It occurs to me that this is the first time she’s actuallyseenme kill people. Before tonight, it was all theoretical. She’s seen me hurt people in the dungeon but never actually take a life. She’s seen the evidence—the garbage bags on their way to the incinerator. She’s seen other people’s blood on me. But she was unconscious when I rescued her from Matsumoto, so she’s never actually watched it happen right in front of her.
I want to talk to her about this, but I just don’t know how to have those kinds of conversations, and I’ve never cared enough about another living soul to be interested in their pain. So I just do all I know to do. I get us both clean and dressed in sweatpants and T-shirts. I help her into her socks.
“A-are we running?” she asks. She sits on the edge of the bed looking down at me, seeming so lost as I slip her tennis shoes on and tie the laces.
I just nod. And she nods back.
And that’s it. We run together on the treadmill, Chopin blasting from the gym’s sound system. When we’re both wrung out, I take her to the kitchen and make her scrambled eggs. Then I lead her back into the dungeon, carefully undress her, press a kiss underneath the platinum collar I had made for her, and then put her in bed.
I put our weapons in the locked room, and then I join her.
I spoon her, shielding her with my body, my arm wrapped tight around her as though she could ever escape me. I am the monster in the dungeon and no matter how many times I save her or she saves me, we will always be the twisted broken limbs of a tree that never got enough sunlight.
I may be a bad guy, but I knew that the best choice out of several wrong choices tonight was to let that boy die in the explosion. It would have been quick, fast, so fast as to be painless. I used enough C4. No one would have survived that explosion. And no one would have suffered, despite how much it might have amused me if some of them did.
The odds that I was going to be able to go in there, break the plan and not be detected by security… the odds that I wasn’t going to have to fight my way out of there and possibly die were not good. There were three realistic outcomes for that boy the second he stepped into that building: die in the explosion, die in the crossfire while I was stupidly trying to spare him—not for his sake or Mina’s but for my own selfish need to keep her—or live, traumatized by this night for the rest of his existence.
But I didn’t have time to explain it or reason with her. Nothing would have taught her but the experience, and I’m sorry I had to hurt her, but I’m not sorry she understands now.
This is not a game, but if she wants to play at my level she has to understand.
She still thinks I’m the hero for saving that boy, but she didn’t know or think through what would happen. I did. I knew what this night would do to him. And I know what he will likely become… a monster, just like me.
I am that kid’s villain origin story, and if Mina ever understands I knew this would be the outcome of my choices tonight, I’ll lose her forever.
I can never let that happen.
epilogue
BRIAN
13 YearsLater
It’s a calm sunny morning, the wrong kind of day for so much gravity. It should be raining, thundering—at the very least dark and gray. There’s nothing light about what’s about to happen. I’m about to become either a father, or an executioner.
It’s a very nice three-story red brick with white columns, way too nice for a kid his age. But he’s seen a lot and got his trust fund early—the second he turned eighteen. I waited six more months. It was a long wait after I’ve watched him for so many years. I’ve kept him alive on more than one occasion, though he doesn’t know that. It would be a shame to break that pattern now.
“Yeah?” the kid says.
“Hello Aidan, my name is Brian Sloan. I’m the man who killed your father.”
His eyes widen, first in shock, then narrow in anger. He pulls a gun from the back of his waistband, holding it sideways like a gang member on TV. I just shake my head at this amateur move. I could disarm him. He’s not trained.
Of course I don’t have to do that because I didn’t come alone. I hear the slide rack of another gun and smile at my dark goddess.
Mina stands behind him, her gun pointed at his head. A .22 so we won’t have to worry about an exit wound if she pulls the trigger. Neat. Clean. Just how I like it.
“I would be very careful about what I did in the next few minutes,” she says, “We’re here to make you an offer, and I don’t want to be a giant cliché, but it’s one you can’t refuse.”
“You should probably put your weapon down. My girl is well trained and, well, she does have a gun six inches from the back of your head. Haven’t you ever heard of locks?”
“You’d be so proud,” Mina says. “He’s got locks, a security code… but nothing I couldn’t break through. He’s even got a couple of guards on the property. Or had. We should find out who to send flowers and condolences to.”
Aidan slowly puts the gun on the ground and then stands, his eyes never leaving mine. “Coming to kill me before I can kill you, you motherfucker? Don’t think I haven’t been looking.”
I just laugh. I hope I don’t have to kill him, because in a very real way, I’ve been Adian’s father since the Fourth of July thirteen years ago. He was already here in the world, but in some ways, he was just being born, and like most births, there was a lot of blood, a lot of tears, and a lot of pain. I remember when I was born like that.
Now the darkness that crawls around inside of me, inside of Mina, is also here in Aidan. I could never bring a child into this world the normal way. I’d made sure of that medically many years ago when I first started the house with the other guys. But I also couldn’t bring a child into this world with me as I am.
