“I didn’t know she was this dangerous,” he said.
“I think it was the storm. She told me that’s when ‘the monster takes over.’”
Daniel sighed. “Maybe we did it all wrong,” he murmured. “Maybe we should’ve called the police that night. Let everything be handled according to the law. The right way.”
I grabbed his arm and spun him around to face me. “You did the right thing. The system and the police don’t always protect people like her and us—we learned that the hard way when we were children.”
He nodded.
“She’s chained,” I said as we reached the bottom.
That stopped him. “Chained?”
“Yes.”
“Do I wanna know more?”
I shook my head.
His eyes scanned the shadows, like he expected to see something waiting. “I haven’t been down here. Ever, actually. Hudson always kept it off-limits.” He stared at the wall in the dark. “Is there a light?”
I moved along the wall and flicked the switch. To my relief, the overhead bulbs blinked on. They were dim and flickering, but on.
“She cut the backup power, you said?” I asked.
“Yeah. But switched it out with a new one.”
“This way,” I said. I was reaching toward the wall when Daniel grabbed my wrist and pulled ahead, taking the lead instead.
We followed the narrow hallway until we reached the familiar fork. To the left was her room. To the right was the tunnel—the one with the bricked-up dead end, the one that also led to the pantry door.
“She’s not in her room,” I told him. “She’s down that way.”
Daniel didn’t waste time. He moved down the tunnel, phone out, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness as he raised it.
But I stopped him.
He turned to face me. His expression was layered with tension: worry in his eyes, curiosity tightening his brow. A quiet exhaustion dragged down the corners of his mouth.
He looked like a man who’d carried too much for far too long.
I stared at the man I’d loved my whole life. His hair was still damp, the dark strands curling over his forehead. He’d changed into dry clothes, but the toll of the night, and probably the last few years, was etched into his face. It wasn’t easy for him either. Losing his mom so young. Living with a father likethat. Watching that man nearly kill his stepsister, then seeing his stepmother shoot him dead.
And now, I had to tell him something terrible: that his father’s body had never been thrown into the ocean, like he’d always believed. That my mom had kept it, like some kind of deranged shrine. And worse, she wore his skull as a mask during storms.
“What is it?” he asked.
I couldn’t say it, not with the way he was looking at me. I was too worried about the pain it might cause him. Was this the same feeling he’d wrestled with the whole time we’d been together? If it was, I understood why he’d found it so hard to tell me the truth.
When I stayed quiet, Daniel kept walking. We passed the room where the first Winthrop had raped the maids. His footsteps slowed at the bricked wall.
“Through here?” he asked, pulling a knife from his pocket. The steel glinted under his flashlight.
I nodded. However, just as he stepped toward the gap in the wall, I grabbed his arm. “Daniel, wait.”
He looked at me. “If you want to talk about what we’re supposed to do with all of this, I don’t think I have an answer.”
“That’s not it. I mean, it is, but there’s something else you need to know.”
