Page 100 of Sin Like the Devil

No. He doesn’t.

Not even a little bit.

With more voices arriving all around us, I break eye contact with the devil watching over me. I don’t need him to see my humiliation as the final chunk in the dam holding my emotions at bay breaks.

Xander’s grip tautens when a sob bursts from my chest, though it sounds weak and lacklustre. He’s holding me so tight; it feels like he’s trying to stop me from slipping from his grasp and drowning.

I know what mess now decorates my body. I caught that brief glimpse. The scribbled craftsmanship inked in my own blood. Disfiguring my tattoos with the path of his blade. Rick left me a message.

Harrowdean’s whore.

CHAPTER 16

RIPLEY

START A WAR – KLERGY & VALERIE BROUSSARD

Present Day

Dropping my eyes from the camera lens, I look down at the lace-detailed cuffs of my off-white blouse. The beautiful foliage on my right arm is still intact, swirling upwards from my wrist to cover my whole forearm.

The left tattoo sleeve used to be an identical match. I got them done on my nineteenth birthday after spending months saving up from every piece of artwork I sold. I thoroughly researched the artist and even illustrated my own design.

Now the design is distorted by old, jagged scarring. It’s faded a little over the last decade, but the skin is still puckered and shiny against dark spirals of ink, making the words easy enough to read. I should know. I trace them every day.

Harrowdean’s whore.

“You never considered tattooing back over it?” Elliot asks me.

“Why? So I could forget? Pretend like Harrowdean never happened?”

Wisely, he keeps quiet. I’ve long hated journalists and their impertinent questions. Every single one of them who’s attempted to buy my story has been out for one thing—blame.

They see me as an easy target, a place to put the world’s rage, now that Incendia is gone. Even all these years later, unanswered questions remain. The scars left by our psychiatric sentences have never truly faded.

“Everything changed after Rick’s attack.” I look back up at Elliot. “Things were already shifting at Harrowdean, but that was the turning point.”

“How so?”

“Wars often start silently. Pieces were sliding into place to precipitate what happened next, but even if we’d known… we couldn’t have stopped it.”

Flicking through his notebook, he studies lines of scrawled handwriting. “You’ve mentioned the rumours circling about what was also happening at Blackwood Institute.”

“News travelled fast. Even when management didn’t want us to hear it.”

Elliot nods thoughtfully. “It was a national scandal at the time. We’ve attempted to interview several Blackwood inmates, including Brooklyn West, on a few occasions. But no such luck.”

I suppress a snort. Brooklyn wouldn’t waste a single second of her time on something like this. She’s never played well with the media and doesn’t care to revisit her past.

For a long time, I felt the same way. Like talking about what happened inside Harrowdean Manor would somehow drag me back there, into the clutches of evil beyond comparison.

“Incendia left many victims, Miss Bennet. I’m sure you know that better than most.”

Because they’re my victims too.

Feeling flushed all of a sudden, I tug at the collar of my blouse. All of the air in the room has vanished. It’s like I’ve stepped into an airlock. I take a sip from the glass of water on the table, but it does little to calm me.

This is precisely why I never leave my safe bubble. When the panic attacks hit, they’re intense and ugly. Old Ripley would laugh at the mess of a person I am now. Traumatised and haunted by all she’s seen.

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