Page 87 of Knight

I’m shaking when I move closer to him, knowing the beast inside wants to run wild. Whatever colour left in his face is gone, his eyes glossy and narrow. I have no words for this. No words for the unthinkable. All I can do is take Damien’s shaking body in my arms, pull him to my side, and hold him the same way he did when I told him my darkest secret.

“It’s okay,” I say, relieved when he lets me take him in my arms. “I’m here.” He tries to say something but his voice cracks, and his body goes limp. His head digs into my chest like he never wants me to let go. “I’ll always be here.”

* * *

The fire crackles in the room, the air smelling like wood and Damien.

We’re still on the floor of the office. The only difference is a fire’s roaring and papers lay around the room. While I would usually be nervous sitting next to a roaring fire, with Damien, it feels calm. Safe. Even while being in the home of a murder.

We found another bottle of scotch tucked away in one of Sebastien’s drawers. It’s been helping us digest the tragedy we’ve discovered.

“He beat the shit out of my mom, and the final time, she slipped, hit her head bad, and he didn’t call the police,” Damien repeats the facts, calmer now, albeit still with a slur. “What kind of sick man lets his wife bleed out in front of him?”

After finding more about his dark past, Damien’s been more of an open book. Blame the whiskey or the trauma, but his past is as dark as mine. As twisted and murky.

Damien wasn’t the only person Sebastien laid his hands on. According to Damien, his wife was no different.

“She didn’t want this life anymore,” I remind him, piecing together the stories he’s been telling me. “You said they were fighting a lot. She had a plan to leave?”

“But he wouldn’t let her,” he says slowly, as if he’s looking for all the pieces to magically align. But I know better. They don’t. If anything, it gets muddier.

We’ve been sitting here for a while, and the longer Damien tries to piece it together, the less sense it makes. I reach out, my hand on his bare back. “You sure you don’t want to head back downstairs?”

“It’s like he knew something, or someone, was fucking with his plan, so he let her die.” Damien takes a moment before he chuckles, taking a swig from the bottle. “Like father like son I guess. Fucking ironic.”

“What?” I catch that, my brows lowering, my hand moving away from his back. “Whaddya mean ‘like father like son’?” It’s not like I don’t see the similarities. The aggression, the crave for power. The haughtiness. But I want to know what he means.

“He didn’t call the ambulance,” he’s laughing now but I don’t know what’s so funny. “And I didn’t call the ambulance for him either.”

The room shifts again, my chest tight like a cage squeezing in on it. I can hardly get the words out, “W-wait …”

“I did the same thing he did to my mom,” he laughs again. I know he’s processing this but is he saying what I think he’s saying? “I’m just like the old man.”

“What are you saying, Damien?”

“You really wanna know?” Damien looks up at me with a look I haven’t seen all week. It’s that look he gives me in the hallway when he’s about to drop a bomb. My heart picks up, my hand moving to clutch it. I’m hoping it’s something that doesn’t make me hate him. That doesn’t make me regret all this. “What does it matter anyway? You don’t fucking trust me.”

“What are you talking about?” My voice is a shaky slur and I already can’t breathe.

“I killed my father, Jo.” No. “I didn’t call the ambulance. I watched him.”

“No!” I’m pleading but my voice is too hoarse for it to sound that way. “Stop.”

He doesn’t, “I watched him as he gurgled and shook like a possessed snake until he couldn’t make any more sounds I—”

SLAP!

My hand comes to his face without even taking another second to think about it.

What the fuck?

What. The. Fuck?

My hand comes at him again, my body wanting to make sure he felt the first one, but he grabs my wrist. The words come out anyway. “How could you? You made me think I’m the one who killed your dad! You made me and the whole fucking town think that when … when you could’ve—”

“Don’t be stupid. You saw him slip. You saw him hit his head and you didn’t do a damn thing, either.” He laughs and my other hand goes flying but he catches that too, a menacing smirk on his face. When I look into his eyes, the Damien I spent the last week with isn’t there. “Trust me now, Medusa?”

Now I’m spitting in his face because that’s the only thing I can do with his grip around my wrists. “Fuck you, Damien.”

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