Page 45 of Sin Like the Devil

CHAPTER 9

XANDER

RAIN – GRANDSON & JESSIE REYEZ

Pen tapping against her leather-bound notebook, Doctor Chesterfield stares. She looks frustrated. Even a little bemused. I drag a single fingertip up and down the soft velvet of the armchair I’ve spent an hour sitting in.

“Your notes from Priory Lane were… enlightening.”

I simply stare back.

“You’re in the final nine months of your sentence now. How do you feel about that?”

Stare. Blink. Wait.

She’ll have to admit defeat eventually. Baiting me to speak has never worked before, and it certainly won’t now. I vowed to never again allow a shrink into my head after the third round of hydrotherapy in Priory Lane’s special wing.

Admittedly, I was curious to know how long it would take for frostbite to set in. A twelve-hour session chained in sub-zero water finally did the trick. I carried around a toe of dead tissue for a week before they did me the kindness of removing it.

Can’t have a product limping, can they?

That wouldn’t appeal to buyers.

Doctor Chesterfield leafs through a thick binder of notes. “Have you enjoyed studying maths in our program? I know you like computers.”

Now she’s really fishing. When that doesn’t work, the doc decides to get personal instead. It never takes them long to reach for that old line of attack.

“Seventeen is a young age to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, clinically speaking. It’s noted that your childhood symptoms worsened with age.”

Gazing straight through her, I burrow into the cold emptiness that flows through me. For as long as I can remember, it’s been there. Not even the abhorrent depths of foster care awakened anything within me.

“No father listed, I see.” Her watery-grey eyes flick over the scrawled notes. “Your last contact with your mother was at eight-years-old, correct?”

With a sigh, I cross my legs at the ankles then lean back.

“She made no attempts to contact you once social services intervened?” Doctor Chesterfield presses. “That must have been difficult to process as a child.”

Little does she know, I’ve long since filed away the memories of my alcoholic mother. She’s as good as dead. Abandonment is easier to accept when for all intents and purposes, the parent in question is deceased to you.

“I see there was an investigation after you were taken into care.” She spares me a searching glance. “You refused to testify against her partner.”

Waiting, she frowns at my continued lack of response. Bringing him into this isn’t going to work. Worse people have tried. We never would’ve survived Priory Lane’s program if we broke that easily.

“He was prosecuted though, wasn’t he?” she asks in a gentler tone.

Jaw aching from grinding down on my molars so hard, I straighten in the armchair and speak for the first time. “I believe our sixty minutes are up.”

“Xander—”

“Until next week, Doctor.”

The weight of her eyes follows me out of the therapy room. I slam the door, perhaps a little harder than necessary, and glower at the wall for several seconds. Processing. Compartmentalising. Burying.

In the subterranean hellscape where we were held after everything with Ripley went down, memories were worth their weight in gold. The clinicians loved to pluck them free then parade them in front of us, desperate to elicit a response.

When we refused to crack, their determination increased. As did their torture techniques. The knowledge that our precious Ripley somehow arranged our admittance to that wasteland was a hateful twist they quickly used against us.

The innocent, vulnerable lamb.

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