GIFT WRAPPED

“… There’s no point trying to save me. I entered into the devil’s bargain the moment I stole that little black book you found on my unconscious body,” Cadence Palace said to the detective, her wide eyes darting to an expensive watch that no longer decorated her wrist.

The detective - Monica Costello - halted her aimless pacing across the small interrogation room. She held her hands akimbo, mimicking something from a Hollywood film. Cadence thought the detective was rather dashing in her uniform, though it was a shame that they were speaking under such ill circumstances.

“I need your testimony; without it, we won’t be able to build a case for you,”

Cadence’s bottom lip thinned, “I think you’ve missed the point in this being a murder case and myself being the suspect. Though, I appreciate the excuse to leave my cell,” Being detained for a week would make anyone appreciative of any form of freedom.

“Mrs. Palace,” Came Costello’s eager voice again, “answer the question,”

“Call me Cadence,” she said, sliding her hands across the table. The sound of steel from the metal cuffs around her wrists scraped the surface till she finally interlocked her fingers.

Costello gave her a strange look. She forced a smile in return, then turned to the camera filming the entire ordeal beside the detective.

“Are you ready now?”

“Are they?” She nodded to the mirror taking up the wall to her right. It was obvious that there were others tuned into their conversation on the other side, or else Costello would have picked a better room.

Guilt crossed the detective’s features, disappearing into pure professionalism once she cleared her throat. “We weren’t allowed to talk alone,”

“What was the question again?” Cadence interrupted, blinking several times at the very conflicted detective.

Something akin to pain crossed Costello’s features. “Your husband, Mr. Nigel Palace, you were married to him for ten years according to our records,”

“Yes,” She answered promptly. Her husband’s name no longer had a negative effect on her now that it belonged to a dead man.

“And in those years, you both called yourselves philanthropists, stated on the charity website you and your husband established,”

“We were charitable people, at the time,” the notion certainly did not age well.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Before the cult Costello. You know this already,” she snapped.

Another heavy exhale echoed in the room, as well as a nervous look towards the mirror. “How did this cult start? Was there something that kicked it off or was it always something Mr. Palace had in mind,” the detective pressed on.

Cadence held in a laugh. “It was my idea, though when I proposed it to him it was more of a seed I implanted in the mind of a man who couldn’t comprehend failure.” She finished quietly.

“So you knew it would come to be.” That surprised Costello. “And the name of your cult, who …?”

“He did. The Giving Community represented a lifestyle centred around the act of gifting, hence the name,”

“And this ‘lifestyle’ how would …” Costello gestured with her hand, not quite finding the words to express herself.

Cadence leant back for this one, though her hands never left the desk. “It’s like reaching out for help toward something that can’t give you what you want.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” the good detective pointed out.

Cadence simultaneously winked alongside a cheeky clicking sound. “That’s cults for you,”

“Cadence …” Costello warned, working up a sweat in that heavy jacket of hers. She was pacing again, meaning she was still searching for the silver lining in all this.

Cadence had earlier informed her that their conversation would be futile, but she didn’t listen. She hoped her superiors, likely the people standing on the other side of the mirror, would find it in their hearts to pardon her displaced enthusiasm.

“It wasn’t easy running the cult beside Nigel. All the people we recruited were taken from their families by my very hands,” she bared her palms, waving each finger till Costello got the point.

“Was it satisfying?”

A haunted silence took over the room.

Cadence silently applauded Costello for the good question whilst she slowed down to think up an answer. She lowered her hands, laying them down on the table, her eyes following suit.

“It was satisfying to watch his empire crumbling down. He never saw it coming. He never expected his liabilities to catch up to him. By the time they did, it was too late to amend it.”

“Liabilities?”

Cadence battered her lashes, as if to blink away all meaning of the word that was about to pour out of her mouth. “His love for me, and everything written in that black book of his. Secrets, names of everyone involved, all his top contributors, dead now - you’re welcome,”

The chair opposite Cadence had been vacant since she entered the room. It was placed there for Costello to sit on, though, she had chosen to dance around it the entire time.

She wondered why only now the detective was taking her seat. She too laid her hands over the desk, holding them together thoughtfully. A clear tell-tale sign of the beginning of an apology radiated off her demeanour. “Your late son, Nigel Junior,” she began.

Cadence’s eyes immediately flicked to the ceiling above.

“… what exactly were the circumstances of his death?” It was obviously a question Costello had been dying to ask.

“It would be difficult for you to understand,” Cadence whispered.

“Try me,” Costello challenged. She wasn’t going anywhere, not until she got the testimony she wanted.

“Our lifestyle was based on the act of giving. Which then turned to the act of providing a feeling, or witnessing an act one may never come across within a conventional life,”

“Pleasure seeking,” Costello provided, tapping the desk as if she made a point.

Cadence laughed at the layman in her midst.

“It wasn’t always pleasure,” she rasped, hands raising an inch above the table to slap them back down. “Would you call the grief I feel from the death of my son, pleasure?” Her sudden switch of mood was startling. She tried to smile again, but it didn’t come easily to her.

“What does … how does that fit into what you’re trying to tell me,”

“My grief was my gift from Nigel, and in turn … I did what I had to do to continue our … - I often thought about killing him, it was the ultimate gift to a God that thought himself untouchable. Nigel really believed he was a God, and I wanted to break that notion. I’m not even sure if - that was clear when I …” her mind was spiralling.

“How many of you guys were there?” Costello pulled her back.

Cadence took a breath. “… about the population of a school,”

“And the twenty-seven you killed alongside your husband?”

“All inner circle members, our elite so to speak … people with connections, people who may have attempted to carry on Nigel’s teachings if he died. They were all an extension of Nigel and I ... I couldn’t have that,”

Costello moved her chair backwards, looking a little lost as her eyes darted across the floor, deciding something. “I think we’ll finish here for today. You look uncomfortable and I wouldn’t want to make you … uncomfortable,” she stood, preparing to leave.

Cadence couldn’t help but envy her freedom. “You’re someone I would have liked to meet under different circumstances. Perhaps at a dinner party, or a charity event,” she alluded rather plainly. This was typically how her recruitment strategy worked after all.

Costello shook her head, not at all amused by the remark. An officer then entered the room without knocking. Cadence barely acknowledged him, having seen a dozen men dressed like him. already.

“He will be escorting you, take care Mrs. Palace,” The good detective left.

Cadence buried her head in her hands. Relieving her memories and explaining unexplainable were giving her headaches recently. Perhaps she did not have the taste for her past anymore.

An audible click brought her out of her thoughts. The officer had switched off the camera. “She forgot to stop recording, you must have distracted her, you’re rather good at that, aren’t you?”

Cadence stilled. She should have seen this coming a long time ago.

“Hello Cadence,” Nigel said, their eyes reuniting through their reflections in the mirror.

She didn’t have the courage to greet him back,

“You … survived,” is what she said instead. She refused to give the man the satisfaction of her internal astonishment. She was so sure she had killed him during her rampage, yet, here he stood alive and well.

Resurrected, like a phoenix from the ashes.

“Honey, you should have taken the twenty-thousand dollars and gone on that holiday to calm down, you always overreact when you’re stressed,” he said nonchalantly, walking over to her chair till he stood directly behind her where she could not see him without the mirror. “Now look at us,” his hands were now on her shoulders, massaging them like a careful lover.

Cadence let out a strained laugh, “disappointed because you thought it appropriate for me to go on holiday after you k-killed our son?”

“It would have been better than going on a killing spree,”

Something dark came over her. “It’s over Nigel, they have the book, your men are dead, I’ve damned you,”

Nigel did not react to her words, “I never expected you to be so bold. You, of all people, you truly surprised me,” his fingers dug into the meat of her shoulders, pinching painfully at her flesh until she flinched “You were being selfish Cadence, you were not giving when you attempted to destroy everything that I built … you were taking.” He pursed his lips, his expression crumbling into one of distaste.

“Y-you took something irreversible from me …”

“I gave you the proof of your motherly love, the grief you felt for Nigel Junior. It’s a shame you couldn’t see it that way,” the massage seized, a que to the inevitable end that was approaching. “I never predicted you would go so far. I don’t think I’ve ever inspired so much vigour in somebody, the grief must have been great for you to go out and kill,”

Cadence watched her husband’s every move in the mirror. There was a twinkle in his eye, the words thrilling him as they came out of his mouth.

He was sick. Though, what did that make her for marrying him?

“Did our gardener find you hanged up and shot to bleed to death?” She asked to mask her growing fear.

Nigel unbuttoned his top button, revealing the rope burns marked across his neck, but not the gun wound, he kept that hidden. “Good thing I didn’t let you fire him last month, or I would have died. Stand up for me?”

With little choice, Cadence did so. Nigel was a head taller than herself, which was favourable to him.

He suddenly smiled.

“Give me a hug,” their proximity allowed him to pull her into one tightly. He buried her face into the crook of her neck. Then held her firmly, whispering assuring nothings sweetly into her ear.

“How much did you pay Costello to arrange all of this? Corrupting a good cop like that …” Cadence felt the urge to ask.

“The twenty thousand you refused,”

The response was a slap to her face.

“And the book?” A gun with a silencer attached dug into the right side of her ribcage. Cadence fluttered her eyes close to the thought of her son.

“It’ll probably cost me a lot to get it back, but I always win,” was Nigel’s last words to his wife.