Page 204 of Sinister

I lean forward and press my hand to his cheek.

“I never want that either, Sin. I won’t be like my parents. I want to be present, to live in the moment.”

“Will you . . . will you accept the baby even if there might be something wrong with it?” he whispers.

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“You know, what happened at the doctor’s office. What if he is not . . . normal?”

“Nothing is normal anymore, Sin,” I say with a dry laugh. But the intense look in his features, shadowed by some elusive sadness, tells me he’s serious about this—he needs to know.

“This baby is mine, Sin. Ours. I don’t care about anything else. No matter what happens, it won’t change how I feel about him.”

A strange emotion flickers over his features. Getting up, he pulls me in his arms, sitting down on the chair with me in his embrace. He cradles me to his chest, holding me tightly.

“Thank you,” he whispers in my ear.

“For?”

“For being you. For being the light in my life, always and forever. For keeping me sane even in my darkest moments.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He shakes his head.

“I’m happy,” he says. “Holding you like this . . . This is happiness for me, Petra.”

“What should we do now?” I ask as I yawn softly after a pleasant nap in his lap. His previous words, ‘I’m happy,’ somehow imprinted on me because I don’t remember ever sleeping so at peace.

In a way, this cozy little underground bunker filled with a mishmash of nineteenth-century furniture and twentieth-century technology has started to feel homely, like we have always lived here.

“How about I give you a small tour of my humble abode?” Sin’s excited voice breaks through my dreams of domestic bliss.

“Yeah, I would love that!”

As Sin leads me through the rest of the space, I’m struck by the sheer size and complexity of this hidden world.

Each room we enter is filled with relics and reliquaries, fascinating and eerie at the same time.

Ornate furniture, dusty bookshelves, and old pieces of bric-a-brac; any antique appraiser would kill to get their hands on some, or all, of the items.

“These paintings are incredible,” I whisper at one point, even though I don’t need to lower my voice.

Somehow the presence of such impressive objects lends the whole space the hushed sanctity of a museum or an art exhibit.

My eyes widen as I take in the rarer paintings adorning the walls: austere still-life artworks and equestrian portraits by Jacques-Louis David, historical paintings by Benjamin West, some of the earlier works by Francisco Goya. Just then, my eyes fall on a particular painting that is immediately recognizable as the product of the same hand that had drawn Sinful Desires, Goya’s old master.

The same moody lighting over a vast wooded expanse, and the same subject—the brown-haired girl wearing a velvet green gown—looking down the cliff face of an ancient mountain.

The frame before me looks like it could have been part of the same series of artworks as my copy of the girl on the moor.

“So this is where you got the painting you gifted me,” I say, trying my best to keep any accusatory note out of my question.

He glances at the painting, a small smile playing on his lips. “Yeah, you got me. This is where I found it. It’s not like Goya’s master left behind a lot of work as it is. And the painting felt too special to leave buried here. I knew you would give it the appreciation it deserves.”

A complex mix of emotions assails me at his words: surprise, apprehension, happiness.

“It’s stunning,” I say eventually. “And now I kinda like it even more.”