Page 100 of Killing Me Softly

Archie.

From his first year in halls. The kid he’d had an altercation with. The kid who’d looked at Aaron as if he was a freak. Who’d treated Rahul with disdain.

Mable crouched, running long, lazy fingers through Archie’s matted hair, as though he were a pet she’d grown bored with.

“He wasn’t very nice to you either, was he?” Mable hummed, stroking the corpse like a doll. “Pastor Whitmore gave me all your notes. He’s surprisingly conversational when behind bars and not able to pin me down.” Mable stood. Kicked the body. “He said sorry in the end.” She sighed, almost wistfully. “But apologies don’t cut the mustard with me.Hisor Mr Whitmore’s.” She looked over at Aaron and smiled. “Did you know Mum told Whitmore to track you? Watch over you? That he fed her every scrap of information about you to her? Told me he found you after that incident when you were fifteen. Tracked you ever since. Consequences, bruh. There’re always consequences.”

Aaron’s stomach churned, his heartbeat thundered, but deep, deep in the darkest corner of his mind, one terrifying thought whispered.If I had been raised like her… I might have agreed.

Mable tilted her neck in an afterthought. “Did mummy teach you that, too? Or was your consequence ignorance?”

Aaron couldn’t tear his eyes away from Archie’s blank, staring face. The kid had been an arsehole, sure. But he hadn’t deservedthis. No one did. But to Mable, he was just a lesson. A cautionary tale. She saw people as experiments. As variables.

Aaron was understanding just how deep that went.

Mable dragged a single blood-caked finger across Archie’s forehead, her eyes gleaming with a manic, electric intensity. Wild, untethered, and utterly unhinged.

“He struggled more than I thought he would.” She snorted as if amused by that. “I mean, really, I was just warming up. Just testing a few ideas. But he gave up so easily. He disappointed me. But I suppose that’s men, isn’t it? They just don’t have our pain threshold, do they, Mel?”

Mel let out another choked sob, her body jerking against the restraints.

“Oh, come on, sweetheart.” She waved a hand dramatically, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like you knew him well. Not like Taylor. Now there was a man who just lay down and let me have at him.”

Mel squirmed, her entire body shaking, but Mable just sighed and let go, stepping back, hands on her hips.

“Why are you doing this?”

Mable turned to Aaron. Expression darkening. The shift was so abrupt it sent a shiver down his spine.

“You don’t have a theory? Aren’t you meant to be getting into heads like mine?” She watched him as if he was some strange, incomprehensible thing.

“I stole your life.” Aaron honed his inner Kenny. “You’re angry because I got to be the golden child. The cherished one. The beloved son. And you?” He wanted to offer a sympathetic look, but he wasn’t sure if she deserved one. “Got the real Howell experience. The one they shielded me from. And you want me to suffer for that?”

Mable tucked the knife under her armpit, freeing her hands to clap in slow, mocking applause. “Well done. Gold star.” Her smirk curled like smoke, toxic and smug. “Can see why he’s the teacher’s pet, eh, Mel?”

Mel made a muffled noise behind her gag, eyes wide with panic.

Mable then ducked behind Mel and reached for something half-hidden beneath the dust-covered crates. Aaron was about to launch forward. To tackle her. Jump on her but she straightened just as quick as the thought came, an old revolver dangling from her fingers. An antique, its barrel dulled with time, but its menace undiminished. Aaron’s stomach clenched. One of their father’s relics, no doubt. And like all relics in their family, it was never just for show.

She raised it level with his head. “Sit down.”

Aaron didn’t move.

Mable sighed in theatrical exasperation. “Shall we see if this still works, then?” She tilted her wrist, adjusting her aim.

Then she fired, and the blast cracked the air apart.

A white-hot whisper scalded past Aaron’s temple, so close the wind stirred his hair, and the bullet slammed into the wooden beams behind him. Splinters exploded outward, sharp and stinging as they nicked his skin. The deafening report swallowed everything. His pulse. His thoughts. Mel’s muffled scream.

A high-pitched ringing swallowed the world.

Aaron staggered back; equilibrium shredded. He blinked, desperate to focus, but the warehouse blurred at the edges, shifting and spinning as if the ground had been ripped from beneath him. His knees buckled, balance gone, body betraying him as he dropped heavily onto the chair. The vibrations of the shot still pulsed in his bones and the smell of burnt gunpowder was thick in his nose.

The chair’s wooden arms bit into his sides. He tried to push up—too late.

Mable moved behind him.

He didn’t hear her. He couldn’t. The ringing in his skull was too fierce, swallowing the rustle of rope, the scrape of fabric against the floor. But he felt it. The sudden, suffocating constriction as rough cords snapped tight around his wrists,yanking them behind the chair. The burn of fibres slicing into his skin, cinching him into place.

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