Page 29

The images were hauntingly painful to take in. I bit back a sob for the stolen years. She was so tiny back then. Isabella had painted her sitting on a wooden bench, dressed in a pink leotard with a large white tutu.

Her feet, clad in ballet slippers, were laced up, and her toes were pointed down. Her twig-like arms were gracefully crossed, one lying over her wrist and draped across her knees. Her little cherub face was tilted to the side, her hair pulled back into a bun.

The one of her on the swan made my heart ache. Isabella had captured her toothless smile, and anger surged inside me. I needed to get the last two paintings and get the hell out of here.

The reality was sickening. These were well decorated, comfortable prison cells and not children’s bedrooms. Looking around, it was like the life was being sucked out of me with each second that passed.

God, how had they endured?

I grabbed the paintings and set them outside with the other four, and steeled myself for Isabella’s room.

“It’s just a fucking room. Get it over with,” I muttered to myself, before forcing myself to enter the room.

I opened the door, and my breath caught in my throat. The lump grew, and I gulped in air as my eyes took in the autumn-themed room. It was dulled with time, like all the others.

Above the bed, covered in dust, was the little girl who’d grown into the beautiful woman I’d come to love. The woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. She’d been confined to this room. For years. That reality tore at my resolve.

With a different type of care, I dusted the first one, and there she was. My Isabella, small, standing before a mirror, her easel positioned off to the side in quiet introspection. Her slender fingers were poised with a paintbrush.

The room was bathed in soft, muted tones, and leaf shaped lights framed her bed. She had painted herself looking into a mirror. The depths of her eyes were filled with desperation and vulnerability.

If I had been tasked with titling the piece, I would have called it Sorrow and Loss. The pain in her eyes made my stomach drop. I hastened to secure it and then dusted the other one.

Thankfully, the haunted look was absent from her carousel piece as well. I was afraid she wouldn’t have been able to conjure up any joy, but she had. I couldn’t help but marvel at the raw emotions and talent that had gone into these paintings.

It was nothing short of extraordinary. That was what had attracted the Mask in first place, according to her. With a mixture of sadness and admiration, I gathered the two frames and closed the door to the pain and suffering that had shaped Isabella’s life.

The yard felt different now that I was alone in it. Every sound carried further than it should have—the rustle of leaves, the distant movement of water along the lake. The longer Pasha remained underground, the harder it became to stand still.

I paced a narrow path through the grass, Marcel’s voice a steady presence against my ear while my eyes remained fixed on the hatch door. I was watching and listening for any sign of him. Every creak, every groan, and every shifting shadow drew my attention.

The rational part of me knew he was fine. The irrational part kept imagining him accidentally locking himself in somewhere. Hell, what if the ceiling collapsed? My stomach churned.

This damn place had taken so much from me. From us. Our childhoods. Our names. And despite taking the most important things from here, it would never be enough. This place had stolen things from us we’d never fully get back.

And standing there with the phone pressed to my ear, I couldn’t stop staring at it. Couldn’t stop thinking. Then an idea hit. So suddenly that it was ridiculous. What was even scarier was that it settled deep inside my core with a certainty that refused to budge.

I wanted this piece of property. It belonged to me. To us. I owed it to the lives of however many victims this place had taken over the years. Who knew if there were bodies buried in the forest beyond the lake.

How many women had we seen tortured? How many died here?

Everything about the thought should have terrified me—repulsed me. Instead, it felt right. Almost inevitable. As if it had been here waiting for me to get older. Stronger. For me to find the girls. Because at the end of the day, it belonged to them too.

“I’ve made a decision,” I said after a moment, the words coming before I could second-guess them.

Marcel didn’t interrupt.

“I’m buying it,” I continued, my eyes lifting to the structure behind me. “The property. All of it. I have to do this,” I breathed into the phone, my gaze fixed ahead as if I could will Pasha to reappear faster.

A very measured heave reached my ears, followed by an equally measured Marcel pause. “Tell me why,” he said.

“Because, it’s ours. No one else understands what happened here. What it holds. They see land, a house, maybe potential. That’s not what it is.”

My gaze shifted to the tree, to the swing set beyond it, to the places that had already pulled too much from me today.

“And what will you do with it?” Marcel asked.

The question sat with me for a second.