Page 77 of Killing Me Softly

Kenny signalled Jack behind him, gesturing at the phone, a silent message Aaron barely processed. Jack had already pulled out his mobile, flying his fingers over the screen, probably calling in a trace.

“Oh, poor Taylor can’t come to the phone right now,”she cooed. “But I must say, you do have good taste in men, brother dearest. He was deliciously yummy. Shame he did something very silly. Looks like you have a thing for possessive ones. Could that be a result of your upbringing perhaps?”

“Where are you?” Aaron stared at the phone, at Taylor’s name on the screen, rotten dread searing through him.

“Me? Oh, don’t worry about that. You never did before.”Her voice lilted, amused.“But, hey, what you should be happy about is that without your very naughty ex-boyfriend, I might never have found you at all. Very good video skills. It was so mean of those nasty authorities to separate us and not tell us where we were. Keep us apart. Did you know your new boyfriend had a hand in that? Very manipulative, don’t you think? Controlling?”

Kenny’s gaze sharpened, his steady voice a clinical counterweight to the taunting lilt of hers. “That’s not true.”

“No? You didn’t say I wasn’t fit to be in society?”

Kenny shook his head. “It was ashareddecision. A preventative intervention based on thorough risk assessment. It wasn’t onlymyassessment that drew the conclusions you were unstable. Mine was research based. Academic.”

“But even when you started fucking my brother you knew about me. And you didn’t tell him. What’s that about?”

“It wasn’t my place to tell him. The authorities made that call. For safety.”

“Safety? Ripping siblings apart is for safety?”

Kenny kept steady. “Sibling pairs exposed to the same adverse experiences don’t necessarily process them in identical ways. One may develop resilience, while the other succumbs to maladaptive coping mechanisms. Manifesting in aggression, dissociation, or evenpsychopathy.”

Aaron’s breath hitched.

“Are you diagnosing me as a psycho, Dr Lyons?”

Kenny’s voice threaded between cold analysis and unshakable authority. “You don’t need me to diagnose you. You already know what you are. And you didn’t experience the same trauma. You experienced very different things. You could have held resentment towards him. Which, judging by this call and what you have done so far, it looks as though you do.”

The laughter booming down the phone was pure madness.“And thus, believed the boy was worth saving but the girl…fuck the girl! Put her in a box and ship her off to a psycho unit!”

“To keep you safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“Yourself.”

“Well, that is a good thing, because I certainly wasn’t safe from all those doctors. Y’know, the ones who came in my room at night and told me to be quiet.”Her voice dropped to a threatening growl.“I am so lucky you sent me there.”

“That must have been a profound betrayal.”

“Are you sorry?”

“Do you need me to be sorry?”

“Fucking hell, he’s clever, isn’t he, brother? But he’s right, I don’t need him to be sorry. As mother always said, ‘don’t be sorry, just don’t do it!’”

Aaron flinched at the ferocity, and he could see the pain written on Kenny’s face, so he asked again, “Where’s Taylor?”

“Why do you care?”She went back to her casual tone.“You didn’t care when he was alive.”

Aaron held Kenny’s gaze, his presence solid, grounding, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from the overwhelming fear.

“What have you done?” Aaron whispered. “Where is he?”

A pause. Then,“Let’s just say…those naughty boys won’t be getting their deposit back. You’re welcome. Happy birthday!”

The floor tilted beneath Aaron’s feet.

No. No. No.

---