The Housemaid(79)

One night, Millie and one of her girlfriends snuck out to a party at the boys’ dormitory. Millie was passing by a bedroom and heard her friend screaming for help behind the door. She entered the dark room and found one of their classmates—a two-hundred-pound football player—forcing himself on her friend.

So Millie picked up a paperweight from on top of a desk and bashed the boy in the head with it. Multiple times. The boy was dead before he even got to the hospital.

The detective had photographs. Millie’s attorney argued that she had been trying to defend her friend, who was being assaulted. But if you look at those photographs, it would be hard to argue she hadn’t meant to kill him. His skull was visibly crushed.

She eventually pleaded guilty to lesser manslaughter charges, given her age and the circumstances. The family of the boy was in agreement—they wanted vengeance for their son’s death, but they also didn’t want him branded a rapist all over the internet.

Millie took the deal because there were other incidents. Things that would have come to light if she had gone to trial.

In grade school, she was expelled when she got into a fight with a little boy in her class who was calling her names—she shoved him off the monkey bars and broke his arm.

In middle school, she slashed the tires of her math teacher’s car when he gave her a failing grade. Soon after that, she was sent to boarding school.

And then even after her prison sentence, the incidents continued. Millie wasn’t laid off from her waitressing job. She was fired after she smashed her fist into the nose of one of her coworkers.

Millie seems like a sweet girl. That’s what Andrew sees when he looks at her. He won’t dig into her past the way I did. He doesn’t know what she’s capable of.

And here’s the truth:

I initially wanted to hire a maid in hopes that she would become my replacement—that if Andrew fell in love with another woman, he would finally let me go. But that’s not why I hired Millie. That’s not why I gave her a copy of the key to the room. And that’s not why I left a bottle of pepper spray in the blue bucket in the closet.

I hired her to kill him.

She just doesn’t know it.





FIFTY-FOUR





MILLIE





Andrew screams when the pepper spray gets him in the eyes.

The nozzle is about three inches away from his eyes, so he gets a good dose of it. And then I press it a second time for good measure. While I do it, I turn my own head away and close my eyes. The last thing I need is to get pepper spray in my eyes, although it’s hard not to get a little bit of residue.

When I look up again, he’s clawing at his face, which has turned bright red. His phone has fallen from his hands onto the floor, and I scoop it up, being very careful not to touch anything else. Everything has to go exactly right in the next twenty seconds. I have spent over six hours planning this while three books were resting on my belly.

My legs are wobbly when I stand up, but they work. Andrew is still writhing on the cot, and before he can get his sight back, I slip out of the room and close the door behind me. Then I take the key Nina gave me and fit it into the lock. I turn the key and pocket it. Then I take a step back.

“Millie!” Andrew screams on the other side of the door. “What the hell?”

I look down at the screen of his phone. My fingers are shaking, but I’m able to get into settings, and I shut off the Lock Screen setting before the phone locks automatically, so the phone won’t require a password anymore.

“Millie!”

I take another step back, as if he could reach through the door and grab me. But he can’t. I’m safe on the other side of the door.

“Millie.” His voice is a low growl now. “Let me out of here right now.”

My heart is beating fast in my chest. It’s the same way I felt when I walked into that bedroom all those years ago and found Kelsey screaming at that asshole football player, Get off of me! And Duncan was laughing drunkenly. I stood there for a second, my body paralyzed as my chest filled with rage. He was so much bigger than either one of us—it wasn’t like I could pull him off of her. The room was dark and I felt around on the desk until my hands made contact with a paperweight and…

I will never forget that day. How good it felt to smash the paperweight against that bastard’s skull until he became still. It was almost worth all those years in prison. After all, who knows how many other girls I saved from him?

“I’ll let you out,” I say. “Just not yet.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The outrage in his voice is palpable. “This is my house. You can’t keep me hostage here. And you’re a criminal. All I have to do is call the police and you’re right back in jail.”

“Right,” I say. “But how can you call the police when I have your phone?”

I look down at the screen of his phone. I can see him standing there, in vivid color. I can even see how red his face is from the pepper spray and the tears on his cheeks. He checks his pockets, then scans the floor with his swollen eyes.

“Millie,” he says in a slow, controlled voice. “I want my phone back.”

I let out a hoarse laugh. “I’m sure you do.”

“Millie, give me my phone back right now.”