Page 105 of Killing Me Softly

That gun hadn’t just been used for killing animals. It had been used tolurepeople here. To make them run. Create the thrill of the chase before they were brought back. Bound. Broken. Prepared for what came next. Forced into the positionhewas in.

Just as Mable was about to do now.

She ran a delicate hand over the weapon, her fingers tracing the length of the barrel, slow and reverent, as if it was a relic of their twisted legacy. She curved her lips in a knowing smile as she met Aaron’s gaze.

“Do you remember, little brother?” she said. “How he used to let you watch?”

No. He didn’t.

Kenny getting in his head earlier had made accessing dead memories far easier. He wished he hadn’t. It was the reason his mind had closed him off from it for years. But he’d never been a part ofthis.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Mable reached for a blade, trailing her fingers along the hilt with an almost tenderness and she rolled it between her palms, savouring the cool press of steel on her skin before pointing the tip at Aaron. “How everyone thinksyou’rethe dark one. Thedangerousone.”

Aaron didn’t even look at her. Refused to. He kept his eyes on Mel.

“How many people avoided you?Fearedyou?” She took a step closer. “How many pushed you away?Hurtyou? Because they thought you were amonster.” A pause. A smile. “Do you know why that is?”

Silence.

Mable’s icy gaze assessed him.Dissectedhim. “Because you’re a man.” She shook her head. “People expect men to be violent. They fear it. They watch for it. But women?” She let out a low chuckle, tracing the flat of the blade against her own wrist, like she was testing its sharpness. “They don’t watch us, do they?”

Aaron knew where she was going.

“They underestimate us. See us as victims.Fragile.” Her eyes glowed with amusement. Proud of her own intelligence. “But that’s therealmistake, isn’t it? That’s what Mummy taught me. When she sent me out to lure people to the house. Poor little abandoned girl needs help. No one ever feared me. They followed me willingly. And every time—every damn time—I did as Mummy asked and she never once told me she was proud of me. That I was her good little girl. Like she did you.” She pointed the tip of the knife at Aaron with a sneer.

Aaron wanted to feel sympathy for her. He did. He wanted to summon some flicker of empathy for the broken child beneath her fury. The girl Roisin had twisted into a tool, a bait, a blade. She had been manipulated, used, just ashehad. Roisin hadn’t raised children. She’d crafted weapons. Designed them with precision. Gave them different edges, pointed them in different directions. His sister had been forged into a lure, taught that love was earned through obedience and fear, and punished for seeking it.

Aaron, though… Aaron had been crafted into the illusion of innocence. The golden boy. The prodigy. The one she paraded. Told him he was special. That he was the only thing she loved. And then made sure he would never stop chasing that feeling, no matter how much it hurt him.

They were two sides of the same wound.

But all he felt was anger.

Because Roisin hadn’t just broken them. She’d broken themdifferently. Infected them with opposing hungers so they could never meet in the middle. She gave his sister a taste for cruelty and Aaron a hunger for affection, but poisoned both with the same core lesson: love is something you mustearn. Bleed for. Perform for. Suffer for.

“And that’s the thing,” Mable continued. “Men act alone. Strike fast, brutal, messy. Butwomen?” She grinned. “We don’tneedbrute force. We whisper in ears. Become the voices in your head.” She bashed her temple as if trying to loosen whatever voice was talking to her then. “Whose voice is in your head, Aaron? Is it Mother’s?”

Aaron’s stomach twisted, Roisin’s voice clear as day.“You’ll suffocate anyone who tries to love you.”

Mable’s grin widened, and she lowered the blade, twirling it between her fingers. “Just like Daddy dearest. You know he did what he did because Mum told him to?Wantedhim to. That’s why the roses. Did you know that?”

Aaron didn’t blink.

“She made him leave them behind.Her signature.He used the roses to give Mum her gift.” Mable exhaled, shaking her head wistfully. “I’m not even sure hewantedto kill people. He just wanted Mum tolovehim. But she never did. And when she snapped her fingers, Pastor Whitmore set it up to get rid of him in prison. Because she was done with him. She thought her golden boy was ready.”

The words slithered through Aaron’s veins like ice.

Mable turned her attention back to Mel. “Did you know?” She traced the blade along Mel’s trembling jaw. “That a cut just deep enough here will scar forever?”

Mel jerked, a sob choking in her throat.

Aaron thrashed against his bindings, his guttural rage muffled by the gag. Mable’s eyes snapped to his, and she smiled.

“This is why love and attachments are a bad thing.” She pressed the tip of the knife to Mel’s cheek. A thin line of red welled up, trickling down her skin like a single, silent tear. “Because they make you do crazy things.”

Mel gasped. Hyperventilating. Spiralling into panic. Aaron wanted to look away.God, he wanted to.But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Because turning away, pretending he didn’t see, was exactly why they were here. He’d been shielded his entire life. Kept in the dark, wrapped in ignorance, while the true horrors of his family’s legacy unfolded around him. And now, Mable was making sure hefaced it. So he forced himself to watch as she drew the knife down, cutting deeper.

Mel’s eyes rolled back, convulsing so violently the chair rattled beneath her, scraping along the floor with a piercing screech. She gasped, drowning in her own panic.

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