“The smell was horrendous and my mother screamed when she looked at her perfect son to see what had become of me. It took days for my father to realize what he’d done. Days to realize that he’d permanently scarred the son upon whom he’d placed the entire future of his company. How could a man run a business when nobody wants to look at him when he speaks? How can a man be the mirror image of his father when half of his face was scarred?”
The thin line of his mouth curved at the corners on a thought, the hint of a dimple indenting his cheek giving her a flash of the boyish charm hidden behind the blank mask he normally wore.
“In retrospect, this scar may have been my only salvation. As soon as he realized the damage he’d done, he no longer expected me to take over the family business. In his eyes, I was as useless as the children buried in the garden on his property, as easily forgotten as those who’d been long dead.”
Their eyes locked and Alice shed a tear for the man who stood so open and vulnerable before her. She didn’t know how long this moment would last, but it was a piece of humanity inside a man she would have never guessed could be human. She wanted to reach out to that part of him. Nurture it in case it would somehow help her escape the torment he’d caused.
“My father was a cruel bastard as well,” she offered, “except I wasn’t fortunate enough to escape his notice. He tried locking me away in places I couldn’t escape from, tried muffling my screams in hopes he could sleep through the night without being jostled awake by his freak of a daughter. But no matter what he did, I was always right there in his sight. Always the dumb child who didn’t know how to behave or stay quiet. It wasn’t my fault. I was sleeping most of the time. But that didn’t matter to him.” Her voice trailed off, her mind locked into a memory that she’d prefer to forget.
Max didn’t openly react to her statement. His head angled to the side, his hair brushing against his shoulder when his lips pulled up into a playful grin.
“I already know that about you, Alice. It’s what draws me to you. We’re alike, you and I. Two very different backgrounds, but a shared trait that pulls us together.”
It was the first time he’d told her he knew all there was to know about her. While he stood in front of her as a mysterious puzzle that had no known solution, she felt naked to his eyes…naked and vulnerable to the knowledge he had of her, gained by means she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Perhaps he was lying each time he told her he knew more about her than she knew of herself. Another aspect of the game he was playing against her, his knowledge of her – or at least the threat of it – was just another method through which he could control her.
How can a person hide their weaknesses against another person who knew all their insecurities and secrets?
If it was even possible for him to know as much about her as he claimed to know, how had he gained that information?
She’d never been a social butterfly in any sense of the world. More reclusive than anything else, she’d kept to herself since the moment she left home to attend school. Expending as little energy as she could manage with the other students and teachers that surrounded her in the years until she’d graduated, she always painted a prettier picture of the life she’d led. Nobody, except for the members of her immediate family, knew of the secrets she carried.
Her heart broke at that thought, an answer rearing its ugly head to stare her in the face and show her just how foolish she’d been to feel even an ounce of remorse for the monster in front of her.
“She told you, didn’t she?”
His brow arched on a question. “Who?”
Turning her face in the direction of the screen that still had a picture of a hooded woman sitting alone on a small bed, Alice caught Max in her peripheral vision, waiting until he removed his gaze from her and fixed his attention on the television screen.
“Did you force the answers from her? Torture her so she’d tell you all about her freak of a sister? Is that how you found me, you son of a bitch?”
Fingernails pressed half moon circles into the palms of her hands, her entire body shaking with anger and newfound rage. “Tell me!”
Here again, Alice expected violence to rise back to the surface, a cold, simmering evil that lay dormant inside him until she did or said something to bring it back to life. But instead of returning to her the scorching flame of revulsion and anger that had sparked to life inside her, he turned his head slowly in her direction to match her fire with his ice.
A secretive grin tilted his lips when he answered, “You told me, Alice. You told me everything there was to know about all of the little secrets you hide.”
“Liar.” She spat the word at him, her teeth clenched together from the rage that was bubbling up inside her.