Page 104 of Start With A Slap

CHAPTER 30

Dirty Secrets

The water had run cold.

Ivy noticed it only when the sound of her chattering teeth interrupted her racing thoughts. Shivering on her knees on the hard bathtub floor, she held onto the tub spout like a buoy and cut the shower off. She sat there, unable to move until the pins and needles subsided.

Wiping the steam off the medicine cabinet mirror, she stared at her dull-eyed reflection, trying to find herself in it.

Who are you? Why did you do those things?

How did you let him convince you he was anything but a monster?

It’s not like she wasn’t privy to Sever’s sinister side — she knew the first day they met that he got his jollies lashing naked girls; she learned in his mile-high bedroom that he had a kink for asphyxiation. But he was so sincerely infatuated with her, so doting, that evenshehad begun to reason that there must be a soft, golden light underneath all that darkness.

But there wasn’t. Underneath his darkness, it only got darker.

He didn’t justwhipthese women. He shackled them to a cross. He tied anoosearound their necks. He impaled them on thick phalluses. And those knives... did he cut them? She couldn’t imagine him going that far... but there were serial killers who were devoted husbands and dads.

The mirror was fogged up again. Which was good, because she didn’t want to look at herself. Nor did she want to think about that snake or his secret lair or the women he menaced in there ever again.

She felt betrayed, lied to, stupid, sick. Disgusted with herself, deeply ashamed... And underneath all of that was a raw, spiraling emotion she hadn’t identified until now: grief.

Ivy knew the feeling intimately, but in this context it didn’t make sense. All she’d lost was a venomous blight: after being steered by Sever’s invisible reins for nearly two months, his beguiling spell was broken at last. Ivy had agency again.

Seeing that room was agoodthing, she convinced herself as she towel-dried her hair en route to the bedroom. She was liberated, free to pick up the pieces of her fractured marriage and apply every iota of her being toward making it better and stronger than ever before.

She could start over right now, tonight, with zero misconceptions, no chance of temptation, no gaudy watches with keys to a Holmby Hills estate etched into their backs...

The Cartier box hit the bottom of the trash can with a satisfyingbang. She couldn’t believe she’d ever considered wearing that gaudy bauble. If she did, she’d become exactly what he wanted her to be: the happy little adulteress — no, thekept womanat his beck and call.

“Never,” she whispered, slipping into a soft pair of sweats, and a t-shirt Jason had worn and left hanging on the door. It smelled like him.

Her phone made a noise — the particular chime that told her there was a text message waiting for her.

Concluding that she needed a drink first, she opened the fridge and picked out a Corona... but something else caught her eye: the outrageously expensive bottle of Dom Perignon that Sever had given her the night she cooked for him.

She opened it. Let it pop and fizz into the sink. Startled, Huey ran for cover.

“Happy Secretary’s Day,” she said caustically, and drank from the bottle.

It began to burn the back of her throat and spill down her neck, but she didn’t stop until she needed air. Coughing, she wiped her mouth with Jason’s shirt, upended the bottle over the sink and watched it all bubble down the drain.

She snapped out of it when Huey licked her toes. “Oh! Hey. No. No champagne for you. Bad boy.”

Her phone chimed again. She peered at her bag, on the living room coffee table, then looked at Huey. “If that’s him, I won’t read it. I’m not Sever’s bitch anymore.”

The dog cocked his head, then followed her to the living room.

Two new messages. The first was from Jason, sent an hour ago.

Gonna be a couple hours more so don’t wait up to eat. Sorry bout this. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow night, promise. Love you babe

The next was not from Jason. On the message list, above his, was a message fromLe Mal.She could see the first three words:I’m not the only

Her stomach knotted.

Her thumb hovered over the message. She could trash it with a swipe... or she could see the rest of the sentence.

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