. No one can know we were gone.”
“Domino, about what you said. About getting the money?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. “I can take care of myself.”
I open the car door and float toward the house like a ghost. Like I left the real me back in that Pox county jail.