Crossed (Never After, 5)

The fifth installment in Emily McIntire's Never After series, a collection of dark contemporary romances that reimagine classic stories, Crossed is a retelling loosely inspired by Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Each book in the series functions as a standalone.

Cade Frédéric, a Catholic priest raised as an orphan on the streets of Paris, arrives in Festivalé, Vermont, a small town modeled on French Colonial architecture, to lead the parish of Notre-Dame Cathedral. On his first night, he reveals a hidden compulsion he calls his "sickness": He murders a sex worker by strangling her with his scarf, rationalizing the act as freeing her soul from demons. Afterward, he atones by whipping himself with a knotted rope he calls his "discipline," a practice rooted in childhood abuse at the hands of Sister Agnes, a nun at the Paris orphanage where he grew up. Cade has killed before and feels no true remorse, only guilt that God may not approve.

Amaya Paquette, 24, lives in a run-down apartment in Festivalé with her six-year-old brother Quinten, who is on the autism spectrum and communicates through gestalt language processing, a method of acquiring speech by learning whole phrases before breaking them into individual words. Their mother, Chantelle Paquette, abandoned them five years earlier, leaving a note that read, "I'm done. He's your responsibility now" (15). Parker Errien, the town's wealthiest and most powerful man, had been dating Chantelle and secretly prostituting her to his associates. After Chantelle vanished, Parker transferred her debts to Amaya, extorting weekly payments and sexually assaulting her. To earn money, Amaya works as an exotic dancer under the stage name Esmeralda at the Chapel, a strip club in neighboring Coddington Heights, while her roommate and best friend Dalia, a former dancer who acquired a disability in a car accident, watches Quinten.

Cade clashes with Parker, recognizing him as corrupt and refusing to serve as his puppet, though he knows Parker controls Bishop Lamont through generous donations. Suspicious, Cade follows Parker to the Chapel and sees Amaya performing on the pole. He is instantly consumed by an overwhelming obsession that is both sexual and violent. He follows her back to Festivalé and begins stalking her nightly, standing outside her bedroom window, telling himself he intends to kill her to end the fixation. The cycle of desire, guilt, and self-punishment intensifies with each encounter.

Their paths cross repeatedly in town. Amaya impulsively enters the confessional at Notre-Dame without knowing Cade is the priest on the other side, giving her real name and admitting she strips to pay her mother's debts. Cade is electrified, but she leaves before he can respond. Meanwhile, Dalia informs Amaya that her cousin Candace, a local sex worker, has been found strangled, though neither connects the murder to Cade.

When Cade witnesses Florence Gammond, a local defense attorney who despises Amaya, publicly insulting Quinten at a grocery store, he intervenes and bonds with the boy over a shared love of dinosaurs. The interaction moves Amaya, who is unaccustomed to anyone treating Quinten with respect. Cade later visits Quinten's school and, after witnessing the boy being bullied while the principal does nothing, insists Quinten be included in the children's play for the upcoming Festival of Fools, a traditional January 1 celebration. When Amaya learns it was Cade who secured Quinten's spot, she shows up at his cottage at three in the morning to thank him.

Their connection intensifies through volatile encounters. During one late-night visit, Cade pins Amaya against a wall and brings her to orgasm before violently pushing her away and calling her a witch, echoing her mother's words. Devastated, Amaya leaves, and Cade whips himself in penance. Yet the obsession only grows. One night she catches him watching through her window and, rather than being afraid, feels a rush of power. Their voyeuristic encounters become a nightly ritual.

At the Chapel, Amaya's regular client Andrew Gleeson becomes aggressive and corners her in the back alley. She escapes when a noise startles him. Cade, who had followed her to the club, intercepts Andrew, breaks his fingers, and strangles him. Days later, detectives inform Amaya that Andrew is dead and she is a person of interest. Desperate, she goes to Parker and agrees to marry him in exchange for his protection, a defense attorney, and financial support for Quinten's care. Parker provides all of this but tightens his control over every aspect of her life. Bishop Lamont then instructs Cade to conduct sessions preparing Amaya for a Catholic marriage.

Consumed with guilt that his murder of Andrew drove Amaya to Parker, Cade devises a plan. He stages a break-in at Amaya's apartment to generate a timestamped police report placing her at home, then travels to Coddington Heights and murders another man using the same method, creating the appearance of a serial killer the media dubs "the Green Mountain Strangler." The third murder effectively clears Amaya as a suspect. During their private sessions, Cade and Amaya share painful histories and fail to maintain boundaries. Cade abandons his plan to request a transfer, follows Amaya to a dance studio, and their relationship becomes fully sexual. She returns to Parker's penthouse concealing the bruises Cade left on her body.

Parker, who has been tracking Amaya's movements through his driver, confronts her. He chokes her nearly to unconsciousness, reveals he knows about the affair, and forces her to sign a marriage license by pinning her to his desk and raping her. Amaya resolves to endure for Quinten's sake.

At the Festival of Fools, Florence Gammond crowns Quinten "King Fool" during the children's play inside Notre-Dame, publicly humiliating him. Amaya instructs Dalia to take Quinten and leave, then follows Florence into the bathroom and bludgeons her with a metal tissue dispenser. Florence survives but is hospitalized. Cade pulls Amaya away and drives her to a secluded monastery in the Green Mountains, where a solitary nun named Sister Genevieve has previously tended his wounds.

Amaya discovers that Sister Genevieve is her mother, Chantelle, living under a religious identity less than an hour from where she abandoned her children. Chantelle is unrepentant and expresses no interest in Quinten. When she begins to say Quinten's name, Amaya strangles her to death, feeling freedom rather than guilt.

Cade returns to Festivalé for Quinten and discovers that Parker has murdered Dalia, leaving his cuff link at the scene. At Cade's cottage, Parker waits with a gun and Quinten as hostage, though the boy is unharmed. Cade sends Quinten out of the room on a pretext, overpowers Parker, and kills him. He buries both Parker's and Chantelle's bodies in the mountain forest, then coerces the hospitalized Florence into publicly identifying Parker as the Green Mountain Strangler. Her testimony, combined with the cuff link and Parker's disappearance, leads authorities to close the case.

Cade resigns from the priesthood, and with no will in place, Parker's fortune passes to Amaya. In the epilogue, set five years later, the couple is married and living in the Auvergne Mountains of France with Quinten, now a flourishing teenager. Amaya has used the fortune to revitalize Festivalé and open a chain of pole dance studios named Dalia's Dancers in her friend's memory. Cade still experiences violent compulsions and occasional self-harm, but Amaya helps him through them, reminding him that his pain is also hers. She has embraced her own capacity for darkness, and the two hunt together. In an extended epilogue set ten years after they first met, Quinten is in high school and showing interest in a girl for the first time, a milestone the couple observes together.