Page 24 of Broken Hearts

10

Celeste

I curledup contentedly in the armchair in my room, my head buried in a book. The weather today was horrible, freezing and stormy, but I was in a good mood. Alex had made me feel truly special in recent days, and my nerve pain was almost completely gone again. I was, dare I say it, happy for the first time in weeks. As happy as I could be under the circumstances, that is.

Alex had several consults in the city today, so he wasn’t going to be home for hours. I had the whole house to myself (aside from the rooms I wasn’t allowed in) and I could do whatever I wanted. Today, what I wanted involved curling up with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate.

I jumped at a loud crashing sound a moment later, before sighing with relief. It was just a tree branch falling somewhere on the property. The storm outside was whipping everything into a frenzy. Suddenly the lamp in my room switched off, leaving me in shadows, and I groaned. The power had gone out.

My mood brightened almost immediately. So many things in this house ran electronically. With the power out, I could get into places I usually wasn’t able to gain access to, because all the locks on the upstairs doors were electronic as far as I knew. I wouldn’t even be seen, because the security cameras would all be down too. Also, I could go farther than fifty feet on the property, because the invisible electric force field surrounding the place would’ve failed in the outage.

I didn’t want to escape. Really. I just wanted to see if I could.

I hurriedly put some thick, comfortable shoes on and stepped outside. Dead leaves were whipping in a fast, howling wind, and spurts of freezing rain and ice pellets spattered onto my face. I headed to the back of the house before running down the garden path by the greenhouse. Alex once told me it led to a creek on the property, frozen over by now. I wanted to see it out of pure curiosity and appreciation for the outdoors, but it was well over two hundred yards away, so I’d never been able to get anywhere near it.

I hadn’t even made it a third of the way when my body began to jerk and convulse with sharp jolts. I sprang back, cursing. The electric collar must’ve had a backup battery system in it in case of power outages. Disappointed, I trudged back up the path toward the greenhouse.

Shit.The plants!

My heartrate picked up again, and I raced into the greenhouse. The space was temperature-controlled, and if the power failed for too long, the plants I was attempting to grow would be affected. The herbs I’d planted from pots might wither and die, and the things I planted from seeds might never break the soil surface at all.

With a sigh of relief, I realized there was a backup generator in the greenhouse. All I had to do was manually switch the system over. When that was done, I murmured to the plants. “I hope you’re all okay.”

I knew it was stupid to talk to plants, but I once heard that they liked it. Somehow, it helped them grow. It wasn’t like I had anyone else to talk to around here anyway, when Alex was gone. Unless you counted Justice Baldwin down in the shelter cells, but I had no desire to speak to that dirty old bastard.

I headed back inside, slipped my shoes off at the mat, and padded upstairs. The power still seemed to be out, which meant I could check out the forbidden rooms—Alex’s bedroom, and his study.

I went to his bedroom first. It was big but sparsely decorated. Lots of grays and charcoals, sharp lines and understated furniture. Certainly not the red and black sex dungeon I’d been picturing. I briefly checked out his walk in closet, but there wasn’t much there aside from clothes and shoes. I was more interested in the study, anyway.

I left the bedroom and crept toward the home office down the hall. The thick door opened right up to me, and I said a silent grateful prayer that the power was still out.

The room was lined with shelves, all stacked with thick books and medical journals. On one side there was also a large filing cabinet, and in the center on the left wall, a dark wooden desk with a computer, printer, and various papers lying in messy stacks.

For a second, I thought about trying to get on the computer, but then I remembered it wouldn’t work with no electricity. Instead, I turned to the filing cabinet and tentatively approached it. I knew it was wrong for me to go through Alex’s stuff, but I still felt like he was holding things back from me. He’d been trying hard to give me what I needed over the last few days, and I appreciated that, really, but it didn’t mean he’d opened up. I still barely knew anything about him, other than the few shreds of information I’d gathered over the weeks.

I wanted to know more.

Crouching down, I checked out the lowest drawer first. My hand flew to my mouth as I saw what was inside it. All the photos of the tortured girls with carved circles were there, along with printed out information sheets regarding the men Alex had previously captured, tortured and killed. Circle members. There were newspaper clippings too, all about the Heartbreaker case.

When I closed the drawer, I noticed a small circle sticker on it. I hadn’t noticed it before, but if I had, it would’ve tipped me off about the contents. It was the drawer he kept all his serial killing research in, along with any other Circle-related information.

The top drawers were all boring property, banking, or tax-related things. I left them alone and padded over to the bookshelves. I’d just noticed that there were two lower cupboards on one of the shelves. Curious, I opened them to see some covered boxes. One had my name printed on it in neat handwriting.

Frowning, I lifted the lid off the box and sorted through its contents. There were photos of me that Alex must’ve printed off my Instagram account, the heart charm bracelet he once gave me, and various other mementos which belonged to me. A teddy bear. A copy of my second semester class schedule from last year. A book which had gone missing from my house about five months ago.

I sat back, my heart racing. Either this was where he’d stored objects related to me while he was stalking me for all that time, or he intended on giving some of these things to me one day, as a reminder of my old life. Knowing him, he probably thought it would be romantic.

My eyes fell on a box next to the one marked with my name. This other box had the same scribbled handwriting on it, but a different name. Evangeline.

I lifted the lid off that box as well and slowly sifted through the contents. At first it seemed a lot like mine. Keepsakes, little teddy bears, bits and pieces of jewelry. There were also several photos of a petite girl with strawberry blonde hair and dark brown eyes. She had the long, coltish limbs of a teenager but a more mature, heavily made-up face, so I figured she could be anywhere between the age of fourteen and twenty when the pictures were taken. If I had to hazard a precise guess, I’d say eighteen.

I picked up a necklace which lay coiled on top of the photos. It was a star-shaped locket which opened up to reveal another tiny photo of the girl. On the back was an inscribed name—Evangeline Gibson.

I delved deeper into the box, pulling out more photos. What I saw made me feel ill all over again. It was the same girl in shorts and a bra, posing for the camera against a white background with her head bowed. There were several in the same set, showing her from different angles, each one displaying a different scar or injury. On her back, there were fat purple lines which showed that she had been severely whipped till she bled in the past. The front-side photos showed massive bruising all over her chest, stomach and legs, so extensive that almost every inch of her tan skin was dark purple and blue.

At first I thought she had to be another Circle victim, but then I realized she had no circle scar on her stomach like all the others. Whoever tortured this girl wasn’t a Circle member.

Besides, if she was a Circle victim, her photos would be in the drawer in the cabinet like all the others.

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