Page 107 of Black Castle

“You need medical attention, Vivienne.”

“They’ll ask questions.” She shakes her head, the sharpness in her voice sending a jolt of pain to her jaw. “You know they will.”

Kenji exhales loudly, shoving his hands into his hair. The careful strand of a few seconds ago stands on end like he has been electrocuted. That’s him when there’s anger inside him but he doesn’t know where to place it.

The silence stretches as Kenji paces the room, muttering a series of curse words in Japanese under his breath.

“She was right, you know.” The words leave her mouth, barely audible.

“What?” he whispers, pausing.

Vivienne sinks further into the couch, the cushions swallowing her whole. “I know you wanna take her down so badly, but it turns out she was right all along.”

The furrow in his brows deepens, his jaw working. “What are you talking about exactly?”

“I’m just like him.” The salt of her sudden tears as they trail over her open cuts stings like hell.

“No, you’re not.”

“I tried to kill her.” The confession rings across the room, heavy, deafening. “I went to her room with a knife. I stabbed the bed, over and over. Hoping she’s there so I could make her scream, make her beg, make her bleed the way she had made me bleed for years.” Her chest heaves, breath ragged. “I tried to kill her.”

The weight of the truth makes her dizzy. She can’t look at Kenji, can’t bear to see the horror in his eyes, the disgust twisting his features.

If she hears a movement right now, it will be him leaving.

But the couch dips, instead, heat pressing into her side, his arms curling around her, solid and grounding.

“You’re not like him.” His voice is low and steady. “Anyone would have done the same thing. Trust me, if she walks in here right now, I’m driving a knife to her chest.”

Liar.

Kenji wouldn’t do that. Not the same Kenji that has let a spider live in his bathroom for days because he’s too kind to kill the creature. Not the Kenji who apologizes to furniture when he bumps into them.

He will never hurt another soul.

But it turns out, she can now.

A normal person wouldn’t have done what she did. No, they wouldn’t charge into their stepmother’s room to drive a knife into her heart and hope to hear the sick, wet sound of tearing flesh and splattering blood.

No one but her.

No one but a killer.

“She wasn’t there,” she murmurs, picking at her arm warmer. “I don’t know where she slept, but it wasn’t at home.”

If she had been there…

“If she was there.” Her voice trembles at what her reality would have been right now if she had killed Isadora—sirens blaring, cops littering the lawn, just like ten years ago at House 4797, Rue Augustin Boulevard. “I would have killed her. I would have been just like dad. They would put me in cuffs. They would take me far away.”

Kenji doesn’t say a word. But his arms tighten around her, his fingers rubbing slow circles on her arm.

And all she can think is, why isn’t he running away from her? Why is he still hanging out with the daughter of a serial killer?

It is 10:30 a.m. when the doorbell rings. Vivienne refused to go and see a doctor so Kenji had to run down to the nearest pharmacy to get supplies for a thorough first aid treatment.

She walks to the door assuming he has come back. Although somewhere at the back of her mind, she wonders why he has come back so quickly. He left barely ten minutes ago, and the closest thing to a pharmacy is about a ten to fifteen-minute drive.

When she opens the door, for a fleeting moment, she wants to be relieved. She even almost is because his scent, crisp and familiar, reaches her first. But then he steps fully into her line of vision and the air shifts, thickening with something suffocating, something cruel. And when she looks up at him, her breath catches.

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