A Necessary Evil(7)

At first, he didn’t answer. He simply licked his finger then flipped the page on his book.

She summoned her courage and told herself that being nice to this crazy man might be her only hope of getting out of this alive. “I can’t tell from here, but it looks like a big book. Do you like to read?”

He tilted the book away from his face and looked at her with bemusement. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes,” she said. “I love to read too. In fact, I want to be a writer one day. I keep a journal and—”

“Shut up,” he snapped. “Do you really think I care?” Then his scowl turned into another creepy smile. “But since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you. I’m reading War and Peace. It’s by—”

“Leo Tolstoy,” Mollie finished.

“Good girl. You’re smarter than I thought you’d be.”

Mollie tried to reposition the shackles that were clamped tightly around her ankles. Her feet were going numb, and she knew she had to keep her blood circulating. “I love Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina has always been one of my favorites.”

The man regarded Mollie with squinted eyes and a slight tilt of the head, as if he were straining to hear something spoken in the softest whisper. “I know what you’re doing.” He closed his book, set it beside him, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He stood and walked around it, over to Mollie’s little corner. She pulled her legs up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them, shivering. She regretted opening her mouth. Was he going to punish her for her stupidity?

When he was only a few feet away from her, he squatted low and looked at her with those hollow eyes. “You’re trying to get me to empathize. You think if we bond over our mutual love for classic nineteenth-century literature, I’ll come to see I couldn’t possibly kill you. Am I right? Is that what you’re trying to do?”

Mollie shivered, both from the coldness of the dungeon and the indifference in his stare. “No. I was just…”

“It’s okay,” the man said. “I’d do the same thing if I was in your position. It’s a brilliant plan, actually. And perhaps it would work on someone else. Not me.” He grabbed a strand of Mollie’s hair and slowly wrapped it around his finger.

Her stomach rolled, and she fought back the bile rising in her throat. “You called me by my name earlier. I didn’t tell you my name. How do you know who I am?”

“I know a lot about you, Mollie Cartwright. I know you live alone with your mother in a nice, cozy cape cod at the end of Sycamore Street. I know you never knew your daddy. I know you’re a student at UK, and that you’re studying to be a writer. I know all your dirty little secrets. Most importantly, I know who your grandfather is.”

Mollie forced herself to stifle the terrified sobs that were threatening to escape her throat. Of course this has something to do with Pops. She’d known the truth about him since she was thirteen when some of her classmates had filled her in on the big secret. He was essentially the crime boss of Lexington. Like, the Kentucky version of John Gotti.

Though he had no ties to the Italian mafia or the Irish mob, her grandfather had a hand in almost every crime committed in the city. Nothing happened without his approval. Of course, he still wanted Mollie to believe he was nothing more than a successful businessman who owned several bars and restaurants, so she’d never told him she knew the truth. Because she loved Pops, no matter what he did for a living, she’d always pretended to believe the family’s lies about who and what he was. In fact, Mollie was pretty sure she was his favorite grandchild. But no matter how much she loved him, no matter how many happy childhood memories they had made together, she would never forgive him for this.

“Ahh.” He dropped her hair and stood from his crouched position. “I see it’s all starting to make sense to you now. You know who your grandfather is…what he does. At least, you think you do. I promise you, Mollie, there’s more to your grandfather than you ever imagined. He’s hurt a lot of people, including people very close to me, and that’s why you’re here with me now. Call it retribution, payback, vengeance…call it whatever you like. But I like to think of you as…incentive.”

The man turned and walked back over to the bed, picked up War and Peace, and began reading again, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. As if he hadn’t kidnapped Mollie, brought her to The Vault, chained her to a wall, and terrorized her, all for some sort of revenge against Pops for whatever he had done to piss him off.

Thinking of Pops made Mollie think of home. And thinking of home made her think of her mother. Kitty would be worried sick by now. The two talked every day, and every night when Mollie got home from work, they would sit at the kitchen table, drink hot tea with honey, and talk about their day. It had always been just the two of them from the beginning. Kitty had gotten pregnant at the age of sixteen and never told Mollie anything about her father other than he was an old boyfriend who had skipped out on her when he found out he was going to be a father. It was Kitty’s one and only secret, and Mollie had always respected her privacy, even if it meant never knowing about her father. It pained her to think of her mother pacing the floor of her room and calling her cell phone over and over, praying this would be the time she’d answer. Had she called the police? Were they looking for her already?