Alex raised his voice for the first time, and even that low harsh tone sent a chill down Cody’s spine. “You stood there and watched.”
“You enjoyed it. You turned her pain and humiliation into entertainment. To you it was a show.”
Alex took Cody’s phone from his pocket. He pressed a button, and the screen lit up the basement. A video began to play.
That video. Ragged crying. Drunken laughter from Wade. Arthur grunting. And behind the camera—giggles.
Thin, ugly little giggles from the person filming. Cody’s giggles. “You liked watching?” Alex asked, holding the phone in front of his face.
The sounds from the speaker filled the room, and Cody began to howl, shaking his head. “Turn it off! Please, turn it off!”
“She begged too,” Alex said. “You didn’t turn anything off. You kept filming.”
“You savored every scream. You kept this video like a trophy.” He shut the phone off and set it on the bench.
“You like to watch. Fine. Then you’ll watch forever.”
He took the tape and sealed Cody’s mouth with two quick strips. Then he stepped behind him and locked his head in place between his knees. Cody bucked and moaned, but he couldn’t move.
Alex picked up two surgical clamps. Carefully, almost like a doctor, he spread the eyelids of Cody’s right eye. Then he took the scalpel.
“Doctors call this blepharoplasty,” he said into the silence. “They remove extra skin to make people look younger. I’m taking all of it, so you’ll never close your eyes again.”
The blade touched skin. The pain was beyond anything Cody could process, but the scream stayed trapped under the tape, turning into a muffled animal sound. Alex worked quickly and precisely, cutting away a thin strip of flesh.
Upper lid first. Then lower. Blood ran into the eye, but Alex ignored it, cauterizing the wound immediately. Then he did the same to the left eye.
When he finished, Cody was hard to look at. Two red, inflamed, wide-open eyes stared into nothing. They could no longer blink.
They could not close. They were condemned to stare at the world until they dried out, ulcerated, and failed. But even that wasn’t the end.
Alex picked up Cody’s phone and turned the video back on, setting it to loop. Then he took superglue and fixed the phone to the boy’s hands, positioning it so the screen sat directly in front of those unclosing eyes. He undid the straps holding him to the chair.
But Cody didn’t move. He sat there, paralyzed by pain and terror, and watched. Watched the screen replay the worst moment of his life and hers over and over. “Watch,” Alex said quietly, and shut off the basement light.
Only the dead glow of the phone remained, lighting a face with eyes that would never close. Alex walked out and locked the door. Then he went upstairs and stepped outside.
The morning was cold and gray. Three stages of judgment were complete. He had avenged his daughter.
He looked at his hands. Clean. Empty. Inside him there was the same emptiness.
The ice that had driven him cracked, and beneath it was a black, bottomless pit of despair. He had done everything he believed he had to do. But Katie was still in a coma, and the pain hadn’t gone anywhere.
It had just changed shape. He didn’t go home. Home meant her pictures, her laugh, her life.
That would have been too much. He didn’t go to a safe place either. The ice inside him—the armor, the weapon—had split open.
And through that crack came a black, freezing emptiness. He just drove through the morning city, obeying traffic lights, stopping at intersections, letting people cross. He was a ghost in a world where people were heading to work, laughing, buying coffee.
He had just come back from hell, and nobody could tell. His face still wore the same calm mask. His hands brought him back to the hospital, to that temple of sterile air and quiet grief.
He parked, went up to the right floor. The smell of medicine hit him, but now it felt familiar. Over the last three weeks it had become part of his life.
The attending physician, an older man with permanently tired eyes, met him in the hall. “Mr. North,” he said with a sigh, “no change. She’s stable but critical. Deep coma. We’re doing everything we can, but…”
The doctor didn’t finish. Alex understood anyway. “Don’t expect a miracle.” Alex nodded and went into the room. Katie looked the same as yesterday.
And the day before. Pale, peaceful face. Steady beeping machines measuring life. He sat in the chair by her bed, the same chair where he had spent countless hours.
He took her hand. It was warm, alive, but limp. “It’s done, sweetheart,” he whispered, and these were the first words he had spoken in days that weren’t meant to hurt someone. “I took care of it.”
“They’ll never hurt anyone again. You hear me, Katie? It’s over.”
He waited. Waited for her eyelashes to move, for her fingers to squeeze his hand. Waited for some sign that any of it had meant something.
But the only answer was the flat, indifferent beeping of the monitor. He had taken revenge. He had committed three acts of terrible cruelty…
