When the guards rushed in she let out a loud sob and ran toward them. Jack stared at the men in Securitas uniforms, two guys in their twenties. For a moment it looked like he was going to take a swing at them. Then he took a deep breath, held his hands up disarmingly and fired off a broad smile.

“Just a bit of a misunderstanding. Nothing to worry about. A difference of opinion, that’s all. I can find my own way out, I’m going now . . .”

He backed toward the door. Faye had retreated to her marketing director’s office and was looking anxiously toward Jack as several of her staff gathered around her protectively. It couldn’t have worked out better.

—

Faye was exhausted by the time she got home after Jack’s scene in the office. The apartment was empty. Kerstin had picked Julienne up from school and they had gone on one of their endless museum visits.

Kerstin had been worried about Julienne recently. She had gone from being open and bubbly to more and more withdrawn. Her teachers had said she tended to spend breaks on her own now. Faye was just as concerned as Kerstin. She recognized herself in Julienne, she had been a lone wolf too.

The letters from Faye’s father were coming more and more frequently. She still wasn’t opening them. She was only grateful that no one had discovered the connection between them. The case had drawn a lot of attention at the time, mostly because her father had been convicted, even though her mother’s body had never been found. The court had decreed that there was enough evidence anyway. All the hospital records documenting her mother’s injuries. The blood. The fact that all of her mom’s personal belongings were still there. The verdict had been unanimous. A life sentence.

Faye poured a glass of wine, sat down in front of her computer, and opened her emails. Twenty new emails from Ylva. She deleted them all, she wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. Faye opened the top drawer of her desk and took out the USB stick on which she had saved the key logger file. It had served her well. She didn’t know if she should save it as a memento or get rid of it.

As she was turning it around between her fingers it struck her that she had never checked the other folders she had copied on the off-chance there’d be something useful in them, because it had turned out there was more than enough to compromise him. She inserted the stick into the computer and sipped the wine as the files appeared on screen. She clicked through them, but none of them caught her interest. Boring business documents, contracts, PowerPoint presentations. Boring, boring, boring. The last folder was entitled Household, and she clicked on it in spite of the uninteresting name. She realized what it contained with growing alarm, and the glass of Amarone fell from her hand.

She stared at the pieces on the floor. At the red stain spreading out. She knew she wasn’t just going to have to crush Jack now, but make sure he was neutralized for good.

Faye let several days pass. Then she called Jack. She had a new plan now. She cried and begged for forgiveness. Even though she really felt like beating him to death, kicking his lifeless body, and spitting on his grave.

Jack fell for her weakness. He needed her submission, and she gave him what he needed.

Slowly she won his trust again. Jack wasn’t a complicated man, and willingly let himself be taken in. She wished she had discovered that sooner.

Though she hadn’t thought it would ever be necessary again, she allowed herself to be fucked by him. That was the hardest part. Trying to pretend she was enjoying it when her whole body felt sick with revulsion. When all she could see in her head were the pictures of what he had done.

Sometimes Jack cried in his sleep. His mobile lit up on the bedside table at regular intervals with Ylva’s name on the screen. She hadn’t thrown him out. Now she was the one begging and pleading. She would soon be giving birth to their daughter while Jack was sleeping with another woman. Just as he had done when Julienne was born.

Faye had managed to get a prescription for some more Ambien. While Jack was fast asleep she took out his laptop and conducted the necessary searches. Sometimes it felt like it was all too easy. But she knew that it would be far from easy. And that there would be a high price. Possibly too high. But she was who she was, and bearing in mind what Jack had done, no act of vengeance could be too brutal.

As darkness fell outside her bedroom she remembered the snowflakes falling outside the windows of the room in the tower. She remembered the feeling of floating. The feeling of being free and captive at the same time. Sometimes she missed the tower room. But she never missed the golden cage. Sometimes she thought about Alice, who was still trapped in hers. Of her own volition. But there were aspects of Alice’s life that Henrik didn’t know about. Such as the fact that Alice had been one of the investors in Revenge, and was now just as wealthy as he was. Or that Alice had asked for Robin’s number, and met up with him once a week while Henrik thought she was at Pilates.

Faye didn’t begrudge her that. If you were trapped in a gold cage, you needed the occasional distraction to make it bearable.

When dawn broke Faye watched as Jack slowly woke up, his head full of sleeping pills and whiskey.

“I’m going away on business next week,” she said. “Could you help take care of Julienne?”

“Of course.”

He smiled. Took the way she was looking at him as infatuation. But she was actually saying goodbye.

FJ?LLBACKA—THEN

I PUT THE PHONE DOWN. The verdict had been announced and I was free. For the first time. I had never tasted that before, I didn’t know what it felt like. But now it was as if my body was floating above the floor. I had never felt stronger.

I hadn’t been allowed in court, they thought I was too young. But I could imagine Dad in front of me, sitting in the same suit he wore for Sebastian’s funeral. His sweaty neck, the way he tugged at his shirt, uncomfortable, furious, captive in a way he had never been captive before. His imprisonment was my freedom.

A small part of me had been worried that they wouldn’t find him guilty. That they wouldn’t see the animal in him, just a pathetic, tragic little man. But the forensic evidence was overwhelming. Even without Mom’s body.

He had been convicted, and he was going to be given a severe sentence.

I knew the whole town was delighted. Everyone had been following the trial. Everyone had been horrified, they gossiped and whispered in the aisles of Eva’s Groceries, standing in the square, stopping their cars and winding down the windows, lamenting and talking about the poor girl. I knew them all so well.

But I was no poor girl. I was stronger than all of them. I would have liked to stay in the house after Dad was arrested, but someone decided I wasn’t allowed to. In their eyes I was still a child. In the absence of any relatives or friends I was placed with an elderly couple who lived nearby. They let me go to the house as much as I liked, as long as I had dinner and slept at theirs.

The last few months had been nothing but one long wait. Everyone left me alone in school now. When I walked down the corridor they parted as if I were Moses approaching the Red Sea. They were fascinated by me, but avoided me. People only seemed to enjoy being close to sorrow and tragedy up to a certain limit. I had passed that limit a long time ago.

But now I was free at last. And he was going to rot in hell.

The rain was pouring down. Her eyes were stinging and her head throbbing. All Faye wanted was to get some sleep. She called Julienne’s number twice, then Jack’s. No answer. The hotel receptionist came over to tell her that the taxi was waiting. She thanked her, grabbed her suitcase, and started to tap in the number for the police.

“Emergency Operations Center.”

“I want to report a missing person,” she said.

“Okay,” the woman at the other end said calmly. “Who’s the missing person?”

“My seven-year-old daughter,” Faye said with a catch in her voice.

“When were you last in touch with her?”

“Yesterday evening. I’m in a hotel in V?ster?s, I’ve been here on business. My ex-husband’s looking after Julienne. I’ve been calling all morning but there’s no answer.”

“So you’re not in the city?”

“No. Dear God, I don’t know what to do.”

“Is there any reason to think they may have gone off somewhere or otherwise be anywhere where they can’t answer?”

“No. They’re supposed to be at home. They were talking about maybe going to Skansen today. This really isn’t like Jack.”

“What’s your name?”

“My name’s Faye Adelheim. The apartment where they should be is in ?stermalm, it’s my flat.”

She gave the woman her address.

“We usually wait a few hours before filing an official report about a missing person.”

“Please, I’m so horribly worried.”

The voice at the other end softened slightly.

“It’s really a bit too soon, but I’ll ask a patrol to go over and check.”

“Thanks, that would be great. Give them my mobile number so they can call me when they get there.”

—