Page 123 of Sin Like the Devil

“Nice to see you again.” The same man smiles at me now. “It’s been… dear me, ten or twelve years? You’re all grown up now.”

Play this smart. Stay alive.

“Sir,” I return stiffly.

“Always such a polite, well-mannered little thing.” Bancroft eyes me. “It’s a pity, what happened to you. So much wasted potential. Jonathan was most disappointed by your… predisposition.”

Of course, he’d label a chronic, enduring mental illness as an inconvenient waste of potential. Eight-year-old Ripley was already an inconvenience. But bipolar Ripley? She was a problem to be erased.

“Naturally, I offered you a place in our rehabilitative program.” Bancroft actually sounds proud. “It’s a shame that Priory Lane didn’t prove conducive. Though your transfer here was an easy request to grant.”

I peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Why am I here?”

“Because, dear Ripley, you were given an opportunity. A chance to be a part of something bigger. But the reports I’ve been receiving of recent disturbances here are yet another disappointment.”

“Perhaps if your men didn’t beat us at any available opportunity, the patient population would be more content,” I reply without thinking.

He chortles in amusement. “It is unfavourable to resort to such measures. But your control is slipping. Defiance cannot go unpunished.”

“I’ve done my job here.”

“Then do better!”

His voice raises several octaves as spit flies across the desk. Behind Bancroft’s well-versed speeches and charming smiles, it’s clear a predator lies coiled at his centre. I’ve seen that threat brimming in his eyes before.

“Your job is to keep your peers dependent,” he continues briskly. “Those who are dependent are compliant. Those who are compliant… don’t ask questions.”

The air flowing into my lungs halts. I cast a nervous glance around, but there are no escape routes. Not even a small basement window. This place is a concrete box designed to trap its prey.

“Our recent visitors to this wing asked many questions.” Bancroft rests back in his office chair. “I wonder if they knew they were being sent to their deaths. Did you think to warn them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Cut the shit, Ripley,” Davis interjects.

Feeling the weight of their collective gazes searing into me, sweat trickles down my spine. “I had to give them something.”

“That wasn’t the question.” Bancroft smiles again in that creepy, all-seeing way. “Did you think twice before sending those boys to their deaths? Did it even cross your mind?”

Is there any point in lying? I don’t need to pretend to be something I’m not here. These three men know the lows I’ve sank to in order to preserve my own existence.

“No. I wanted to hurt them. Just like they were hurting me.”

While Davis looks furious at my admission, Bancroft seems positively thrilled. Like I’ve somehow ticked a box only he can see. It makes me want to scrub a year’s worth of invisible bloodstains from my skin.

“Interesting,” he muses, fingers tapping his lips. “Perhaps we still have use for you after all.”

“Sir.” Davis steps forward to address his superior. “Our program here is compromised enough.”

“Which is precisely why it’s a bad time to be training a new stooge,” Bancroft responds. “I will not add another unstable element into an already difficult situation. We have enough to contend with.”

Picking up a stack of folded newspapers from the corner of his desk, he slides them across the gleaming surface for me to take. I reluctantly accept them and begin flipping through the papers.

“Our future is compromised, Ripley.” Bancroft rests his chin on his folded hands. “Therefore, your future is compromised too.”

The blazing headlines catch my attention, one after another. All of the papers are dated within the last few weeks.

Deadly riot at Blackwood Institute.

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