Part I
Prologue
“State your full name for the record.”
“Ronan August Wentz.”
“Age?”
“Nineteen.”
“Do you know why you’re here tonight, Ronan?”
Because it’s the end of the road.
Two detectives waited for an answer. One was round and short—his badge said Kowalski. Harris was taller, had a mustache. I folded my arms and stared back hard, pretending the white-walled holding room wasn’t fucking suffocating me. On the table, Styrofoam cups of black coffee flanked a thick file with my name on it. A camera perched in a corner trained its black eye on us, recording everything.
The detectives exchanged glances at my stony silence, and then Harris got up and paced behind the short guy, Kowalski.
“Where were you on the night of July thirtieth around eleven p.m.?”
“My apartment.”
“What were you doing?”
“Watching TV.”
“Anyone with you?”
“No.”
He nodded at my bruised knuckles. “How’d that happen?”
“Don’t remember.”
It was a shit answer, but the truth wasn’t much better.
Kowalski smirked. “You don’t remember?”
“Are you supposed to be asking me this shit without a lawyer?”
“Do you think you need a lawyer, Ronan?”
“We’re just talking,” Harris cut in. “Your hands are pretty banged up.” He picked up my file off the table. “Lots of people find themselves ‘banged up’ around you, don’t they, Mr. Wentz? Starting with your mother.”
I stiffened, bracing myself.
“You grew up in a violent household, is my point,” the detective continued casually, flipping through my life story: behavioral write-ups, police reports from a stint in juvie, and ten years’ worth of social workers’ notes from my time in the foster care system. “Says here your dad beat your mother to death with a baseball bat when you were eight years old.”
Inwardly, it felt as if he kicked me in the gut. Outwardly, I only nodded.
“He died in prison after a knife fight with another inmate?”
I crossed my arms. “He got what he deserved.”
Wrong answer.
The cops raised their brows. Another knowing look passed between them: Now we’re getting somewhere.
“You witnessed it, didn’t you? Your dad murdering your mom?”
I winced as blood-stained memories instantly tried to claw their way up out of the grave. They wouldn’t stay dead no matter how deep I buried them.
“Seeing something like that’s gotta mess a kid up,” Harris stated grimly.
“Did it make you angry, Ronan?”
“Angry enough to lash out?”
“They say that kind of violence runs in the family.”
“In the DNA.”
“Like father, like son.”
The last words hung between us, sucking the oxygen out of the air. My worst fear spok