Page 96 of Buried in Blood
I don’t answer.
The door opens anyway.
Damien stands in the threshold, all shadows and calculation. He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t speak. Just looks at me like I’m a question he’s already answered, but keeps asking anyway.
His voice, when it comes, is velvet stretched over bone.
“You can come back to the main house.”
My breath catches.
He watches me too closely for me to respond, so I nod. Once.
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” he murmurs. “To be closer again?”
I nod again, slower this time. The air feels thick in my chest.
He tilts his head. “But first,” he says, stepping aside so I can follow, “I have a present for you.”
The words hit me like frostbite. Too kind. Too cold.
Still, I follow. We walk in silence.
Past the silent rooms.
Past the empty hall where Brooke laughs.
Past the surveillance room where you see too much.
He doesn’t speak. And neither do I.
The stairs to the lower level groan beneath our weight. The air grows colder. Thicker. The kind of sterile chill that only exists in places where screams have nowhere to go.
He unlocks the final door and holds it open with a theatrical sweep of his hand.
“After you.”
It’s the medical wing. I step inside slowly.
The lights above buzz like flies trapped in glass. The walls are off-white and stained in places where bleach couldn’t quite erase the past. A steel table sits in the center of the room. Nothing on it.
Yet.
Cabinets line the far wall—locked. An IV stand casts a spider-leg shadow across the floor. And still, he says nothing. He closes the door behind us.
Locks it.
“Why here?” I whisper, throat dry.
His lips twitch into something that might be a smile—or a flinch.
“You’ll see.”
I stand still, fingers twitching at my sides. He walks to the cabinets. Pulls out a small silver tray. Places it on the table with care.
Then, finally, he turns to me. His eyes are hollow in the worst way—alive, but unreadable.
“This is the part,” he says, “where you learn to be grateful.”
