Page 19 of Bound By Blood and Lies

She finally looks up at that like she’s measuring whether she dares believe it.

“This sounds crazy, Emily, and maybe it’s wrong for me to tell you this, but you have a sister. Her name is Hazel and I’m sure she would love to talk to you. Would you like that?” Victor asks.

Emily hesitates before a bright and unguarded look breaks across her face. She nods and Victor breathes a sigh of relief. My feet shift as I feel my watch buzz, a reminder we’ve been here for thirty minutes. Atlas and Felix still have eyes on the house but the longer we stay up here the more we risk. This girl needs doctors. She needs social services. She needs somewhere that doesn’t smell like damp wood and fear. Riggs must get the same buzz because he helps her to her feet carefully with one steady hand at her elbow. She sways and he adjusts his hold as I stepaside to let them pass. Emily glances at me on the way to the stairs and I hold her gaze.

“You’re safe now,” I tell her quietly.

Riggs takes her down as Victor follows close behind. Atlas talks them through the approach to the van; his voice is low and steady in our ears as he watches for blind spots on his drone. I remain in the attic until the red light on my collar confirms they’re outside and secure. I force myself to take one slow breath before I turn toward the stairs. Footsteps approach from below and I know who it is before they even turn the corner. Felix appears at the bottom of the attic, and his eyes are already scanning the house as if he expects Fisher to materialise out of the rafters.

His gaze then shifts to me. I can see him cataloguing the redness in my eyes but he doesn’t say a word about it. I move toward him, intending to brush past and get back to work but he steps into my path and stops me. His hand grips the collar of my jacket as he pulls me into him. It’s not graceful. It’s solid and unfiltered. It reminds me of the dungeon and of the night he was the one unravelling whilst I was the only thing holding him upright.

My skin still tightens at the contact but I don’t pull away. I let him hold on. I suspect he needs the confirmation of me being steady more than I need the comfort of him trying to be. Felix steps back, leaving his hands on my shoulder. His eyes flick across my face as I take in a shuddering breath. Half of me wants to bark at him to back off, the other is grateful someone understands my desperation.

I feel exposed.

“We’re in this together, mate. I’ve got you. Don’t carry it alone. She wouldn’t want that,” he murmurs after a while.

I nod.

“I thought it was her,” he says, swallowing hard.

“So did I,” I murmur.

He exhales through his nose and drags a hand over the back of his neck. “We’ll get her.”

I don’t answer. Instead, I turn and start down the hallway as Felix falls into step beside me without another word. We clear the house separately. I enter the living room first, making sure no stone is left unturned. I lift cushions, take photo frames off the walls, dig about in the fireplace before I move on to the kitchen empty handed. This time I open cupboards, pour out jars of sauce and beans, lift floorboards that look loose. Every drawer is pulled out; every nook and cranny is searched. I’m not sure what I’m looking for exactly, but I know I’ll know when I find it.

I hear Felix clearing other rooms as I turn and go back upstairs. I strip the bedroom, lifting the mattress, the bed frame, the photos but still there is nothing. The spare rooms, attic and bathrooms are all the same.

Finally, Felix and I meet again and we make our way to the final room. It looks like an office. Boxes are everywhere as a desk is positioned beneath the window. There are also rows of filing cabinets against one wall. The first thing I find is a small black book tucked into the back of the bottom drawer, wedged flat beneath a stack of plain envelopes. It’s unremarkable at first glance but a gut feeling makes me open it.

Names line the pages. Rows of them. Some are crossed out, others underlined, each annotated with dates and short coded symbols that I don’t immediately recognise but every name is female. I flip past the index and land on a random page. Becky. The top half reads like a standard intake form. Her height, weight and BMI are all recorded with unnerving precision.

Then the notes change.

Training hours are logged beneath the measurements. Observations are written in tidy handwriting about physicaldevelopment and “progress.” Vaginal circumference seems to be measured and re-measured over time as if tracking recovery from surgery. There’s also a table highlighting their body responses and muscular tension from sexual intercourse. My eyes skim the page until they land on sexual preferences being jotted down like a symptom of a disease.

It isn’t written like desire. It isn’t even written like perversion. It’s written like research. I slam the book shut and swear. Not from shock or even from disbelief but from the sheer, methodical cruelty of it. Against every instinct telling me to leave it closed, I open it again. This time I don’t land on a random page. I go back to the list and scan properly, forcing myself to take it in. The names blur at first before they settle into focus.

Robyn. Hazel. Fae.

I close the book carefully, as if it might burn through my skin, and hand it to Felix without looking at him.

“Bag it,” I demand in a clipped voice.

He doesn’t ask what I saw but I see a crease form between his eyebrows like he wants to know. I scan the room again. We already have the black book. We already have enough to bury him. Butenoughisn’t the same aseverything. This isn’t just the workspace of a violent man. It belongs to a doctor. And doctors document. If he has built an empire out of girls and silence, then somewhere in this room is the paper trail that holds it together. Fae has been hunting leverage for years. Something that doesn’t rely on testimony or bruises or broken girls standing in front of a council. I want enough weight in our hands that when she comes home and walks into that room, the ground shifts under all of them.

I spot a thicker ledger on a smaller desk against the far wall that is partially hidden beneath loose paperwork and I move toward it. Flicking it open, it’s the same structure as the black book. Instead of names though there are initials. There seemsto be a repeated sequence of numbers and letters that mean nothing at first glance. I flick through it, absorbing as much information as possible, until I land on a page that makes my breath still.

At the top of the page is a symbol. A red cross. The same red cross that was on Tyler’s keyring. My heart pounds so hard I can hear it in my ears as I scan what looks to be an invoice. This ledger isn’t about girls. It’s about the members. If I can figure this out, it will blow the whole operation apart.

I hand the ledger to Felix again before I make my way over to a hidden laptop. Flipping it open, no password prompt appears, just a dimmed screen that wakes under my touch. I don’t waste time trying to navigate it. I just close the lid and slide it into my bag as I see Felix doing the same thing with more files. As I walk to the door, something catches my eye on the shelf. It’s half-hidden beneath a stack of loose papers.

I move quickly but my hand stills before I touch it.

A photograph of me and Fae stares back at me.

It was the day I took her to the beach. We are unaware that we are being watched, holding one another close as we look out over the horizon. Her brown hair is caught by wind and there is a softness in her expression that she saves only for me. I pick up the photo as I run my finger over it.