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My prey is in the basement, which really is a torture dungeon. And it’s my gift to Raven.
“We should get started,” I say, finishing my wine and placing the empty glass on the table.
“Okay,” Raven smiles at me and I see that excitement has replaced the fear from earlier. Maybe she thinks this is a sex thing.
It’s not.
I take her hand and pull her to her feet.
“Ready to enter the dungeon?” I ask and she laughs nervously. “Want to lead the way?”
“Sure, sure,” she replies sarcastically, obviously not believing me.
Oh boy, she’s in for a shock when we get downstairs.
I grab my bag and follow her along the corridor until she comes to stand in front of the closed door.
“Going down?” I tease. I pull out my phone which has automatically connected to the cabin’s system and hit my favourite playlist: Murder Music. You can’t hear it upstairs but down in the kill room, the mood will already be set for me.
Raven opens the door and I flick on the light to illuminate the stairs.
“It really is a basement,” she says with confusion.
“Dungeon,” I correct.
I shake my head in amusement and give her a gentle nudge forwards. With a shaky hand she takes the rail and descends. I follow. At the bottom of the steps there’s another door which I reach past Raven to open this time. The door swings open, and once again I nudge her forward and into the space that’s filled with my favourite tunes.
The room’s shadowed, and when I shut the door behind me we’re plunged into total darkness for a second until I switch on the lights. I blink rapidly to ensure I catch her reaction, and the second she spots my gift she turns to me, white as a sheet.
“What’s she doing here?” she hisses.
“I won’t allow any more threats against my family,” I tell her seriously. “She’ll keep trying. She’ll keep coming. She’ll find a court that will listen to her...or she won’t. Maybe she’ll take matters into her own hands. She’s not without connections after all. This way, my way, we can stop her once and for all.”
She stares at me, and I’m sure she’s horrified. It terrifies me, her reaction, but I know I can’t back down.
“Even if I lose you over this and you walk away right now...even if I have to live the rest of my life without you and Phoenix in it...even if I have to spend all eternity in hell, alone...I’m doing this. For our family.”
She swallows thickly and I’m sure I see tears glistening in her eyes, but I don’t understand why. If she ran across the room to free her grandmother right now, what would I do? I’d have to stop her but how far could I go? I couldn’t hurt her. But I have to do this.
“What is this?” She gestures to my kill room, even though it’s pretty obvious what happens down here.
“She can’t walk out of here alive.” I tell her emphatically. “No one ever does. You’ll be my one and only exception if you want to leave right now.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“Never. I want you by my side. My partner in all things.”
“You want me to help? With this?”
“If you want to,” I reply carefully. I don’t dare to get my hopes up but that would be the dream come true.
“I want to—” She hesitates and my heart soars and plummets faster than any thrill ride.
“Don’t worry.” I shrug like it’s no big deal, but inside my walls are fracturing. This could be the beginning of the end.
She stares at her grandmother, who’s strapped to the stainless-steel table in the centre of the room, her pearls gleaming in the harsh fluorescent light.
My kill room is a work of art, absolute perfection designed by my own hand. I based much of the design off plans for a modern abattoir, but obviously on a much more...personal scale. At the far end of the room I even have a deboning table, an acid bath, and a cold room. There’s nothing I can’t do in here, I have it all: hanging devices and stretching racks; ceiling harnesses and pulley hoists; saws, hammers and cleavers; even a wide selection of poisons. I have cleaning stations, ventilation and extraction, a sprinkler system for easy wash down when I’m done, even a sloped drainage system with infills to prevent solid waste blockage. It’s soundproofed, has its own bathroom, air conditioning and my beloved speaker system. My favourite is the refrigerated minibar stocked with snacks and tipples for when I’m really in the zone and don’t want to be bothered with traipsing all the way upstairs just to grab a drink or some food.
