Page 38 of A Trap So Flawless

“It’s fine,” I wheeze. “It’s just a crumb.”

He swears under his breath and shoves himself away from me. When he returns to my side, my coughing has mostly subsided. He’s holding a glass of water.

“Drink this.”

“Really?” I rasp with sweetly feigned surprise. “You want me to drink it? I never would have guessed.”

He’s not amused by my sarcasm.

“Shut the fuck up and drink it, pet.” He shoves the water against me and releases it. I scramble to grab hold of the glass before it spills all over me or worse – falls and shatters on the floor.

“Don’t choke on anything else,” he orders me as he leaves the kitchen. As if I did it on purpose. “It’s extremely fucking distracting for me when I think that you’re about to die.”

But he didn’t run here like he was distracted.

He ran here like he was worried.

I don’t reply as he disappears around a corner. I hear the office door close once more.

I drink the water, because despite my desire to rebel against his rather crass order to do so, it is a good idea. I eat a few more cookies, too, with no more coughing fits. There’s a small sitting room beside the kitchen, and I consider flopping down on one of the chairs or the couch in there.

But a part of me is itching to explore. And if I simply sit down in the quiet of this dead man’s house…

I’m going to think about other dead men.

My own husband with his gruesome hole for a face.

And my papà…

Though Papà might still be alive. He was in surgery when I left, but how that surgery ended? I don’t have a clue, and I don’t have an easy way to find out. Mamma must be a mess. Or she’s drinking and sleeping non-stop and letting Elio handle everything.

Even though she went along with everything Papà did, I still feel loneliness catch beneath my ribs when I think of her. I do miss her. And guilt plucks at me with poisonous claws when I think of how she must have reacted to the news that I am missing. I wonder if Elio has made it to Montréal. If he’s gotten Curse out.

If my feeble fingers were enough to keep Papà alive.

Yeah. This is why I need to do something instead of just sitting around and thinking.

I leave the box of biscuits and my glass of water in the kitchen as I wander. There isn’t much else to see on the first floor, so I mount a dark and narrow set of stairs to the second. There’s a small library up here that I’ll likely return to if Darragh takes a long time downstairs. There’s also a bathroom with vintage-looking black and white tiles. And another room with the door closed.

I reach for the handle, then hesitate.

It doesn’t feel right to open this door. I can’t say why. It’s an instinct I don’t have a name for. The ghosting whisper of dread on the back of my neck. The sudden rise of goosebumps beneath my sleeves.

Darragh told me no rooms were off limits. Surely, if Callum had some torture chamber here, or a room full of dead bodies, Darragh would have warned me. Right?

I’m being stupid. I huff out a breath, grasp the handle in a suddenly sweaty hand, then open the door.

Well. That’s rather anticlimactic. My instincts must be total shit when it comes to this sort of thing. Because there’s nothing on the other side of the door but a small bedroom with pale blue walls. I step inside the space and slowly turn in a circle, taking in a single bed, a wooden dresser, a rickety desk in the corner with a few pens in a plastic cup, and a small framed poster of a quote that says, Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.

Above the desk is a shelf built into the wall and lined with plastic gold trophies. They’re the kind of trophies you might see in a kid’s room, if that kid participated in a sport.

A sport like boxing.

My stomach flips. The goosebumps are back.

Because suddenly, I know exactly where I am.

This was Darragh’s room.

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