“Pissed and I don’t know… maybe hurt? Where were you?”
“I had to figure shit out.” I didn’t want to tell her about the two-day interrogation and then my endless search for Mitch because worry was the last thing I wanted to see in her eyes. She had managed to make me care despite my best defenses.
The look she gave me was full of disappointment. “But how could you just leave Keenan alone like that?”
“He isn’t safe as long as my father is out there and he has John.”
“But he needs you too, you’re his bro—”
“Don’t. Don’t say that.” I’ve known since the beginning Keenan was my brother, but it didn’t make others knowing any easier. Especially now. I may have been cold and cruel, but I never wanted Keenan to find out the way he did. Now I was forced to wait while my brother died in some fucking hospital to see how much damage I’d caused or if he would forgive me.
“Did you know all this time?”
“Yes.” I could tell it shocked her.
“How?”
“I saw her picture on Keenan’s nightstand the day John brought me home. He said she was his mother.”
My heart started pounding just as it had the day I discovered my mother had another child. One she loved enough to keep. At least that’s what I felt then. I don’t know what to feel now except confusion. I sure as hell didn’t like the vulnerability it created.
“What did they make you do?” The drastic change in subject didn’t go unnoticed. Parents were a sore spot for her though she cared enough to hide her pain.
Just like her parents were a taboo topic for her, talking about my days of enslavement was or should have been forbidden. After spending time in my father’s company, I felt like I owed her at least a condensed explanation. I would never be able to bare myself enough to reveal everything. Besides, after today, I was letting her go.
“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, anyway.” I ignored the increasing pain in my chest. No amount of mental preparation could make what I had to do any easier. “I made my first kill for them when I was six.”
“How? You were so young.”
She stared at me in disbelief. I wasn’t surprised by her reaction. No one was willing to believe in anything other than the perfect image of innocence that children projected, but with the right conditioning… anything was possible. After all, ignorance is a person’s greatest enemy. It makes you weak and vulnerable, but it’s better received than knowing because no one wants to allow the darkness of the world to enter their lives. So, instead, they choose to ignore what’s happening right in front of them.
“It’s amazing what you’re willing to do when you’re starving and don’t know a way out. They used anything they could in order to control us. Before long, I stopped noticing the hunger pains or thirst, and the scars healed before I knew they were even there.”
The way I grew up those first eight years put a new meaning to the idea of a privileged lifestyle. Compared to what I endured, kids on the streets near our homes were considered privileged.
I could see the questions in her eyes along with the pity, but thankfully, she didn’t interrupt. “They started me off small. First, it was other kids they wanted me to punish until I made my way up to adults. After two years of training to be a murderer, I became one of their best students. I was a fucking eight-year-old kid. I stopped thinking, and I stopped feeling. It kept me alive.”
“That isn’t living,” she argued.
“How would you know?”
My defenses went up at the look in her eyes and the way she spoke those words. She was judging my choice to live rather than die. Sometimes I wondered why I didn’t give up. Was it hope for a life that I’d never known, but only heard of from the others that kept me going?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.