The police car smelled of stale coffee and old vinyl. The cage between the seats was a geometry of shadows, cutting the world into squares. I watched my neighborhood pass by—the familiar turn to my street, the oak tree whose roots cracked the sidewalk—but we didn't turn. We drove past. I was already on the other side.
Even though everything was so crazy right now, I knew what to do. Just say everything.
The resolve was a cold, clear stone in my chest. It didn't feel like courage. It felt like exhaustion. The energy required to hold the lies, the half-truths, the edited memories, had finally run out. There was nothing left but the hollowed-out space where the truth had been festering.
Charles's assault. Lucian. Everything demonic.
I would tell them.
Perhaps there was no new life because the past kept coming back. But my present—what I would do today in that room—would define my every tomorrow. Even handcuffed, trapped like a criminal, I could choose this one thing.
I would say the truth. Because I killed no one. Let the best, or the worst, happen.
The interrogation room was smaller than I'd imagined.
A table bolted to the floor. Two chairs. A smell of industrial cleaner trying to mask something sour beneath.
A single, bright light in the ceiling shone directly onto the seat meant for me, leaving the corners in deep shadow. On the wall opposite me was a mirror, long and silvered. I stared at my blurred reflection—pale, wide-eyed, a smudge of a person under the harsh light.
Wow. I've actually watched this in movies. A mirror, but they can actually see you.
The thought was bizarrely detached. My life had become a cliché. I was living a scene I'd seen a hundred times, except I was the one in the hot seat, my wrists still ringed with the ghost of the cuffs.
The door opened with a soft click.
A man in black walked in. Dark trousers, a grey sweater under a black jacket. Not in uniform. He carried a simple folder. He was older, with a tired, intelligent face that gave nothing away. He moved quietly, as if not to startle me. He took the seat across from me, placing the folder on the table but not opening it.
He looked at me for a long moment. His eyes weren't unkind, but they were assessing, stripping away layers without moving a muscle.
"Camilla," he said, his voice low, neutral. "I'm Detective Hayes. We need to talk about Charles Granger."
He waited. The silence stretched, a silence of offering. It was my turn.
"I did not kill him."
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. "Yeah. No murderer actually accepts that they killed the victim."
I shook my head, a small, frantic movement. "I didn't. I was in the restroom when he died."
"No, Mrs. Hart. You killed him and immediately went to the restroom to cool off. To have space to… compose yourself."
The words were a trap, snapping shut around me.
"Please," I said, the word thin as glass. "Do not put words in my mouth. I did not kill him."
He leaned back, his chair creaking. He picked up a file, flicked it open with a casual thumb.
"Wow. You have a… fascinating record. Your husband died during sexual intercourse." He looked up, his gaze a clinical probe. "That must have been traumatic. That is why you are like this, perhaps. Just tell me the truth... Your punishment will be reduced."
The air left the room. He had taken the deepest, most private wound of my life and laid it on the table between us like a piece of tawdry evidence. Fascinating.
"I was assaulted," I whispered, the words ash in my throat. "I went to the restroom to cool off."
His pen, which had been still, suddenly scratched across his notepad. He wrote something, his expression tightening into focused suspicion.
"Assaulted?" He made the word sound foreign, improbable. "By whom? It doesn't seem here in your last statement to the responding officers. You said you were dismissed, Nothing about an assault."
He let the contradiction hang, a hook in the new story I was trying to tell.
"It was… it was Charles. Before. That's why I went to the restroom." The explanation felt flimsy even to me, a card tower in the wind of his skepticism.
"Charles Granger assaulted you," he repeated, not as a question, but as a dubious fact he was tasting. "And this was before he was killed. Yet you never mentioned it. Not once." He tapped his notepad. "Convenient."
He closed the file softly, a judge dropping a gavel. "Here's what I see, Camilla. A woman with a history of… intense personal tragedy. A woman in financial distress, beholden to a powerful family that despises her. A woman alone with a man who, according to you, had just violated her." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a confidential murmur that was colder than a shout. "That's a powerful motive. A jury will see a story. A scared, angry woman who fought back. Maybe too hard."
He was constructing my guilt around me, brick by logical brick.
"I didn't fight back," I whispered, the words barely audible. "He told me to do something… corrupt. But I didn't. I left."
My voice was a breath, not a defense.
"How should I believe that?" he asked, his tone flat, disbelieving.
"Because I know who did."
A slow, deliberate blink. "And who is that?"
"Lucian Thorne."
The air in the room changed. The detective's neutral mask slipped, revealing something colder beneath. A sneer twisted his lips. "The Lucian Thorne? You are actually sick."
"He's a rapist. A murderer… the devil."
"And why would Lucian Thorne kill Charles Granger?" He leaned forward slightly, as if examining a bizarre specimen.
"He claims he owns me. He's insane. It's… it's like trafficking. Abduction. He is the real villain in all of this."
A short, humorless laugh escaped him. "Wow. You want me to believe that?"
He pushed his chair back and stood up. Slowly, he circled the table, his shadow falling over me. The space between us vanished. He was close enough that I could see the faint stubble along his jaw, the cold, assessing glint in his eyes.
"Yes," I insisted, my heart hammering against my ribs. "He killed him. I don't know how, but I'm sure."
His expression didn't change. No anger. No surprise. Just a flat, empty finality. His arm moved—not a wild swing, but a short, efficient, backhanded arc from his side.
The impact wasn't a crack. It was a thick, dull thud of bone against skull. My head snapped sideways, ear ringing, before my temple met the cold steel of the table. The world didn't blur—it pixelated, breaking into jagged, nonsensical fragments of light and sound. The taste in my mouth was hot, electric copper.
His voice swam up from a deep, dark well, right against the shell of my ringing ear:
"We know."
Then, not darkness. Nothing.
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To be continued...