Page 71 of Risky Passion

I made sure of that.

After I killed him, I sealed off this room, locked it tight. For four years, it remained untouched. Until I needed it again.

The next time I came down here, I wasn’t a scared, immature orphan. I was eighteen. A staff member. And angry as all fucking hell.

This time, it wasn’t a teacher luring a child into a nightmare. It was me, luring Bryon Baldock down here with the promise of sex.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I steadied myself for what I was about to see. At least, I hoped he was still there.

I swept the light from my phone across the desk, then to the chair, and a small, satisfied smile curled at the edges of my mouth.

Bryon Baldock’s skeleton was still in the chair, slumped forward, held in place by the straps I’d used to tie him down. His skull lolled lazily to one side, and the yellowing tape still clung stubbornly to the remnants of what used to be his mouth.

I hadn’t meant to kill him like that.

I’d wanted to end him with the same kind of violence he’d inflicted on so many kids. Evil prick. My position as a staff member had its perks . . . leftover food, a bed to myself. But sometimes, I got intel that was actually useful. And when I got wind that the authorities were coming to shut the orphanage down, I couldn’t let Bryon walk away.

But the police came before I could kill him.

As the authorities tore through the building, rescuing the kids upstairs, I was still here, trying to decide what to do with him after I’d strapped him to the chair and gagged him.

In the end, I put more strapping on him and left him there. To rot.

After what he’d done to Alice, he deserved to die slowly, agonizingly, all alone, just like that.

If anyone had ever found his body, they would have found the records too. The files in this room documented everything. Names of pedophiles, the payments they’d made, the authorities who’d chosen to look the other way. Names of every child who came through the front door but never walked out. It was all here.

But no one ever came down here.

The building had been condemned, abandoned, and left to rot. Just like the bastard in the chair.

I stepped closer and as my boots crunched on debris littering the floor, Bryon’s remains stared back at me. His jaw had fallen open and the gag was half hanging out. His empty sockets gaped where his eyes used to be.

“You deserved worse,” I growled, my voice cutting through the silence and echoing back, soft and distant as if Alice were agreeing with me.

Shoving the memory aside, I turned my attention to the rows of cardboard boxes stacked along the wall.

This was why I was here.

Forty years of secrets. Forty years of nightmares.

It was only fitting that the evidence of every horror committed in this place serve as the fuel to burn this hellhole to the ground.

I yanked open the desk drawers, rummaging through the chaos of old papers and junk, searching for the matches Whitmore always kept here along with his fancy Cuban cigars he loved to brag about. He let me try one once and laughed when I nearly coughed up a lung.

Didn’t stop me smoking, though. Alice and I used to steal cigarettes from the staff and sneak out late at night, down behind the shed. Those precious moments were our way of escaping the horrors of this place—just two scared, broken girls pretending the world wasn’t as cruel as it really was.

Finally, I pulled out a box of Redheads.

Turning to the rows of archiving boxes, I grabbed the first one that was missing its label and dropped it onto the desk. Dust swirled into the light of my phone as I pulled off the lid.

My breath hitched. At the very top of the contents was the 1981 yearbook.

The year Alice came into my life. The year everything changed.

I peeled open the cracked and stiff leather cover, and my fingers trembled as I flipped through the pages, searching for her. Rows of smiling faces stared back at me. Kids who didn’t know what was waiting for them in this retched building. Some of the kids didn’t even make it into the next yearbook.

Then I found her.

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