I'm sorry for the delay. The holidays had me too busy to write and I really didn't want to rush this chapter. I hope you enjoy. Thank you for all the lovely comments!

Confusion swirled with fear and finally produced anger in Liette. It had never been an emotion that she wore well. She simply wasn't comfortable with rage as she knew the consequences that such a harsh emotion could hold. Still, Joe's words triggered her, flipping a switch that had her growling at him instead of shaking. "What did you just say?" she was not timid or frightened, instead she was enraged. The wolf had shed it's clothing, revealing that it was not a lamb at all. Her hands gripped the side of the table as if she was holding onto the edge of world. She was sure she'd fall off if she let go.

"Liette please," Joe tried to soothe Liette, his voice swirling like a satin ribbon around her, surrounding her and pulling her in closer to him. She should have run. She should have darted out of the room and told Debra she couldn't do this anymore. Liette knew that Joe's next words would not bring her comfort in any way. He would explain what he had meant and yet Liette already knew. She assumed that the profilers on the original case had come up with several reasons why Joe was the way he was, why he killed. Childhood trauma and deviant fantasies were probably listed as things that might have made a seemingly ordinary man into a monster. It was clear now by Joe's words that it was so much more than that.

It had to do with Liette.

Liette had always seen it as a coincidence that the killings had started just six months after she had begun attending Winslow. She had no beliefs about dragging bad luck around with her or some death curse like Ryan Hardy had. In Liette's world things that were not entirely logical belonged in the category of happenstance or chance. She worked mainly on probabilities but accepted that somewhere there always had to be a situation that went against the odds. Still, none of her worldly calculations could have ever prepared her for what Joe had to say next.

"It's all very complicated." Joe looked down at his hands, his mind busied by the task of finding all of the right words. "You must promise that you'll let me explain everything." he looked up to her, waiting for the agreement.

She should have run.

"Okay."

Liette's hands found their tremors once again, shaking against the edge of the table that she clung onto. Thankfully the metal structure was bolted into the ground so it didn't budge, no matter how much Liette shook against it. Her eyes stayed on Joe, though she wanted desperately to look away. She couldn't. Liette had to watch every opening of his lips or shift in his eyes to try and see if he was toying with her. Maybe this was just some game. Perhaps she was just a pawn in his chess set after all. She had convinced herself that she had the ability to wrap Joe around her finger without him realizing it but she was beginning to wonder if it had been the other way around. She'd catch him in this sick twisted game if she could.

The only problem was that Joe wasn't playing a game.

"Before we met I had been perfectly confident that Claire was the person I wanted to spend my entire life with. She calmed a chaos in me that I had never really understood." He explained, thinking of his youth but not diving into it. Some aspects of his life needed to remain private and kept away from the FBI. They could only speculate about the things that he had done when he was younger. Early onset criminal behavior was a regularity in psychopaths but that mental note did nothing to ease Liette's mind. Joe continued without hesitation, dragging her deeper down the rabbit hole. "Then I met you and I began to question everything about my marriage. As you know, Claire and I began to fight."

"Joe are you alright?" Liette asked a question she usually left behind with most people. She was afraid to ask things that might lead to answers she couldn't deal with. She knew she wasn't the best at consoling people but as she sat across from Joe in his office, helping him sort papers for his other classes, she couldn't help but noticed a grim look on his face. The room was illy lit but there was a darkness lingering upon Joe that wasn't caused by poor lighting. He seemed to carry a weight on him and despite a slight feeling of reluctance, Liette couldn't help but ask if he was okay.

"I'm fine." Joe lied, not making it past Liette's keen eyes as he continued to toss papers to the side as he got sick of marking them. "Aside from the fact that I have to read such ignorant and pathetic pieces of writing." Joe was never unkind to his students, even if some of them weren't suited for english. The lash out confirmed Liette's suspicion that something was wrong.

"Joe." Liette beckoned his attention up from the essays to try and understand him. She had only known Joe for three months but that was more than she could say about her classmates. They spent almost every Sunday together now, discussing the latest piece of literature that Liette had picked up to critique. On occasion she came to his office like this just to help him with the work for his other classes. It was all relaxing to Liette but normally the task was accompanied by Joe's high spirits and welcoming conversation. He was one of the few people that she could actually talk to for long periods of time without feeling burdened. That was the exact reason she had to see what what really wrong."What's actually going on?"

Joe looked up from the papers to see Liette studying him. What a bright girl she was. He was generally a terribly good liar and yet his facade had slipped away in the moment with Liette. Frustration had won out over Joe's typical nature to appear charming and pastoral. He peered across the desk at her and let out a long sigh as he realized she would not let him off the hook. She had read him like an open book, seeing the change in his typical blithe behaviour. He couldn't slam the pages closed on her now, she'd just reopen them.

"Trouble at home." he admitted, dropping his eyes back down in slight embarrassment. Since September he and Claire had been having difficulties getting along. She didn't like how often he was away from home, even if he excused it as being busied by work. He blamed his schedule on his focus on getting tenure but the fact was that Joe had wasted many of his available research hours just meeting with Liette. After three months he had not told Claire about his meetings with his student but not out of fear of jealousy but because of a feeling of possession. He needed something outside of his marriage and these intellectual talks with Liette were his and his only. They were just talks. It was not like he was having an affair. Joe had convinced himself that he was doing nothing wrong and that this time with Liette wouldn't bring him any trouble.

He should have known better.

A storm had begun to brew in Joe, not a week or two after he had met Liette. He had felt it inside him, that deadly chaos that he had known in his youth. Despite a clean criminal record Joe had a past he had run from when he had come to America. He had demons and skeletons in closet doors that had been unlocked by Liette's presence. The presets of a storm had begun to brew at home as his changing nature had started to cause fights with Claire. His once happy marriage began to deteriorate, only saved by the fact that a month later Claire would announce her pregnancy. The promise of a son brought new life to Joe and Claire's marriage but it did not suppress the storm brewing inside of him it had only deflected it to another avenue.

"Claire's pregnancy saved our marriage but I'm afraid it didn't save me from you." his words didn't make sense to Liette but they tightened around her as she waited for the full explanation. Joe was carefully planning each sentence he said and Liette could feel that this would be much more drawn out that she wanted. He had to recant everything to her, bringing her into a context where he figured she would be more understanding. He didn't want to frighten her but instead he thought he might flatter her. Liette felt nothing like the feelings that Joe was trying to instill in her, instead her fear deepened.

"I'm sure you know that love has always been important to me. It's the most important emotion in the world. I always imagined my marriage the love of a life time, the kind that the greats wrote about in all their works. I did love Claire for some time but not the way I loved you." the confession sank into Liette's skin like a sharp razor blade, tearing at her and making her want to cry out in pain. She felt her body convulse in agony as if she had just been burnt. She hadn't thought it was possible but her grip on the table tightened as she continued to stare at Joe, wanting to run away now more than ever but unable to break herself from the shackles of his gaze.

"I loved you." he repeated, his secret finally freed from the prison of his mind. He wanted to keep saying it as he felt his whole body lighten at the release of his words. He had held that statement back for so long, hid it in the blood and bodies of the young women he had desecrated and kept it to himself during the ten years that he was locked into the closet that they called a room. Finally he had found the moment to tell her. It had actually come sooner than he had expected and he was thankful for that. Holding onto this secret had been hard enough ten years ago when he had seen Liette in class and had wanted to tell her then. Thankfully that white dress said it all, Liette had been betrayed by her own people which meant Joe had a chance to claim her as his own.

But Liette didn't feel like Joe's at all. She felt disgusted, disturbed and torn. Her heart ached for the man who had once been her friend, the man that she had once dreamed about meeting in another world where they had a chance. He had been married and Liette hadn't been a fool. Her school girl delusions about Joe had been just that, delusions. Now he sat before her confessing his love and Liette didn't know how she was supposed to react. To be loved by such a beast was not flattering or comforting. Liette knew this confession would drag her into Joe's world now more than ever. She wouldn't escape this game until every last member of the cult was rounded up and imprisoned or killed. She would not rest until Joe did and it was all because he loved her.

"Come on." Debra watched as Liette remained silent, not gaining any ground for them in Joe's vulnerability. The team worked like clockwork around her, trying to pull up everything they could on Liette that linked her to Joe. This new reveal made Liette a suspect more than ever. Debra watched carefully, waiting for anything that might tip the game into Joe's hands but so far the man was giving nothing more than a simple long held confession.

"I don't understand." Liette's voice quaked, her world shaking beneath her with Joe's words. She wasn't fishing for answers, she was simply doing the least she could do to keep the conversation going, even if she didn't want to.

"I couldn't control my nature around you. I thought that maybe if I got rid of you..." Joe stopped, the look on his face reading as severe shame. A sickened feeling came about Joe, washing over him like an illness caused by his own words. "I'm sorry." he apologized for just the thought, knowing that Liette would have figured the rest of it out.

He had wanted to kill her.

Liette had been his intended target all along. She sat across from a man who now confessed that he loved her and thirsted for her bloodshed at the same time. Her heart raced, waiting for the next piece of the puzzle, needing the full explanation.

"I couldn't do it." Joe spoke, looking back to Liette once more. "But every day we spent together I questioned my marriage more and more but I couldn't cheat on Claire and I couldn't do that to you." Joe frowned. They had been wrong when they had labelled him a psychopath. Liette had checked off the traits in her head but Joe was missing one of the most important traits of all; a lack of empathy. Although Joe showed no remorse for his victims his empathy was not faked, at least not here in this moment with Liette. He watched her face contort into terrified looks and body shift uncomfortably against the chair she was seated in. He could feel every ounce of her pain and he knew it was all his fault. This had not been what he wanted at all. He had to fix this.

"Please don't be upset." Joe said but continued on before Liette could react. "You helped me unlock who I was meant to be. You made me into everything that I am."

That was something Liette didn't want to be responsible for.

"What does he mean?" Deirdre looked to Debra for understanding as she listened to every word on the video feed.

"I'm not sure. Arnaut may have been an inciting incident for him." Debra's mind searched for answers that Joe was hesitant to give. He was holding back something, she could see it in the way he held his arms closed to himself and his lips moved but no words came out. The confident lion was backing away, slightly intimidated by something in the situation.

Debra had no doubt it was Liette's reactions that were reeling Joe in.

"Pull up Carroll's victims." Debra said suddenly

Twelve girls. All Blonde, all in their early twenties, all of them students at Winslow. What had Joe meant when he said they were nothing like Liette? They were exactly like her. Deirdre even had a picture from Liette's graduation from Winslow pulled up on the screen and it was easy to see that the girl had fit right in.

"Love, say something, please."

Liette didn't have words to say, not ones that could be strung into a coherent sentence. Her mind scrambled, an unorganized darkness looming in the corner, the monster in the closet of a child's bedroom becoming a real life nightmare for the grown woman in the room. Her lips opened as if she would fulfill his request but the words caught in her throat, pushed back down by the agony of the moment.

"Come on, Arnaut."

Everyone waited on Liette. The agents. Joe. Even Liette herself waited for the words to come. But what was there to say? Words from her lips would be poison to the others. She could tell Joe how much she loathed him for bringing her in like this but it wouldn't further their investigation, it would just close him up again, making him useless until the next chapter in his book. The other root was to pretend she was flattered, it would get her further in finding out more about him but it would also incriminate her even if she was simply trying to do her job. The second consequence was that she'd have to listen to Joe explain the rest.

Liette looked down at the table, finally tearing her eyes away from Joe's gaze as she chose silence over words. She loosed her hands from the table edge and she sat back in her chair, distancing herself from Joe as much as possible in the moment. Her mind swirled with ideas of what to say but she suppressed the words there where they couldn't be heard.

I loved you.

Joe's words burned into her as if they had been seared onto her skin with hot metal. She knew she'd never get them out of her mind. After ten years she had continued to struggled to forget him and now he came back to her, making himself more prevalent in her mind than ever before. She wouldn't escape him until they were both lifeless and cold. Liette knew it was her own death that would be the only thing to separate her from the beast across from her and for a moment she wished he had done what he had originally wanted to do. She wished he had killed her so she wouldn't have to live through this.

Then she remembered the mangled bodies of Joe's real victims.

"Why did you do it?" Liette's eyes snapped back up, the light in the room reflecting heavily in her lighter brown eyes, illuminating them until they appeared almost gold on the video feed. "What did Sarah, Jen, Amy, any of them do to deserve what you did to them?" She asked. The anger was back, the ugly emotion straightening Liette up as she leaned in again. The images of the other girls flashed too vividly in her mind for her to stay quiet. She had had only two options; curl up and quiver in fear or react outwardly. The latter gave her more to gain as she demanded answers from Joe.

Joe watched as Liette moved forward, coming close enough that he might have been able to grab her if he moved quick enough against his chains. Her blond hair fell loosely in front of her face, strands of it threatening to hide the glowing eyes that looked at him with such rage that he swore he could feel heat coming off of them as if she was trying to burn him with a gaze.

This was not the reaction he wanted. He had to calm her down.

"They were just wrong Liette. Their lives weren't filled with wrong choices and darkness that they couldn't escape." Joe's gaze moved past Liette as he found himself in a sort of trance, the image of his victims coming into his mind, pleasing him instead of disgusting him like they had Liette.

"They were all accomplished students, members of clubs, active at the school." Liette hadn't known the other girls well in their lives but during the killings she had done some research of her own, hoping to practice her profiling skills while she found herself in the killing zone of an actual serial killer. It had been more interactive than any of her lectures or her textbooks. "They were successful, just like me."

"THEY WERE NOT LIKE YOU!"

Absolute silence. The entire room of FBI agents came to a perfect stillness as Joe raised his voice with Liette for the first time. He had stood from his seat, his movement stopped by the chains on his wrists. Liette had stood as well, reacting to Joe's loud and quick behaviour, startled by such a change in him. She looked away, ashamed that the sudden fear had released tears from her eyes.

Guards from outside came into the room to settle Joe but they did not reach him before he sat down and apologized. "Love, I'm sorry, look at me." Joe softened once more, his voice calmed and steady as he reigned himself back in. He had tried to control such a reaction but Liette's words dug deeply into his heart. She was missing the point completely. Still, he realized he couldn't just scare her away. He had to keep explaining.

"Look at me."

His request suddenly had Debra snapping into action. "Mitchell, their eyes. Looks at their eyes." Joe was so focused on Liette's gaze that Debra had been able to find the puzzle piece she was missing. What was one of Joe's signatures? He cut out of the eyes of his victims. Enucleators were relatively rare and yet Joe's precision in removing both eyes of all of his victims was something difficult to forget. It was an action that some of his followers had adopted in his honour. Everyone had assumed that it was simple another thing about Poe. The eyes were the windows into a person's soul but what if it wasn't just that? What if it was what Joe was seeing through the windows that had turned him into a monster?

"What about their eyes?" Deirdre asked, not sure she knew where Debra was going with her statement.

"Blue, green, no brown. Liette's eyes are brown."

Despite the light illuminating the young woman's eyes into a lighter shade of gold it was still clear, especially to Joe, that Liette's eyes were a honey brown that spoke tales of autumn and falling leaves. There was a warmth in that colour even as it was hidden slightly by eyelids that had narrowed to stare at Joe, as per his request. The colour of Liette's eyes was distinct, especially in contrast to the ocean blues and seagrass greens that reflected in the pictures of Joe's victims.

"The eyes are the windows to the soul." Joe spoke as if he was teaching, standing in front of a lecture hall instead of shackled in a prison. "Don't you remember?"

Of course Liette remembered. Any words from Poe had turned her stomach since Joe's incarceration. She had avoided the dark and disturbed poet altogether, knowing that is words would remind her of Joe's voice and would make her think of him. Now she was forced to think about how she played into Poe's work, how she was part of Joe's fantasy. Just like Debra had, Liette began to understand.

"They spoke to me, not with words but with glances. They were desperate to be set free. Girls drowning in blue eyes, tangled in green. They were choking on their own lives, desperate for air. None of them were like you."

He was obsessed with her, in a way that no one could have imagined. All of his original victims had been surrogates, replacements for the girl he couldn't bring himself to kill. Their eyes had told him the stories of their lives of despair. Their eyes have set them apart from his beloved Liette. Their eyes had driven him to kill.

At first Joe had just been observing the girls to try and realize that Liette was just another pretty young girl that he didn't need to get hung up. He had tried to convince himself that his attraction to her had been caused by some want to keep his youth. An older man, a younger woman. It had made sense at first. Joe had denied himself the nature that had been stirring in him. But when Liette had told him about being asked out by one of the boys in her classes he had realized his jealousy only came from her. He saw girls like her all the time, just as young, just as beautiful but the jealousy he had felt in that moment had come only from Liette. He had to check to make sure which was why he had sought out Marissa Shore.

Marissa Shore had been Joe's first victim. A first year like Liette but an English student that was in many of his classes. He had easy access to her and so calling her to his office had been easy. It had been there that he had seen it. She glanced up at him, her blue eyes giving him all the answers he needed. He couldn't kill Liette but he could get the release he needed, just with other girls.

"I set them free. I did it for you."

Liette was practically choking back tears, her stomach turning with the knowledge that Joe bestowed on her. She felt a great burden placed on herself, one that made her feel as if she had taken the knife to those girls and killed them herself. From the other room Debra watched carefully, noticing that they were starting to loose Liette to her mind.

It was time to pull her out.

It took Debra all of a minute to leave the room and enter the interrogation room. "Arnaut, we're done here." it was an order, one she was giving to save Liette's sanity. More time with Joe might have given them more answers but Debra didn't want to be driving Liette to a mental institution after all of this. Despite her reservations about Liette's possible involvement with Carroll, Debra did still have to look after the young woman as a member of her team.

"I'm not finished Agent Parker." Joe's tone was ice compared to the one he used with Liette. "Don't you want to hear the rest of the story?" his tone was menacing, the lion had come back to the room and begun to circle around it's prey. He didn't want to hurt Liette but he had to continue on with his plan. The next chapter was about to begin. "After all, that was just the prologue."