Page 26 of Peak Cruelty

Ava isn’t her daughter.She’s her niece.

That’s the kind of mistake that gets people killed.That’s the kind I don’t make.

ExceptI did.

I look at her again.Really look.The restraint.The silence.The things she hasn’t said.

And the worst part is—sheknew.Not about the mistake.Not all of it.But she knew I had it wrong.And she let me keep going.

Why?To buy time?To see how far I’d go?

I sit back, run a hand through my hair, toss the phone aside.

And I start wondering who, exactly, I brought into this house.

14

Marlowe

Iwake to absence.The ache is the only thing that tells me I’m not dead yet.There’s a soreness where there wasn’t one before—quiet, rooted, impossible to explain away.

My first instinct is panic.My second is inventory.

The catheter has been removed.

The door opens.He walks in like it’s routine.

I don’t look at him.I’m still trying to breathe through the vertigo.

“Feeling better, I see,” he says as he raises the blackout shades and opens the window.Light pours in, too clean to feel natural.

“Helplessness reveals things you’d never confess out loud.”

I think I’m going to be sick and I tell him as much.

“It’s important you know what it’s like,” he says.“To be bedridden.Helpless.Like Ava.”

I hate her name in his mouth.

“And not because you’re sick—but then neither is she.It’s just the kind of woman you are.”

When I refuse him the reaction he is after, mostly because the room is spinning, he stands there like he always does—silent, calculating, mouth a little too still.

“Get up,” he says.

I can’t but I try to sit up anyway.

Too fast.

My muscles don't enjoy it.My core doesn’t fire.It’s like trying to rise out of wet concrete.

He watches.Says nothing.Just takes a seat and waits.

“How sad,” he says finally.“Bedridden.Helpless.That’s what your niece lives with every day, right?”

“You don’t know anything about her.”

“I know enough.Enough to wonder what kind of woman lets that happen and calls it love.”

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