Page 29 of Where Light Cannot Follow

He scoffs. "Enough of this, Michael. I'm sorry. I will make it up to you and⁠—"

"How old," I roar, "was my mother when you fucked her the first time?"

He stares for a moment, as though he didn't realize I had this in me. Then he laughs. "Age is just a number. She was a whore long before I touched her."

My fist shoots forward. There's a crunch. Blood spills onto his ivory, misbuttoned shirt. He cries out, and the door flies open. My fiancée covers her mouth with her hands.

I snatch up my coat and walk toward the door.

"Michael," my father roars. "If you leave now, you will never work for me again. You will never work in investment banking again!”

I chuckle derisively. "Bold of you to assume I'd ever wish to." Then again, perhaps not so bold. I'd already sold every fiber of moral integrity I possessed to do so.

"You'll end up on the streets. You'll end up⁠—"

"I'd rather starve to death on the streets than ever see your face again." Then I turn to my fiancée, to the girl caught up in the power games of hungry men. "You deserve more than this, more than selfish men like me. And like him. Go to college. Don't let yourself be used anymore."

The look she gives me is unreadable, but there's something in it, almost like regret..

Then I close the door on my life, and I make a vow to myself.

Winter air hits my face and my knuckles throb where they connected with my father's nose. Blood—his blood—is already drying in the creases of my skin. I welcome the sting of it. Proof that I can still feel something.

Never again.

The words form in my chest, ice crystallizing, hardening, into a vow. Never again.

Never again will I accept a handout from anyone. Never again will I trust another soul with even a fragment of my heart. Never again will I let family or love blind me to reality. If I make my way in this world, it will be by my own blood and sweat. And no one—no one—will ever get the chance to destroy me this way again.

I can feel the vow wrapping around me. Not like armor. But a tomb.

The memory dissolves, and we stand once more before a door. This one is weathered wood, ancient-looking, with rusted iron hinges. The color of old blood. I reach for the handle.

It doesn't turn.

I try again, twisting harder. Nothing. The knob refuses to give even a millimeter beneath my grip.

"It happens sometimes," Virgil says quietly. He's moved closer while I struggled, near enough that I could touch him if either of us could bear it. "When the weight of what we've witnessed is too fresh. The path forward requires something we're not yet ready to give."

"I don't want your consolation." My voice comes out ragged, scraped raw.

"Of course." He slides down beside the door and settles on the ground, his back against the frame.

"Will you not help me try to open it?"

He looks up at me, golden curls resting against his forehead like a Renaissance painting left out in the rain. "I told you. I cannot open the doors for you."

"Then what is your purpose as my guide?" I yank as hard as I can, desperate to escape this place, but the door won't give. "Are you my judge? You've seen how monstrous I behaved. Will you damn me now?"

He remains silent for so long that a buzzing ache beckons me to look back, to return. A part of me wants to. Wants to sit in that apartment where Matthew weeps and begs, and I stand cold and unmoving. If I deserve hell, then that is the greatest punishment. For that moment to loop repeatedly until my soul burns to ashes.

"I don't see a monster in you, Dante," Virgil says.

"I used people." The words spill from me with more passion than I'd normally allow. "I let that bastard manipulate me, and I became just as heartless as he was. I was wrong, Virgil. I belong here, in hell." My hand falls from the knob. "Why are you even bothering with me?"

He tilts his head and offers me a strange, sad smile. "Ah. And that's why you can't open the door."

I stop my efforts to stare at him.