Chapter 6
I took him upstairs through a back corridor lined with enormous floral arrangements and framed mirrors. No one stopped us. In houses like that, people assumed confidence meant permission.
In the guest room, I locked the door and pulled the flash drive from my bag.
We used my laptop.
The first videos were exactly what I expected. Security footage. Lewis and Mia in my house. On the couch. In the kitchen. In our bed.
I felt nothing looking at them except a distant disgust, as if I were watching evidence from someone else’s crime scene.
Then file number seven opened.
The hospital.
My hospital room.
I froze.
The camera angle was from the upper corner, likely security or internal observation footage. The timestamp was three months into my stay. I was on the bed, curled on my side, face swollen from crying. Lewis stood near the door with the attending physician, Dr. Keller.
No audio at first.
Then Evan found the icon and turned it on.
Dr. Keller’s voice came through faintly. “Her dependency is still centered on you.”
Lewis sounded bored. “That’s useful.”
My skin went cold.
Dr. Keller said, “If she stabilizes too quickly, she’ll revoke the proxy.”
“She won’t,” Lewis replied. “Every time she gets close, I’ll give her a reason to spiral.”
The room seemed to leave my body.
On screen, Lewis moved closer to my bed. He crouched. His hand brushed my hair back with false tenderness.
The me in the video looked up at him like a dying person seeing water.
I heard my own weak voice. “You came.”
Lewis smiled.
“I always come back, Betty.”
Then he turned slightly, just enough for the doctor to see his face, and the softness disappeared.
“Adjust the meds again,” he said quietly. “Enough to keep her emotional, not enough to sedate her all day. She signs better when she can still cry.”
I made a sound that didn’t feel human.
Evan reached out on instinct, then stopped before touching me.
The video kept going.
Dr. Keller hesitated. “And if she refuses?”
Lewis gave a small shrug. “Then note another episode. She threatened self-harm before. Use it.”
“I don’t want liability.”
“You won’t have any.”
Then came the sentence that reassembled my entire year into a single blade.
“I need her unstable until the estate transfer clears. After that, I don’t care if she hates me.”
Estate transfer.
My parents.
The village.
The gates.
Everything inside me went utterly still.
My parents had died six months before my breakdown. Officially, their estate had remained tied up in probate and tax review. Lewis had handled everything, saying I was in no state to deal with it.
The village where I planned to disappear wasn’t random.
It was where my mother was born.
The land there was ours.
Had been ours.
Unless it wasn’t anymore.