I knew, but I didn’t reallyknow. But now, after what happened today, after reading this, I can’t pretend any longer that my husband isn’t a monster. That the man I married isn’t someone who I wish I’d never met. Never known.
Never allowed to touch me.
I can’t avoid him forever. I won’t be able to keep him out of mybedforever. One day, we’re going to have to finish what he tried to start on our wedding night. And the thought terrifies me.
I’m married to a killer, and there’s no escape.
11
MAEVE
After I make it back up to my room, everything in the office carefully placed back where it was, I don’t think I sleep at all.
How can I, after everything I’ve read? After seeing so many of Sean’s kills laid out in clinical detail, as if they weren’t people with families… with wives, daughters, mothers, sons. I try to remind myself that they could have been bad people, that they might have done bad things. That the man who came to the house today and threatened me, who wanted to hurt me, was a bad man. Sean says he deserved what he got. Is that how I need to learn to think? That there are people in this world who deserve to be hurt for what they do to others?
When dawn finally starts to break, light slowly spilling into my room, my body aches and my eyes burn from lack of sleep, but my mind is still racing.
Sean is a killer. I knew that, abstractly, from the moment Mrs. Brady told me who I was marrying. But knowing it and seeing the evidence—pages upon pages of death—are two very different things. Seeing him beat a man to within an inch of his life is different, too.
I sit up slowly, running my hands through my tangled hair. I don’t want to be the helpless girl everyone has to protect and manage and control. I have to survive this somehow, and I don’t want to do it with my eyes closed.
But having them opened is just as awful.
I have no idea what to do—how to survive this, to survivehim. But somehow, I need to stop being so afraid, even if my world feels even more terrifying than it did two weeks ago.
A soft knock on my door makes me jump.
"Maeve?" Mrs. Brady's voice, gentle and concerned. "May I come in?"
I sit up a little further, feeling stiff and uncomfortable. "Yes."
She enters with a breakfast tray, but her eyes go straight to my face. Whatever she sees there makes her frown. "You didn't sleep."
"No."
“Dear—” She sets the tray down, studying me. “Be honest with me, Maeve. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I lie. "Just... adjusting."
"Adjusting." She doesn't believe me. "Maeve, dear, I know this situation isn't what you would have chosen. But Mr. Flannery?—"
“You said he was a killer,” I interrupt. "Did you know how… much? What he’s done?”
“I could suspect,” she says carefully, folding her hands in front of her as she looks at me in that motherly way of hers. “But it’s not something I dwell on, Maeve. The men in this world are bloody, every one of them. Measuring it brings nothing but grief.”
“He’s amurderer,” I insist, but Mrs. Brady's expression doesn't change.
"I know he's a dangerous man,” she says finally. “That was easy enough to see from the moment he walked throughthat door. But I also know he hasn't hurt you. And after what happened yesterday with that man who came demanding money?—"
"He beat him half to death."
"He protected you." She moves closer, her voice firm. "That man threatened you, Maeve. In my book, he got what he deserved."
I stare at her. "You can't possibly think that violence was justified."
"I think this world doesn't play by the rules you are gentle enough to believe in. Your father sheltered you from that reality, but it doesn't make it any less true." She sits down beside me, taking my hand. "Mr. Flannery is a hard man. A violent man, yes. But he's your husband now. And whether you believe it or not, he will keep you safe."
I can’t find my words for a moment. This isn’t what I’d expected from her. "By killing anyone who threatens me?"
