Page 28 of Dangerous Silence
I rolled my eyes. Like I cared.
For the most part, the wedding was traditional. They said the vows you always hear in the movies, and the bride, of course, looked like a ray of sunshine, and the groom looked like Axe, though younger, and seemed actually capable of smiling. I glanced around, studying each of their faces. I knew, by looking at them, that they were all criminals. I was the only person there with an inkling of a moral conscience.
Axe adjusted, his leg rubbing against mine. The heat of his leg made me think of the way he handled me, his eyes boring into my soul, looking at my pussy as he dragged the knife along my inner thighs, shoved a rubber cock down my throat. Like it would never be enough. And for some reason, that made me giddy. Made me want to spread my legs for him, to show him that I could take it. That I could take him.
But I buried those thoughts. He was a bad man. A murderer. Someone who needed to be corrected.
But he had also saved me. Promised my dad he would keep me alive.
And I was alive. More alive than I had ever felt.
After the ceremony, Maddie immediately ripped off her sundress and jumped into the river with the oldest brother, while the rest of us sat at the picnic table. Axe’s mother’s whitish-blond hair was blinding under the sun as she served the food. The officiant went past us. Axe turned his head, watching her go. Then he left me there and went after her. The therapist.
I bit my tongue. I don’t know why.
Axe’s mother pushed a plate with a fresh baguette, arugula, mozzarella, turkey, and pesto aioli. She had made the soup that Axe had literally shoved down my throat. I wouldn’t turn down her food again.
“This is nice,” the father said, his voice deep. His pupils were dilated, or maybe they were darkly colored? It was hard to tell in the sunlight. “No talk of war. No talk of enemies. Just family. Just love.” War? What enemies?
“Gerard,” the mother said. Axe’s mother had almost said his name with an accusatory tone. Gerard. Had my father known him?
“It’s alwaysjustfamily,” the newly-wed husband said.
I turned back, looking at Axe. He was still talking to the therapist, his face stoic. What was he asking her?
I turned back to the table. I couldn’t be curious or jealous. Those emotions were unreasonable.
But I couldn’t stop myself. How could Maddie act so nonchalant about the whole thing? How much did his family know? Why was the therapist leaving so quickly? Was she scared of Axe?
“You know he’s keeping me hostage,” I said.
Gerard laughed. “He’s keeping yousafe,” he said. “Like your father asked him to.”
“My father would never have allowed this.”
“Your father trusted my son,” Gerard said.
Axe joined us, and a hard silence fell heavy on the group. It took a few minutes of eating before his father, Gerard, went onto the rambling the same escapade about how nice it was to enjoy a wedding day without talk of war, to focus on what mattered. Love. Family. It seemed forced, and no one seemed to buy it. Especially not me.
Gerard left to go on a walk with his wife, leaving the rest of us alone. Axe spoke to his brothers privately, then turned to me, nodding towards the trees.
“You want to walk the loop?” he asked.
What choice did I have? I shrugged.
The trees were bright, yellow sunspots speckling the tops of the leaves. I hit my neck; a mosquito was nibbling on my blood. Axe rubbed his hand over his gun absently, like it calmed him to know that it was there. Or maybe he was thinking about murder, the different ways to kill someone. I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
And yet, I couldn’t stop wondering about it.
“When I went to therapy,” he said, breaking the silence, his words causing my chest to seize up. “I was eight and a half, maybe nine years old.” He wasn’t thinking about murdering at all; he was thinking about therapy? “I had stopped talking, almost entirely. Rarely said more than a word a day. I was working with Shep full-time. We had a tutor that could work with me, so I eventually got my GED, but why? When…” His voice trailed off. Then he shrugged. “Anyway, Mercia, my therapist, once I told her about what I had done, she had said that there was no saving me. That I could never change the past. That I could either learn to live with who I was, or I could compartmentalize it, save it for a time when I needed it most.”
What kind of therapist said something like that? “So what did you do?” I asked.
“I stopped being ashamed of who I was. And I stopped going to therapy.”
Courage swirled within me; I had to know. “What did you say to her?” I asked. “Just now?”
“That she tried,” he said calmly, “And that I was always meant to be this way. Nothing, not even therapy, was ever going to change that.”
