Captive Beauty

by Natasha Knight

  How scared was she?

  Because I know she would have been afraid. Terrified.

  What could lead a fifteen-year-old girl to hang herself? The papers never said, but she was a minor. That wasn’t strange. Of course given what happened with the uncle, there was speculation. Some papers even painted Kill as the monster who pushed her to it. I don’t believe that though. I just don’t.

  A noise behind me has me let out a small scream and I jump. A metal something crashing to the ground. But when I turn, there’s no one there. Kill’s not behind me. Neither is Helen. A ghost, maybe.

  A moment later, a mouse scurries under the barn door, exiting this haunted place.

  “Just a mouse, Cilla. Just a tiny, little mouse.”

  But my heart doesn’t stop racing as I turn back to survey the space.

  I look down. Mud does mark the places he was in here. And he was wearing his shoes from the look of the prints. I follow them deeper into darkness until I see it. See why he had no shoes on when he came back to the house. See the chair standing upright against one wall. It’s been cleaned off because it’s the only thing here that’s not covered in a thick layer of dust. And what’s underneath it—oh God—it’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.

  I walk to it. To his shoes now caked in dried mud standing neatly against the wall. Between them a smaller shoe. A ballet flat.

  With a shudder, I stare at it, noticing as I near it how the color has faded to palest pink. There’s a smudge of the magenta it once was along the side. It’s small, maybe a size six or seven at most. And between his giant ones, it looks like a young child’s shoe.

  I know it’s Ginny’s. And I know why it’s here. There’s only one reason. She must have had them on when she did it, and one must have slipped off or the cleaners somehow missed this second shoe.

  I wonder how long he was here last night. What he did. I imagine what he feels or felt. I know how Jones was when it was me. I know what extent he went to in order to protect me. And I know how I feel every day when I realize over and over again that I couldn’t protect him.

  I wonder if that’s Kill’s hell. If that’s his demon. The knowledge that he could not protect his baby sister. Because at least my brother is alive.

  Lightning strikes in the distance, animating me. I turn and walk to the barn door, in a hurry to leave. To get out of this place where the past lingers. This space that ghosts haunt. It’s a heavy place, like for the last few years air hasn’t penetrated and everything has grown stale and weighted. When I set foot outside, I run. I run back to the house, suddenly feeling like I’m being chased, needing to go back to the land of the living.

  This was wrong. I shouldn’t have gone to the barn. Those warning voices were right. I had no business there. But it’s too late now. I’ve seen it and you can’t unsee what you’ve seen. It’s not how things work. I know. My God, do I know.

  I’m crying by the time I walk up the steps toward the pool and when I spy movement behind the glass doors, I don’t try to hide. I’ll take my medicine. And I do feel sick now, sick to my stomach.

  I push the glass doors open and step inside, take off my mud-covered boots, and carry them up to my room. If Helen has seen me, she doesn’t say a word, but in my room, I find the tray she’d left is gone, replaced by another with still warm tea and crackers. I strip off my wet clothes and climb back into the bed and close my eyes and when I sleep, all I can see are those shoes. Three of them. Lined up against the wall. A hangman’s rope beside them, lying in a pool of blood and urine, a stained kitchen knife at its center.

  14

  Kill

  I sit at a table in the restaurant of the club with a whiskey in front of me looking out on the floor. The restaurant part, which is small, is slightly elevated from the main floor where patrons can watch what’s going on while having a meal.

  This afternoon, I paid a visit to Cilla’s brother. What happened last night has been bugging me all day. When I told her she was damaged she didn’t deny it. She just looked at me like it was a fact, simple and straight. And I want to know what the damage is.

  But Jones surprised me. When it came to talking about her, talking about their time in foster care, he was like a different person. He put up walls so thick and so high, they were impenetrable, even for me. Whatever happened to Cilla when she was a kid, he’s not talking.

  And something did happen.

  The only house they spent a significant amount of time in was at Judge Herbert J. Callahan’s. He and his wife took in foster kids for years. He’s in his late seventies now. Retired.

  I know people though. And the cleaner they look on the outside, the dirtier they are on the inside. See, you have to watch out for men like the good Judge as much as you do men like me. They’ll fuck you just like I will. They just may be more discreet about it.

  Jones didn’t give anything away. All he said was what I already knew. Parents were dead and since they had no other living relatives, they went into the foster care system. No one wants to adopt teenagers. And all there is on those years they spent with the Callahan’s are two hospital reports, one of a broken arm and a second time a broken ankle. Cilla’s. She’d fallen down the stairs is what Jones said. Twice.

  That sounds way too fucking coincidental and I don’t buy it. I don’t even know if he wants me to.

  But why in hell would he defend Judge Callahan if the old man abused her? Especially now that they’re both adults and he can’t touch them.

  If that wasn’t enough, I had a call from Helen informing me Cilla had snuck out of the house and when she’d returned she’d been soaked and covered in mud. It doesn’t take a genius to know where she went.

  When Hugo walks onto the main floor, I check my watch. It’s almost ten o’clock. Cilla will be here soon. I want to know if he’s learned anything.

  The waitress walks over as Hugo takes a seat across from me.

  “Usual?” she asks him.

  “Yeah.” He sets a file down on the table and slides it over to me. The look on his face tells me it’s not good.

  I open it, glance at the sheets inside, waiting while the waitress delivers Hugo’s drink.

  “A dirty judge,” I say. I expected that.

  “The dirtiest kind.” He reaches over and flips a few pages back. “These are the kids he took in. Always teens. Always a pair—brother and sister. Always an older brother, younger sister.”

  I like the sound of this less and less.

  “They all stay two years. When the brother turns eighteen, he gets rid of both of them.”

  I look at Hugo, raise an eyebrow.

  “Like in Jones and Cilla’s case. Judge grants the brother custody. They disappear. But—” He flips a few sheets to a copy of a newspaper article. I check the date. It’s from almost four years ago.

  “This one didn’t disappear. Her brother did, but she didn’t. She claimed abuse when they lived in the Callahan home. Came forward because her brother committed suicide. Turned out he was a meth head and, given the Judge’s impeccable reputation, she was played as some pariah out for money. But you know how I feel about judges and the system.”

  I know. Hugo spent too long in prison. He’ll never feel any other way.

  “Jones won’t talk but something happened there,” I say, closing the file. “Where’s Callahan now?”

  “Florida. Moved two years ago.”

  “How would you like to get out of this shit weather and get some Florida sun for a few days?”

  Hugo grins, swallows his whiskey. “I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Thank you.”

  The front door opens then and John, the man I sent to bring Cilla, walks in. I feel Hugo’s eyes on me when I stand and button my jacket as Cilla enters a moment later.

  I clear my throat.

  He clucks his tongue and gets to his feet. “I’ll talk to you later, boss,” Hugo says.

  I don’t take my eyes off her. “Later.” She’s s
till got her coat on so I can’t see what she’s wearing, but she’s got on a pair of high-heeled black pumps. When John puts a hand at her back to guide her to the restaurant, she brushes it off. She spots me in the same instant and stops when our eyes meet. I wonder if it’s guilt. If she knows I know what she did today.

  She resumes walking. The eyes of other diners follow her when she climbs the two stairs to the restaurant and approaches me.

  “Cilla,” I say, drawing out her chair.

  “Killian.”

  She doesn’t like calling me Kill. “Take off your coat.”

  She looks down as if just realizing she still has it on. Unbuttoning it, she slips it off her shoulders. I take it and hand it to John. “Thank you, John.”

  “Sir.”

  He turns to walk away and I look Cilla over. She’s wearing a strappy black dress that clings to her. The hem comes to mid-thigh and she looks stunning. I nod in approval and gesture for her to sit. She does and her gaze moves across the room and while it does, I take her in. She’s left her hair loose and it drapes thick and dark down her back. Her heavy bangs frame her pretty eyes as she watches the dancers, three of them on three different stages. It’s a classy place, one for the wealthiest of the wealthy, but ultimately it’s a strip club. And she’s not impressed.

  I grin. “Not good enough for you?”

  “Women taking their clothes off while men sip expensive drinks and stroke their dicks isn’t impressive, no.”

  “Each of the women chooses to do this. Don’t judge what you don’t understand.”

  “I’m not judging. I just wouldn’t want to be one of them.”

  “And that’s fine for you, but I think you are judging.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I know you better than you think.”

  She drops her gaze to her lap, laying her napkin on it.

  “See that one there,” I start, pointing to one of the dancers. “Her stage name is Brandy. She’s got a two-year-old at home and is one year from graduating law school. That’s Lola there, she works with high-risk kids, to keep them off the streets. Julie, well, she just likes having men watch her take her clothes off, and why not? She’s a beautiful woman. She uses what she has to make a very decent life for herself. And she gets to keep all the control.” From the look on Cilla’s face, I’ve hit a nerve. “Like I said, don’t judge what you don’t understand.”

  “Like I said, I wasn’t judging.” She picks up the menu. “But you have to admit, there’s a stigma that comes with the word stripper.”

  “Stigmas are created by closed-minded, pole-up-the-ass people to make themselves feel superior. Make up your own mind after you’ve got all your facts.”

  She sets the menu down and cocks her head to the side. “So did you bring me here to show me what a good guy you are? Hiring all these women to strip for you because they want to? To show me how because of you they keep all the control?”

  I count to ten. This isn’t how I want this evening to go. “I wanted to have dinner with you. And I thought you’d want to get away from Rockcliffe House for a night. That’s why I brought you here. That’s all.”

  That gives her pause. She lowers her lashes but doesn’t quite apologize.

  I signal for the waitress who brings over a bottle of wine from my private collection. Cilla’s quiet while she pours.

  “Do you know what you want to have to eat?” I ask her.

  She looks up. “The filet mignon, well done, with roasted potatoes and a salad please.”

  “I’ll have the same, but make my steak rare.”

  “Right away,” the waitress says and leaves with our menus.

  “You’re hungry,” I comment.

  “Dinner’s late.”

  “It’s not your little adventure that worked up an appetite, is it?” I ask, wanting her to know that I know.

  She flushes, blinks rapidly and looks around the room. “Where’s the bathroom?” she asks, rising.

  I nod in the direction of the lady’s room. Her heels click as she walks away and I scan the patrons of the restaurant, making note of who’s watching her, who’s with whom, memorizing alliances. These are dangerous men. This is a dangerous world. And when Cilla returns to the table, I wonder for a moment why I’ve brought her here. In public. Because I know each of these men is, in turn, watching me. Taking inventory of what’s mine.

  We don’t speak, but drink the wine instead. She’s clearly anxious under my gaze, but I don’t mind that. I like it, in fact.

  When the waitress brings dinner, Cilla eats with gusto. I make a mental note to tell Helen to feed her regularly whether she asks for meals or not.

  “What were you looking for?” I ask her.

  She doesn’t pretend to not know what I’m talking about and I respect her for that. She puts her fork down, chewing on a piece of meat as she considers her answer. “I wanted to know where you went,” she finally says after swallowing.

  “But you knew where I went.”

  She stares at me, uncertain what I mean, but perhaps suspecting.

  “You wrote a piece on Rockcliffe House two years ago. You didn’t use your full name when you published. You used Hawk instead. Why?”

  She clearly didn’t know I knew this, but I look into the background of every person I come in contact with. It’s just I didn’t expect to find what I did on her.

  “That was a fluff piece. A ghost story. I want to be a serious writer.”

  “So you were looking for my sister’s ghost out there?”

  She chokes on the bite she just put into her mouth and gulps half her glass of water to wash it down.

  “I don’t like wasting words, Cilla. I already told you that.”

  “I wanted to know why you’d come back like you had last night. Barefoot but for your socks. It was strange. And you were drunk. I thought you were, at least.”

  “I was when I went out there.”

  “What happened to your face?” she asks. “The scar?”

  I know what she’s talking about. I pick up the bottle and refill her glass, then take a sip of mine, set my glass down and lean back in my chair before answering.

  “That’s the cut my uncle got in before I stuck a knife in his gut.”

  Her mouth falls open and her eyes go wide.

  I grin. “It was a long time ago and he deserved it. Why do you look shocked? You know this already. It’s not a secret. Everyone in this place knows what I did.”

  “Why did you get out of prison after only four years?”

  “I served my time.”

  “No, you didn’t. You only served four years.”

  I lean forward, pick up my last forkful of meat and stick it into my mouth, crushing the tender flesh between my teeth.

  “My uncle deserved to die. I wasn’t the only one who thought so.” I wipe my mouth and set my napkin on my plate.

  Cilla slumps back in her chair, picks up her glass and drinks the last of it. I signal to the waitress. “Get us another bottle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did he do?” Cilla asks, like she’s barely realized the waitress was just here.

  I study her for a very long time before replying with less emotion than I thought I could. “He’d been raping my sister for a long time. She was fifteen when she died.”

  Cilla’s face goes white. That detail she didn’t know. Not many people do. I don’t know why I just told her.

  I unclench my fist and rub my hand across my mouth.

  Cilla is thoughtful for a long time. I don’t anticipate her next question. I think it’s going to be something else. Some words of pity. But she surprises me. She always seems to surprise me. “What does it feel like?” She’s watching me so intently, I don’t think she’s blinking.

  “What does what feel like?”

  The look in her eyes, it’s strange. Dark. Too dark for her.

  The waitress comes to replace our empty bottle. I pour for us both and Cilla waits to speak un
til I’m sitting back again.

  “Stabbing a man.”

  Our eyes are locked and I don’t understand what I’m seeing. She’s trembling a little, and her face is ashen, but there’s something in her eyes, something desperate, something wild and vengeful. Something old and sad.

  “Let’s go,” I say, standing up. I pick up the bottle and wait for her to stand.

  It takes her a minute to move, to blink again. I pull her chair back and she rises. I take her arm and she doesn’t resist when I lead her toward the elevator. When the man stationed there sees us coming, he pushes the button and the doors slide open when we reach it.

  Suddenly, I feel like I need to hide her away. Like I shouldn’t have had her out here, where everyone would see her. They’ll want to know who she is. They’ll look into who she is and I don’t want them to. I don’t want anyone to. I want to keep her hidden. Keep her to myself.

  I don’t let her go until we’re in my office. The elevator doors close behind us and she walks toward my desk, drawn to the monitors there. There are six of them and currently, five are set on the club and one on the house. Helen is moving around the living room. Cilla watches her, cocks her head to the side as she does.

  From the wet bar, I retrieve a wine glass and pour her one from the bottle I brought up. For myself, I pour a whiskey. She turns to look at me when I approach, takes the glass from my hand.

  “You watch the house?”

  I sip my drink and nod. I haven’t thought about what it felt like to drive the knife into my uncle’s belly for a long time, but I remember it. I remember breaking skin, cutting through fat. Muscle would give more resistance, but my uncle’s gut, well, it easily yielded the pound of flesh I required.

  I look Cilla over, look at how her nipples press against her dress. Watch how her hand trembles when she brings the glass to her lips, barely taking a sip as she watches me. I set my drink down and take my jacket off. She puts her glass next to mine. I turn her so she’s facing the cameras, lean her forward, place her hands flat on the desk.