“You weren’t tempted by what they said?” I asked as he drew me out the door.
He made a face. “To go hunt down a bunch of randoms at night? Not interesting. I’d rather hunt you down. Because I know there’s always going to be this little flicker of defiance in you, Lark. There’s always going to be a little wonder in your mind.I wonder if I could escape him this time. And it will give me great pleasure to prove you wrong every single time.”
“Maybe sometime I will escape.”
He snorted, gripping my chin hard with one hard.
“Try me then.”
A smile spread across that blood-flecked face.
“Give me what I won.”
“I love you,” I said promptly.
“I love you,” he replied, kissing me with that bloody hand spanned across my throat, smearing evidence of his psychopathy all over my chest, and I felt my heart begin to pound.
Maybe it wasn’t the empathy I had dreamed I could teach psychopaths. But it wassomething.
“How are we going to explain this?” I demanded.
“Let’s burn this whole damn thing down,” he shrugged. “It fucking reeks in here.”
“You—don’t care?” I asked. “This manor has been in your family for generations.”
Gabriel made a rude noise.
“You and the baby are my family. I don’t give a fuck. Let’s get the gasoline, baby girl. Then we’ll pick out the crib.”
EPILOGUE
“With further research comes new avenues of analysis,” I said, clicking the next slide of my presentation. “Our previous understanding of psychopaths has been wrong. Very wrong. I have thought psychopaths could be taught empathy and kindness. Now I see I was mistaken.”
There were gasps all around the auditorium as the psychiatry scholars clutched their notebooks. This would upend decades of research, but I had to be true to what I knew.
“Normal therapeutic treatment does not work on psychopaths. There is only one lever that will work, and that is finding a psychopath’s totem or trophy. The one thing they care about. Sometimes it’s a feeling, or a sensation. Sometimes it’s a goal. . .or even a person. The one thing they will put the focus of their entire being into. . .”
I went on, clicking through the sides as the audience hung on my every word.
Of course I couldn’t delude myself into thinking my lecture had been the only reason people came today.
Part of it of course was my massive hockey superstar husband sitting in the front row in a salmon-colored polo shirt and khaki slacks with our 18-month-old daughter in his lap.
Theoohsandaahsof the audience were always bubbling below the surface as Gabriel fed Isabella snacks and held up soft toys for her to play with.
You might even think he was a normal, well-adjusted man, instead of a violent, dangerous psychopath who was only gentle with his child.
After the presentation was over, we mingled with the other scholars for a cheese and wine reception, and then when Isabella got fussy we headed back to our home.
“So sorry to hear about that tragic fire,” one of my colleagues murmured. “I can’t believe Ashgrove Manor is justgone. And the loss of your father, Dr. Descoteaux? And even your uncle and butler? I am so sorry for your incalculable loss.”
“What loss?” Gabriel said. “I have my wife. And my daughter.”
The colleague stared at him, and he stared at the colleague, and I smiled to myself at the thought that never in a million years would they understand each other.
To Gabriel, the death of his father and uncle and the destruction of his family home meant nothing and to kill them did not pang his conscience at all.
He didn’t have one.
