Page 119 of Obsession

“Tell me, Gray,” Cain says, his lips a thin line of fury. “Is that what the girls you molested said to you when you took them into your home?”

Without another word, he dunks the minister’s face in the pool of water. I want to look away, but I don’t. What Cain does and who Cain is are inexorably intertwined. If I love him—and I do—I love all of him, even the cruel, vindictive parts that lurk in the shadows. Those are the parts that make all of him whole.

I watch Descamps struggle, thrashing in the chair he’s secured to until I know he can’t breathe. My own air’s constricted in my lungs until Cain brings him up. He hasn’t even broken a sweat.

“Anything more to tell us, minister?”

A pause. He’s breaking. When he doesn’t say anything, Cain submerges him in the water a second time.

The first time I saw Cain torture someone, I had to look away. I hated that I did. I wanted to face the cruelty he inflicted, because it was always,alwaysjustified. With ruthless determination, he gets what he wants when he wants it, but he always has good reason. He doesn’t torture for sport and never without a damn good reason.

This is why I hired Cain. This is what we came for. I need these fucking answers.

Bubbles emerge from the water. He’s got Descamps right on the edge.

Cain looks in my eyes as the minister faces his own mortality, and I feel that stark, honest truth to my very soul. We don’t speak. We don’t blink. We stare in solidarity of a shared purpose, and I love him for it.

He lifts Descamps out of the water. A rivulet of water floods his eyes and face, his hair dripping onto the cold concrete floor below. The light blue dress shirt he wears is soaked from the collar to the first three buttons, his pants still untouched. Cain slams him back on the floor.

“Answer.”

“Fine! Fine,” he says, crying softly to himself. He glares at Cain, and his words feel like venom. “I had an affair with her mother when I was newly ordained.”

Now that, I didn’t expect.

Ew.

“And?” Cain stands with his arms crossed on his chest. “If you think we have all day, minister, I can speed things along?—”

“No! No,” Descamps whimpers. “I… I knew her well. We ended what was between us and went our separate ways. I began my ministry and she… she married Violet’s father. They had her less than a year after they married, but I always kept in touch with Anya.”

Anya.I’ve never heard anyone use my mother’s name.

Cain nods. “Go on. I know you’ve got more to tell us, Gray.”

“You were the one that married them,” I said.

Gray nods.

“And you were the one that knows why they were killed.”

Gray looks away, not answering, but when Cain lifts the chair, Descamps screams. “I’ll tell you more!”

Cain thumps the chair back on the floor. “Go on.”

Gray shivers and looks out to where his team sits, but every one of them’s restrained. Still, just to be sure, I walk over to the door with my Wilson in hand, half hoping someone will give me a reason to shoot. Cain continues the interrogation.

“Her parents did some work for them. For… for me.”

He hangs his head and looks at the floor.

He didn’t say my father… he said… my parents?

I turn back to him just as something crashes behind me. My gun’s raised and pointed in seconds. A huge, muscled guy with a gun comes straight at me. My finger hovers over the trigger. I’ve shot the target at the range so many times I could do it in my sleep, but I’ve never shot a human. In a split-second, I imagine the torn flesh and blood, the pain in his eyes. My hesitation costs me. He tackles me to the floor before I can shoot, as a gunshot blasts.

He screams, grabbing at his shoulder, and as crimson blood spurts to the floor, he rolls, and Cain’s deadly voice echoes in the small room.

“Move again, and I shoot you between the eyes.”

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