Page 58 of Torment

17

Jolie

I clickedthe TV remote again and again, aimlessly jumping from channel to channel. I was mostly keeping my hands busy. There was nothing good playing, and even if there was, I probably wouldn’t be able to concentrate on it. My mind was still whirling from everything I’d learned today.

I should’ve known that Mason thought I betrayed him to the cult. It made so much sense now that I thought about it. Why else would he be so sure that I still had a connection to my father or any of the other men from New Eden? I should’ve figured that out the second he commanded me to give him information regarding them.

Then again, when he wasn’t slicing and dicing me over the last few weeks, he was beating me senseless. He hadn’t exactly given me much of an opportunity to think too deeply about why he thought I was protecting my father.

It wasn’t like I’d known about the true nature of his scars, either. I had no idea the cult blew him up as vengeance for turning them in to the FBI, or that he believed I was the snitch who set the whole car bomb incident in action. I genuinely believed the online gossip about the house fire, and when he revealed himself in the underwater cell all those weeks ago, I didn’t react or comment on the scars because I thought that would anger him even more.

Now I finally understood what he said to me in that moment. ‘Stand up and look at me. Look and see what happened to me, you little bitch.’

At the time, I thought he was just trying to scare me by forcing me to look at the scars he so clearly believed to be disgusting and monstrous. It didn’t occur to me that he wanted me to gaze upon what was supposedly my handiwork.

If I’d just said something back then, all of this could’ve been avoided. If I’d asked what happened to him and where the scars came from, he would’ve surely realized I had nothing do with it. Then again, he might’ve assumed I was mocking him and tortured me even more instead. There was no way of knowing, and I suppose there was no point dwelling on it anyway. The past wasn’t going to change. I couldn’t take back the things I‘d said and done, or the things I hadn’t. Neither could Mason.

I closed my eyes and leaned back on the quilted bedhead behind me. I was so tired. Tired of sitting here going over the same thoughts in an endless loop. Tired of wondering what the hell would happen next.

Mason had given me zero indication of what he would do to me now that he knew I was blameless for his family’s terrible demise. He left the room and locked me in about five hours ago, and I hadn’t seen or heard anything since.

My eyes snapped open ten minutes later when I heard the key turning in the lock on the other side of the door. Heart racing, I pulled my knees up to my chest and waited, eyes wide with trepidation.

Mason stepped inside with several black bags. Without saying a word, he began to fill them with all the clothes and other things he bought for me when he was pretending to be nice a couple of weeks ago.

My stomach lurched. If he was getting rid of those things, then that probably meant he was getting rid of me too. Even though he knew I was actually innocent of everything he once thought I was guilty of, he couldn’t just let me go free after all the terrible things he’d done to me in the name of revenge. I knew that much.

“Mason, please!” I whimpered pathetically, trailing after him into the bathroom as he swept all the lotions and hair products into yet another bag. “Don’t kill me! We can work something out, I swear. I won’t tell anyone about this. I promise.”

He ignored me and kept packing things into the bags. He obviously didn’t believe me, and why would he? What sort of person in these circumstances wouldn’t talk to the police as soon they reached safety?

He finally moved to the doorway and held up a hand, beckoning me to follow. “Come.”

My knees buckled beneath me. “Please, no!” I begged. “You know I don’t deserve to die!”

“I said come. Now.”

“I thought you weren’t angry at me anymore. You said you didn’t blame me for what I did,” I said, cowering on the floor. My voice was nothing more than a pitiful squeak. “You said you understood…”

Mason didn’t respond. He roughly grabbed my right arm and pulled me back up before dragging me along behind him. When we crossed through the main living area, I noticed Buddy was no longer in his tank. Did Mason get rid of him too? Was he trying to erase every memory of me as if that would somehow erase every terrible thing he’d done?

He led me into the front entryway, and then he told me to wait while he went outside. I stood there quaking, unable to run even if I wanted to.

Mason returned a few minutes later. “This is yours.” He held up a set of keys.

I shook my head, confused. “W-what?”

He opened the front door and directed me out onto the porch. A brand new black car was parked in the driveway.

“You need to go,” he said. I noticed he was refusing to meet my eyes. “Your things are in the back of the Maserati if you want to keep them. If not, toss them in a dumpster. I don’t care.”

“I don’t understand. You aren’t going to kill me?” I said in a small voice, my hands trembling by my side.

Surely this was some sort of trick. Some new way to torture me. Did he not believe me when I said I had nothing do with what happened to him all those years ago? Was the car secretly rigged with a bomb so that I would go up in flames like he once did?

“No.” Mason shook his head. “The car is in your name. Buddy is in a small transport tank in the front. I’ve also transferred some money into your bank account. It’s enough for you to live on comfortably, so you won’t need to work again if you choose that path. You can do whatever you want with it, though. I only ask one thing: that you use some of it to see a decent therapist for all the issues you have with guilt. You shouldn’t live like that.”

“Huh? You’re giving me money? And you want me to see a therapist?” I gaped at him. “What the hell is going on?”

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