“Wipe your mouth, baby.” Wynter dropped back into her chair. Her ignored instructions were for Nessie.
“Hungry, are ya’, darlin’?” Ville’s dirty fingers rubbed my leg as he voiced his question.
I suddenly wished I’d changed my clothes. The shorts of my pajamas felt instantly shorter as his calloused fingers brushed my thigh.
I stared down at his dirty nails and fought hard to keep the vomit from rising in my throat. I fought even harder to put a false smile on my lips and keep it there as I nodded.
“Don’t touch her,” Woodrow’s voice was deathly flat—cold and volatile, in comparison with the warmth I’ve felt these last few weeks.
“Excuse me?” Ville countered, a hidden smirk twitching on and off his lips as his eyes moved from me to the boy I loved.
“You heard me. You heard every word. Don’t touch her. Or, I’ll slit your wife’s throat.”
Woodrow was up on his feet, hands spread across the table as he leaned in.
His threat ripped Ville’s hand from my body, but I hadn’t heard it. I’d heard nothing but the brush of silk across my skin as Ville’s hand moved my pajamas higher and higher with each stroke before his touch finally retracted.
But I heard the sound of Woodrow dropping back into his seat—the legs not making half as many threats to collapse, as that of Ville’s.
And then I heardthe panic in everyone’s voices.
Ville raised his hands in surrender, like he was about to be taken by the law for all the rules he’d ever broken. All amusement had left him as he voiced, “Easy, you don’t want to do that.”
“Woodrow.” Wynter sharpened her tone. The edge of her words ready to slit his oversized throat. They pulled me back to the table, back to the reality from the maladaptive escape I’d slowly started to slip away to.
I side-eyed the boy holding my heart, who sat deadly silent, deadly still, like he was on some kind of knife edge. He looked different, his expression darker, more brooding. Hateful. Nothing like the person I’d spent all my time with. Nothing like Woody—the child trapped inside his body who came out to play when Woodrow’s stress levels rose him to the surface of the skin they shared.
This was someone else.
This was Hell.
“Save your words, Mother. He can’t hear you. And I have no interest in fucking listening.” A daring smile crept across his face as he peered into her worried face, swallowing her fear and feeding on it.
His smile dared her to say more, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
He had stunned her into silence.
He’d taken a knife from the table—one too sharp to have a reason for its dwelling there, given what we were all having for breakfast. Sharp and deadly. And clutched tightly in his fingers as he guided it from left to right across her throat.
Wynter’s face turned a ghostly shade, much whiter than her usual porcelain.
“Get that blade away from me. And put it away. Right now.” Her voice trembled, like her fingers as her own cutlery slipped through them, lashing more gravy onto the already stained tablecloth—its checkered pattern ruined.
A bigger smirk lifted his entire face—a face that was inches from his mother’s when he pulled back the knife and stabbed the blade into the thick wooden table, causing her to jump what looked to be half a mile high out of her seat, all of us shadowing her movement.
“Ah, so scared. . . of me?” Woodrow, or whatever had taken over—Hell—laughed again. “You’re trying to be brave. Don’t. I like the fear, Mother. It’s cute.” He placed a kiss on his mother’s cheek, and shesnapped her head away. “Do I remind you of him? Is it the eyes. . . or, something else? Was it something about my body when the clothes were off? Woodrow has blocked it out, but I remember. I remember everything. How you told them to do the things they did. . . all because you wanted revenge. And you took it on a child, and look what you created. A monster.” He licked her face before laughing in it.
“God dammit, kid!” Ville jumped to his feet, but he had no intention of helping his wife, and she hadn’t even voiced her annoyance over his blasphemy.
They were both, now that the alcohol was fading from Ville’s tongue, too scared of their son. Scared of what Wynterapparentlyturned him into. Which made no sense as to why they insisted on antagonizing him until this side of him appeared. The diary had told me so much. Told me of all Woodrow’s feelings before this alter took over.
Ville’s sausage fingers proved his fear, shaking as they bashed the table in heavy fists—the rouse of calmness fooled no one, not even Nessie, who shook from her head to her tiny toes.
I watched gravy vibrate from the dishes, making Ville’s dishdryagain. I reached for a napkin to clean the spill, giving myself something else to focus on, but as soon as Hell started talking, I froze.
“You don’t have to do that. You’re not their slave. You’re mine. You were a gift for me. . . it’s not the lie they’ve fooled you into believing.”
Ville huffed, not liking the exposure of Hell’s words.
