Page 8 of Red Dreams

“I don't?—”

A woman's voice fills the room, tinny and frightened:“Kaden, they're following me. Ever since that story I filed about the cartel... God, I think they know about Cassie. Please, I need?—”

Cassie cuts off the recording. “She thought running would save her. Just like you thought staying would save you.”

The weight of implication suffocates me in the same way the pillowcase over my head did. “What happened to her?”

“What do you think?” Cassie's smile is all teeth. “The same thing that happens to everyone who gets too close to him. They snap. Or they disappear.” She taps her phone. “Would you like to hear how she sounded at the end?”

I choke back a sob. “Why are you making me listen to this?”

“Because you need to understand what he is. What loving him does to people.” She crouches in front of me, her blue eyes steady on mine.

Normally, people don’t know how to stay focused on me, their gaze darting between my blue and brown eye. Not her.

“And,” Cassie continues, “because I want you to help me show him what he really is.”

My heart clenches at the unrestrained ache in her words, the unhealed wounds festering beneath her icy exterior, yet she gives me no time to reason with her.

Cassie’s breath is cool against my face, smelling of mint and expensive wine. “Did you know he used to record me, too? Reading bedtime stories, singing little songs. He was obsessed with preserving every moment.”

She tilts her head, studying me like a mortician assessing the next corpse they must embalm. “The mighty Scythe, brought low by sentiment. All those recordings, gathering dust while I screamed in the dark. While Morelli made me recorddifferentkinds of messages.”

I try again. “He searched for you. Kaden never stopped?—”

“Looking?” Cassie’s voice drops to a whisper. “Or replacing me?”

Before I can process her meaning, she stands and strides to the room's corner. A red light blinks in the shadows—a camera I hadn't noticed before. She plucks something from beside it and returns, holding up a small recorder.

“Let's play a game,” she says, her lips curving. “A little father-daughter project. Since you're sogoodat taking my place.”

“I wasneveryour replacement.”

“You live in the lighthouse he used to run past every morning, where I wasburied alivewhile everyone walked overhead, searching the horizon for me instead of below ground.” Each word is a precise cut. “Did he cook you breakfastthere? Stand at that countertop and pretend he was still whole? Tell me, when he touched you, did you taste the guilt on his tongue?”

I lift my chin. “I won't help you hurt him.”

Cassie's smile is a ragged wound. “No? Then perhaps we should send him something else. The sounds of his new love being unmade, just like his first.” She leans in close, her eyes glittering. “Trust me, those screams will haunt him far longer than any sentiment could.”

“I won't scream for you either.” The words come out stronger than I feel. “You can hurt me, torture me, but I won't give you what you want.”

“Such loyalty.” Cassie traces her fingers down my throat, a ghost of pressure that promises violence. “I had that once. The desperate need to protect him, to keep his love.” Her touch turns cruel, nails piercing through my skin. “But protecting him is what ruined me. And now it's going to break you.”

She releases me and moves to a sleek laptop on a nearby table. “Do you really think I need your cooperation?”

With a few keystrokes, my voice fills the room in fragments of conversations with Kaden; intimate moments pieced together into something twisted and wrong.

“You think you mean something to me? … Not even close.

“I’d rather drown than let you save me. I don’t want you.

“Weak… just like the rest.

“I feel nothing for you—nothing.

“You bring blood, you bring death … and for what? Nothing I want.

“Everything you touch … just turns to darkness.

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