Chapter 6 - THE MAN WHO CALLED HIMSELF A MONSTER
Fay did not notice she had said “Old River Conservatory” out loud until Griffin looked up sharply.
“You know it.”
She swallowed.
“I went there once.”
“When?”
“When I was a kid. My dad took me there in winter. It was closed—I think it had already been shut down—but he knew a side gate.”
Griffin’s focus sharpened further.
“Did he take you anywhere specific?”
Fay tried to force memory into order.
It was one thing to remember snow on old glass and another to trust those fragments under pressure.
“There was a long central house… maybe three? Dead vines on the outside. He kept saying, ‘Look for life where other people see rot.’ I thought he was being poetic because dads do weird things.”
Griffin’s mouth barely moved.
“Simon never did anything by accident.”
Fay rubbed both hands over her face.
“So now what? You send me in alone?”
“No.”
“Brandon said alone.”
“Brandon says many things.”
That answer should not have been reassuring, but the certainty in it steadied something in her anyway.
Roman stepped closer.
“It’s an old site. Multiple entrances. Easy to trap.”
“That’s why he chose it,” Griffin said.
Fay laughed once in disbelief.
“How calm are you all the time?”
Roman almost smiled.
Griffin did not.
“I’m not calm,” Griffin said. “I’m practiced.”
The line lingered in the room after he left it.
Fay watched him move to the window again, phone against his ear, voice low. He spoke like a man who expected to be obeyed and had trained himself never to waste force where precision worked better.
She thought about the ballroom.
About him wiping off her lipstick.
About his tiny smile before ordering her buried alive.
Then she thought about the Grave.
He caught her looking.
“What?” he asked after ending the call.
Fay folded her arms.
“Is it really called the Grave because you bury people there?”
One corner of his mouth moved—not a smile exactly, more the shadow of one.
“It’s called the Grave because no one gets in without my permission and very few get out with a story they can use.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“It answers enough.”
She stared at him.
“Do you enjoy sounding like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like every sentence is carved on a weapon.”
Roman gave a discreet cough that looked suspiciously like hiding amusement.
Griffin ignored him.
“You think I’m offended by your opinion of me?”
“I think you’re aware of it.”
“Of course I am.”
“Then answer honestly.” Fay stepped closer despite every instinct telling her not to. “Did you ever mean to bury me alive?”
Griffin’s gaze held hers.
“In dirt? No.”
The bluntness made her blink.
“Then why say it?”
“Because the room needed to believe I might.”
She opened her mouth, then stopped.
He continued, not louder, simply more direct.
“You ran to me in public. Brandon put hands on a woman in front of my guests. If I had treated either one of those facts lightly, that ballroom would have learned the wrong lesson.”
“What lesson?”
“That fear around me is optional.”
Fay stared at him in disbelief.
“That is your defense?”
“Yes.”
“It’s insane.”
“It’s consistent.”
Again, maddeningly good.
“What about me?” she demanded. “What lesson was I supposed to learn?”
He looked at her for a beat that felt too long.
“That you survived by making a reckless decision,” he said. “And now you’ll need to survive the consequences with more care.”
For some reason, that hurt more than cruelty would have. Because underneath the monstrous phrasing, there was something almost like respect.
She looked away first.
On the table, Roman spread old city maps and site plans of the River Conservatory. Fay forced herself to focus.
Three greenhouses.
A service tunnel.
A boiler room.
A long-forgotten admin office.
Basement cisterns beneath the central house.
“It used to be beautiful,” she said before she meant to.
Griffin glanced up.
“What?”
“The conservatory. My dad brought me there because he said dead places remember who loved them.”
Roman muttered, “That’s a hell of a florist line.”
Fay might have smiled if Owen were not in a chair somewhere with bruises on his face.
Griffin came closer to the maps.
“If Simon used the conservatory, there may be a reason beyond sentiment.”
“There was a winter rose house,” Fay said slowly. “He wanted me to remember that specifically. White roses in January. He said, ‘If something is hidden well, it blooms backward.’”
Roman looked between them.
“I hate when dead people speak in riddles.”
“He may not be dead,” Fay murmured.
That truth changed the air every time it was spoken.
Griffin’s phone buzzed. He checked the message, then set it down.
“Brandon moved your mother,” he said.
Fay’s stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Not captured,” Griffin clarified. “My men found her first at a motel on Route 17. She’s safe. Brandon only took Owen.”
Relief nearly made her knees weaken.
“Can I talk to her?”
“After we move her again.”
She closed her eyes briefly.
Thank God.
When she opened them, Griffin was still watching her. Not tenderly. Not even kindly. Simply as if relief on her face was data he was quietly filing away.
Then he said, “We go to the conservatory at eleven-thirty.”
Roman frowned. “Too obvious.”
“Yes.”
“Then you think Brandon wants us there before midnight for another reason.”
“I think he wants Fay to remember something before he takes it from her.”
Fay’s skin prickled.
Before he takes it from her.
Not because Griffin sounded dramatic.
Because he sounded right.
Roman left to coordinate teams.
That left Fay and Griffin alone for one long, strange minute beneath city lights and map paper and the thin electric hum of a building built to hide wars above and below ground.
Fay looked at him.
“If I help you save Owen and find whatever my father left, what happens after?”
Griffin’s answer came with almost no pause.
“That depends what your father left.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
She should have looked away.
Instead she heard herself ask one more question.
“Are you a monster, Griffin?”
He held her gaze.
“Yes,” he said.
Then, after a beat:
May you like
“The mistake most people make is believing monsters can’t tell the truth.”
And for the first time all night, Fay understood why men in his world feared him more when he was quiet.
