“So I decided to do something special. For both of them.”
He pulls back and claps his hands once.
“I killed her, of course. And he ended up locked in a cell below. Meanwhile, I stepped into his life.”
He rises and circles behind me. The scalpel kisses my right wrist this time, slicing skin with the same calm precision.
“I took everything from him,” he says. “Just like he took everything from me. First, his wife. Then his mind.”
He taps his own wrists and laughs.
“I drank. I took drugs. I destroyed his career. Everyone thinks he’s an addict. A lunatic.”
My chest tightens. A scream builds inside me but never finds a way out. I am trapped in his voice, drowning in it.
“You know,” he says, “I grew up with everything. So I learned that I deserve everything.”
He pauses, savoring the silence.
“Having something taken from me created who I am.”
He returns to my side—scissors glint in his hand. The blades bite into fabric, slicing my shirt open. Cool air hits my skin as my breasts are exposed.
“Well,” he adds with a laugh, “that and my psycho dad who made me in his lab.”
He shakes his head, amused.
“He thought he could change a serial killer by isolating me and giving me a happy childhood.”
He leans closer to my left breast, licking my nipple.
“Mmm,” he murmurs. “My brother has good taste.”
He steps back, then bows slightly.
“Zeke,” he says. “Your doctor. Owner of the Z Institute. Here, instead of fixing people, we like to break them.”
His eyes lock onto mine.
“And we like to fuck them.”
A small sound escapes my mouth, but no words form. Saliva slips from the corners of my lips as I remain motionless, waiting for what he plans to do to me.
I was trapped in his own asylum.
FOURTEEN
Zayne
May 28, 2003.
Istood before a narrow brick house tucked in the middle of New York. Behind me, distant traffic and voices faded the longer I stared at the house. This was the first time I had ever left Eureka Springs.
The nurse who had pulled me from the fire showed up in Ozark Woods a week later and took me with her. She taught me how to exist outside asylum walls, how to eat without watching the exits, how to sleep without flinching and thinking someone was coming to get me. Somewhere along the way, she learned about my mother and gave me this address.
I wanted answers.
The brown wooden door stared back at me. I knocked twice, holding a gold-engraved lion doorknob.
