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Damiano and I smile fake smiles as we turn to greet the man.

…and my entire. Fucking. World. Drops. Out.

Everything turns cold and black. The sensation of blood oozing over my skin is overwhelming, and panic stabs through me as my insides knot and riot in fear.

Time, my pulse… It all stops. My body shuts down. My heart stops pumping.

And every nightmare I’ve woken screaming from over the last eight years comes slamming into my psyche as I turn and look into the eyes of the Devil.

I always thought I’d recognize his face if I saw it on the street. I even used to look for it. But now that I’m here in this horrible, black moment, I realize it’s not the face that’s familiar at all.

But the tattoo on his throat is.

FEAR ME.

It leers right into my face, shoving me right back into that red room.

The red night.

The helplessness, the pain, knowing something had been ripped from me.

The thick black lettering is all I can stare at as my lungs forget how they work. As my pulse slows to a syrupy crawl, like my veins are suddenly full of glue.

The champagne flute trembles in my hand.

The man who raped me when I was a child smiles right. At. Me.

Like he’s never seen me before in his life.

Varga gestures between them.

“Caleb Nyack, Tucker Fannybottom.”

I watch my husband smile his fake smile and shake my monster’s hand without even realizing it.

Then suddenly, mid-handshake, Damiano stills to a statue.

The veins on the back of his hand slowly pop out.

Caleb’s smile wavers.

“That’s quite the firm grip you’ve got,” he chuckles, glancing at Varga and then frowning slightly at Dame.

Damiano doesn't reply. When I realize where he’s leveling that black, poisonous glare, my pulse skips.

He’s staring right at Caleb's tattoo.

An icy chill finger-walks up my spine.

He remembers from when I told him on the cottage stoop.

Damiano’s jaw is clenched tight as Caleb finally slides his hand out of his. My insides turn rotten as he turns to smile at me.

“And you are…?”

“Excuse us.”

Damiano’s voice barely sounds human as his arm tightens around my waist and ushers me across the room on unsteady feet to an empty corner near the windows, still drowning in the thick, viscous fear filling my nostrils and oozing down my throat.