I let go of his wrist as he softly says, “You are being tested. Don’t try to hold on to your humanity or it will be taken from you. Violently.”
I watch him step back to restrain the woman to the wall, gentler now. When he has her wrists in the cuffs, he holds the back of her head as he feeds the chain through the hole in the wall. I just stand there, useless while he moves around me, leaving the room only to come back a moment later with a bag of what looks like sand and a leather case. He tears a hole in the corner of the bag, covering the puddles.
“What are you doing?” I ask stupidly when he opens the leather case, taking out a barber kit.
“Fixing them.” He gently lifts the man’s chin with two fingers so his head is leaning against the wall. “Come here.”
The buzz of the trimmer is comforting, a sound I recognize when everything else is alien. Lennox begins trimming the man’s facial hair, using the buzzing to hide his whisper. “Time stands still here. It’s another way Rowan shows his power. Don’t ask questions and don’t argue, little shadow.”
“This is fucked up though,” I hiss.
No fucking response.
So I ask, “How can I leave? I need to get back to Delilah.”
“You are being tested.” He pauses his grooming to look at me. “What are you struggling to understand?”
“All of it?”
“I thought you were intelligent,” he mutters. “You can’t leave until you prove yourself. I’ll check on her.”
27
CHAPTER 27*
When Lennox reaches his childhood home, he takes a deep breath before he gets out of the car. He can vaguely remember a time when the atmosphere wasn’t as dense, a time he could exist with ease before Kane came into his life and before Delilah’s attempt at protecting herself took him away from the normalcy he convinced himself he could have.
Now, he doesn’t yearn for a family of his own. The priorities of the only family he’s allowed don’t concern him, so he doesn’t look for Helene to greet her like a son would as he walks through the kitchen to the staircase leading to Isadora’s old bedroom, ignoring the disarray of the kitchen table.
The parallels aren’t missed. He knows everything Helene or Rowan does has a meaning deeply rooted in belittling those around them. He also knows where the cameras are and how to disable them. As he enters the bedroom given to Delilah, he does that.
Only, when he steps inside, it’s cold. Delilah isn’t on the bed, and the bathroom door is open, showing she’s not in there either. It takes a moment for him to see her through the small gap between the closed drapes, but he loses some of his apathy at the sight of her emotion.
On the ledge stands a broken girl, hair whipping into her face with one foot raised, ready to walk over the edge. He reaches her in five steps and wraps his hand around her ankle to stop her from plummeting to her death.
Fear makes her blanch as she looks at who has hold of her. She falls backwards, plastered against the glass to stop herself being taken away by the monster from her memory.
“Little doe,” Lennox softly whispers so she knows he isn’t Rowan, reminding them both that he is the lesser evil.
Relief and torment war on her features as she sobs, “Let me go.” She kicks, attempting to get him to release her, but he drags her closer to the window opening so he can bring her inside.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” is all he manages to say instead of explaining that he promised Isadora he would protect the children before she took her last breath. Kane wasn’t aware of his uncle’s presence in the hospital while he was booking a flight back to Delilah—to be her anonymous tormentor.
Her sobs are faster, more pained, turning her voice to an unintelligible mumble as he carefully holds her legs and carries her through the window opening.
Another parallel,he thinks to himself as he remembers the day he came into this same room to find Isadora ready to end her life. He saved the only mother he ever knew, and he’ll save Delilah now.
Her skin is clammy, cold, stricken in sweat as he lays her on the bed, forcing him to ask, “Did you drink the tea?”
“It’s my fault,” she cries. “I did all of this.”
He hums as he gently strokes his gloved hand over her hair. Delilah is trapped in the maze Helene has created, so all she can feel is pain. Her body, her mind, it all aches. For each painful truth she works through, there’s a destroyed future.
One death sparked so many more little deaths.
If she had only allowed Asher to do what he wanted, then she wouldn’t have endured everything she has. It’s a simple thought, too simple to be true. Lennox knows this, so when she keeps repeating how she altered events, he corrects, “You would have been tied to them both. In public, Kane would be your husband. In the shadows, Asher would be your tormentor.”
He doesn’t tell her it was his mistake too. Or recount the second-to-last conversation he had with Isadora, where she pleaded with him to kill Asher because she’d found the recordings he’d made and she knew there was no saving him—before he was ordered to end his sister’s life. If he had done what she asked, it would have been the lesser evil. Yet, just like with Sarah’s daughter, he refused to act, resulting in more pain.
