Page 112 of Psychotic Obsession
I close my eyes, my chin shaking as I hold back tears. They are going to drive to Ewan's place, he's going to walk out thinking it's me, and he’ll be met with a pair of vicious animals.
"Please don't hurt him," I beg Tobias, but he ignores me yet again as he leaves the room, slamming the heavy door closed behind him. I gasp out a weep, dropping my face to my bound hands.
"I tried," Violetta says after a few passing moments of my cries filling the room in broken echoes. "I really did try."
I gulp, my eyes drifting to Gabriella still tied up with her mouth taped. "So did I."
"You need to understand, Tobias is my baby boy," she says, standing from the chair and slowly walking over to me. "I'm his mother and my job right now is to keep him alive and safe."
"Alive and safe?" I let out a breathy laugh. "He's definitely not safe. He's wanted for murder and now kidnapping. He's not even safe from himself. If he succeeded earlier, we would all be dead."
"Meaning?" she asks, tilting her head with a frown.
I wipe my eyes on my sleeves. "He tried to kill me, twice."
She doesn't flinch. "Tobias won't kill you."
I chuckle again. "First time, he wanted us to both hang ourselves." I watch her face drop, her lips parting as fear washes over her. "And then he tried to blow my house up with us both inside."
"You're lying."
I shake my head. "I wish I was."
She drops to her chair, twisting the pendant of her necklace between her thumb and finger. "My son was going to kill himself?"
I nod. "Ten minutes before, he agreed to hand himself in under the condition that I stay by his side."
She presses her palm to her mouth, closing her eyes as a tear slides down her cheek. "He did?" she asks with a croak, her lip quivering. "He agreed to turn himself in?"
Nodding, I say, "We can help him, Violetta. You can let us out, and we can keep him safe from himself."
"He will never forgive me," she says, pressing her palm to her chest. "He's all I have."
"I'm pregnant with your grandchildren, and the chances of us surviving this with me denying Tobias are slim." I move forward, taking her hand in between mine, the plastic causing painful friction against my wrists. "I won't doom my unborn babies; I will get out of this. Please...please, help us?"
The corner of her mouth turns up ever so slightly as shestrokes the back of her fingers down my cheek. She takes a deep breath, and I get to my feet as she stands. "My son is a good person. He was taking a cocktail of different things that helped regulate most of the issues he faced daily, but?—"
"But he stopped them when he met me," I finish her sentence, remembering Tobias telling me he'd stopped his meds because he wanted to be normal. "He told me."
"His stepfather was monitoring his behavior around you at work, but Tobias had lashed out at him for some reason. He broke his ribs with one punch. They never really formed much of a relationship over the years. Roderick... You know him as Blythe."
“Yeah.”
She nods, rubbing her hand down her face the same way Tobias does. "He is very unique, Aria. I have had many specialists observe him since he was young. He's a trickster, and a really good one at that. He intentionally manipulated their results so they couldn't diagnose him. He always told me he didn't want a label, that he didn't need one because he wasn't different."
She clears her throat and continues.
"When Tobias was a teenager, his father taught him to compartmentalize his emotions, arrange them in a way that protects them from each dissociation. He was able to protect things like empathy, love, fear, and anything that rendered him powerless. As he got older, I watched him fight against himself to keep them safe, to make sure they didn't get lost. He was terrifying to be around."
I look over at Gabriella and Kaleb, both sitting with their mouths taped and their hands bounded, watching, listening.
"I don't know how to explain it. There are parts of him that aren't even in touch with reality, that don't even know who I am. They only come out when he's blinded by rage. I have no idea who he is right now. He's not my son...not the real Tobias." She sighs, looking down at her fingers in her lap. "He has to be inside that vessel, Aria. My son needs to be there...somewhere.”
Her body is trembling, but she keeps going.
“He has a lot of things going on, but I don't know if it's really him, or if he's tricking us into thinking it. Blythe thinks he's a psychopath trying to play a game with everyone, even you. But I believe each part of him has a different disorder."
"I think Blythe might be right, and if he is... Tobias is a good actor." I walk over to Gabriella's crate, leaning down to her and curling my fingers over hers as they grip the bars. I turn back to Violetta. "Tobias is going to torture my friends, isn't he? Until I agree to leave with him?"
