Page 119 of Sin Like the Devil

This overzealous shithead is running his hands all over her, but she’s staring at me like it’s my goddamn fault. Maybe she’s right. I didn’t make this world, but I sure as hell benefited from it.

Thinking no one’s looking, Kieran skates a hand over her ass. She hisses a selection of insults, but it doesn’t deter him from grabbing between her legs next. I watch the horrified tears stream down her cheeks.

“You’re clean,” he declares.

Taylor pushes off from the wall, her wagging tongue now silenced. I look away as she leaves, her arms wrapped tight around midsection. The guard saunters off, smirking to himself like he hasn’t just committed a crime.

“Ripley,” Elon snaps.

I catch up to him with a sickening weight curling in my stomach. It’s never been hard to find examples of abuse in Harrowdean. But never has it been so blatant and relished in. Something has shifted.

“Did you see what he did?” I demand.

Elon rolls his eyes. “Just move it, inmate.”

He grabs my bicep and tows me across the quad. My scalp prickles when I spot a familiar headful of ash-white hair. At least his vantage points are getting more creative.

Xander sits on the grass, back against a tree trunk. He’s pretending to be occupied by the thickly bound maths textbook in his lap, but instead, his narrowed eyes follow me across the quad.

We stare at each other for a brief, tension-laden second. Just the sight of him causes my heart to speed up to a traitorous gallop. Whether in fear or some twisted sense of anticipation, I don’t even want to know.

The memory of him sitting at my bedside in his bloodstained clothing rushes to the forefront along with the ghost of his hand grasping mine. As my world fell apart, he ensured I wasn’t suffering alone.

Was it real?

Does the infamous iceman… care?

That can’t be right.

Xander doesn’t know how to care. That would require far too much emotional range. I don’t know what he feels for me—hatred, fascination, a desire to torture and maim—but caring isn’t a remote possibility.

His perched form disappears as we descend farther into the institute’s grounds. The stirrings in my chest morph into a nausea-inducing pitter-patter of anxiety. Blood pounds in my ears with each step towards what I know is coming.

It’s unassuming. Nondescript. An abandoned façade coated in ivy, cracked brick and signs of disuse. Even the once sparkling stained glass windows have been boarded over and eaten alive by overgrown shrubbery.

To the untrained eye, it’s another relic of Harrowdean’s colourful past as an asylum in the nineteenth century. Most of the unrestored buildings scattered across the grounds hail back to that sombre period of time.

“Wait—”

“Shut it,” Elon snips.

“Please. I can’t go in there.”

“I said shut it, inmate. That sedative can still be arranged.”

Tucked out of sight in a cluster of glossy ivy leaves, I recognise the blinking eyes of several CCTV cameras. Why protect an empty husk? It can’t be for the cobwebs and ghosts of inmates long past that live inside.

The most sinister of evils always hide in plain sight. Hidden behind politicians’ smiles and their empty promises. Glossy brochures with photos of therapy rooms, green forests and happy, smiling patients.

As I stare up at the disused exterior of Kingsman dorms, I understand how this place and so many like it have operated under the radar for all this time. Even those who pay attention fail to see the truth that’s right in front of them.

Harrowdean isn’t real.

It’s just a well-crafted disguise.

“You don’t have to do this.” My voice trembles pathetically.

“Scared, Ripley?” Elon laughs. “Come and see where you sent your little friends.”

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