Page 36 of Deliver us from Evil

“Why?” I manage.

He draws back a little, and then his eyes fall to my lips. “Because he’s a clever fuck, that’s why.”

Gabriel taps my temple hard with a finger. “Always ten steps ahead of me.”

My entire body vibrates how hard my heart’s beating. “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “He shouldn’t have used you.”

“No!” he agrees, breath painting my lips again. His eyes are locked on mine now, so intense I can almost feel his pain. “No, he shouldn’t have. Not if he loved me like he claimed he did. But you know what, Trinity? I realized something a few years ago.” He glances away for barely a second before his eyes are back on mine again. “Still can’t believe it took me so long, but I realized, ofcoursehe didn’t love me. He’s not capable of love. He’d just pretend. Just like he’d pretend to be normal.”

He grabs my chin, shakes my head. But not violently this time. Almost gently.

“Had everyone fooled, didn’t he?” He smiles, bitterly, cruelly. “Me. You. Everyone.”

My head sinks into the dirty mattress when he pushes back to sit. He drags his hands down his face and then slowly climbs off me.

Relief floods me with heat, then cold. I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’m walking a tightrope, and one wrong word could send me plummeting to my death.

Literally.

But I don’t need to. He’s gone off on a tangent, and I’m merely his audience.

“I was such a fool back then,” Gabriel purses his lips. “I was so infatuated with him, his plan sounded…logical. If his urges, hiscompulsions, only became worse when he repressed them then he had to find an outlet for them.”

My skin grows cold. I swallow hard, and then force myself not to fixate on Gabriel, or the words spilling out of his mouth. Instead, I tug surreptitiously at the knots lashing me to the bed, trying to find a little give in them. Something. Fucking anything.

“We tried everything, Monica and I. Sick things. Things you couldn’t wrap your head around. But it was never enough. The two of us? We were never enough for him.”

He points at the bed, and I freeze. But he’s so far lost in the past, I doubt he even sees me anymore.

“I’d strap her down for him.Hurther for him. Ropes, whips, knives. We’d fuck her raw, but it was never enough for him.”

My guts twist as I glance down at the mattress I’m lying on.

Lord, don’t let this be the same one they—

My eyes flutter closed as I will my nausea to settle down.

“It became a game, in the end.” Gabriel walks up to the bed, stares down at me. When he reaches out and grabs a lock of my hair, curling it around his finger, I do my best not to pull away or puke. “But Keith always won.”

My body sags.

I’m not getting out of these knots. I doubt I’m even getting out of this basement. Not after I see the look in Gabriel’s eyes.

Defeat.

He knows there’s no coming back from this. You can’t tie up your daughter in a basement and still expect her to love you.

If that’s even what he was after. It’s night and day with him. Like a faulty switch that keeps dimming and brightening a light even when you’re not touching it.

“You’re crazy,” I say quietly. Not with malice. Just stating a fact, that’s all.

Gabriel smiles as he huffs out a breath through his nose. “Yes.” He agrees through a sigh. “I am.” Then he releases my hair. “But not always. Not at first.” He points at himself. “He made me like this. With his tricks and his games.”

He’s nodding over and over again, like he’s stuck. “Theydid this to me.”

“You can’t keep blaming him. He’s dead.”

At this, he throws back his head and laughs.

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