Page 5 of The Sin

“Your husband opened the lockbox for you,” he said, as if he already knew, as if he already had all his facts. “Where were you? What did you see?”

“We were in a parking garage,” I said. “I’m not sure where, but I assume it was Warden Head Quarters?”

He looked at me, tapping the page with the pen nub. “And yet, when the guards discovered you in that lockbox, you were right here at the wall. You didn’t find that odd?”

“I wasn’t discovered,” I muttered. “My husband turned me in.”

His eyes narrowed on me. “That makes you angry?”

I lowered my gaze so he wouldn’t see me burn. Seriously, he even had to ask?

“Not angry,” I said slowly, meekly, taking careful measure of my temper. “I just want to get the facts straight. I was trapped in darkness. I didn’t have a clue where we’d been or where we were going. I’m not trying to be dismissive of your questions, I simply don’t know how to answer. Maybe Roman brought me here because this Guard station was the first place he thought of? Maybe he knows someone here?”

I lifted my gaze to give him an innocent look. “Perhaps you should ask my husband, he would know.”

He looked at me so long, so intensely, I felt like a bug about to be squashed. Then he transferred that intensity to the page before him, scribbled away for at least five minutes after I’d finished speaking.

I clasped my fingers in my lap, tried not to squirm or fidget. What was he writing?Lies. Lies. Lies.He’d recommend full incarceration. If I were lucky. How did they execute traitors anyway? Beheading? Firing squad? Injection?

I’d never seen an execution.

There’d been acts of treason over the years, one in particular that I could recall. An average looking man in his early twenties, nothing remarkable about him at all. I assume there’d been a trial—no details had been shared. We’d only seen the verdict aired on the public screening in the town square.

Guilty on two counts of high treason against the Eastern Coalition.

I’d been about seven years old at the time, excluded from the rumors and gossip that must have spread like wildfire and I’d never really given it much thought…until now, until it could be my face on that public screen.

My stomach knotted, pushing bile up my throat.Shut up. Shut up.The thoughts in my head didn’t listen. I was going to be sick. I swallowed down the sour taste and it hit the bottom of my stomach with a backlash of bitter anger.

Finally, Mr. Stenner paused to look at me again. “Is there anything else you’d like to add?”

There was plenty Icouldadd. I knew secrets, secrets that would bring Roman down with me.

But I couldn’t do it.

The thought of betraying him chipped at my veins, leaking lifeblood and whatever bits of me that hadn’t already spilled out when Roman had cracked my heart down the middle. If I did this, out of revenge and cruelty and hate, there’d really be nothing of me left behind.

“I am sorry,” I finally said, because that’s what this man wanted to hear, wasn’t it? “I am truly sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused.”

4

Eight glasses of water.

Two meals.

Seven bathroom breaks. With that blinking red light, I didn’t want to risk a chamber pot. I’d only call for a bathroom break when I actually needed one.

Twenty-two hours.

I was never getting out of here.

Maybe this was rehab after all. Maybe there weren’t group sessions and counselling and lectures and psyche evaluations. Maybe it was just this, day after day after day. Twenty-two hours in, and now I understood how easily it could drive anyone certifiably insane.

I’d still hardly slept.

Ants crawled in my brain and snakes slithered beneath my skin. My body ached and my muscles cramped with tension and the bad posture of slumping in a chair for hour upon hour. I tried to pace it out in the six-by-six room, but it wasn’t nearly large enough for me to run away from myself and the mistakes I’d made.

The buzz of the door unlocking snapped me to attention.

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