Page 65 of Beautiful Savage
When she looks at me again, her face is ice. Not the kind that burns, but the kind that numbs. I recognize it from my own mirror.
"You need to leave," she says. "Right now."
Her jaw trembles, just once. She blinks, and the tears stop.
"Go," she says.
I don't move. Not right away. I'm still holding the knife, and my hands are red. I want to explain. I want to offer her something—an apology, or a promise, or maybe just the truth, which I've never given her unfiltered. But there's nothing I could say that she doesn't already know.
The two operators who lived are starting to come around. One of them coughs, tries to roll over, but his arms don't work right. The other groans, half-conscious, one hand crawling toward a weapon that is no longer there.
Daphne doesn't look at them. She doesn't look at the knife, or at me, or at the mess in her father's living room. She just sits there, breathing slow and shallow, as if she needs to regulate the oxygen for both of them.
She finally looks at me one last time, and now the anger is there, but it's not jagged. It's the kind of anger that comes with grief, a sadness too large to fit inside her body.
"This is your fault," she says. "All this violence, this blood. You brought it to my father's door."
She looks at her hands, red to the wrists.
"He almost died," she whispers. "My papa almost died because I let you into our lives."
She isn't raising her voice. She doesn't need to. Every syllable is a verdict.
"Stay away from us," she says. "Stay away from me."
The "us" draws the circle. Her and Nicolas inside, me outside. But I catch the micro-movement: her shoulders shifting toward the door as she says it, her body wanting to follow even as her voice shuts me out. Her hand tightens on Nicolas's good shoulder, anchoring herself. Her eyes close once, just for a heartbeat mid-sentence.
I hear what she's really saying. She's not just convicting me. She's convicting herself. The woman who fell for her captor. The woman who painted herself with my garden's flowers and danced for me.
I could name what she's doing to herself. Could force her to see the self-destruction in her verdict. But I don't. Nine years of taking what I'm given. She's spoken. I won't argue.
My voice comes out steady though my chest is caving in. I pull out my phone, dial 911. Report it clean: address, four assailants, two breathing, two not, elderly male with broken ribs and arm needs immediate response. I hang up.
"Paramedics will be here in ten minutes," I say.
I pick up the secondary from against the wall, holster it. Pick up the knife still wet with blood. Walk past Daphne and Nicolas without looking, though everything in me wants to drop beside her.
Out the front door to the porch where morning light makes everything look peaceful.
I stand on the porch in Pristine's morning quiet. No neighbors have emerged. The cottage contained its violence well.
Through the door, I hear Daphne's breathing. Not quite crying, just shaped breaths. The small, wordless sounds of someone whose world just shattered.
The sirens reach me at 11:01. Six minutes since the call. I see the first patrol car turn the corner, lights fracturing morning peace, followed by the ambulance.
I move to the property's edge, stand behind a line of trees.
The paramedics rush in. Thirty seconds later, one emerges calling for the gurney. They bring Nicolas out on it. Oxygen mask, IV in the good arm, broken arm splinted. Daphne follows, wrap skirt streaked with blood, hands still red, face composed.
She climbs into the ambulance with her father. The doors close.
They pull away, sirens wailing.
She never looks toward where I stand.
More vehicles arrive. Patrol cars, unmarked SUVs. Yellow tape goes up. The cottage becomes a crime scene. I walk the long way back to my truck, get in, pull out silent.
I don't replay her words. Don't need to. They're carved into me now, confirmation of what the Army said in 2017, what the world's been telling me. I was that monster before her. For forty days, she made me forget. Now I'll be that monster again.
