“Daddy, Ihadto.”
“I know, Kitten.” I swept my thumb across his bottom lip. “But no more, okay? If someone upsets you, I’ll take care of it.”
“But what if—”
“We’re not negotiating here, Silas. You won’t do that again. Am I making myself clear?”
His nostrils flared. I felt the muscles in his face stiffen as he stared up at me. An aggressive mewl ripped from his throat, and I lifted an eyebrow, daring him to disobey me.
He wouldn’t.
Violence thrilled him. Cruelty fascinated him. Silas studied dead bodies because he loved them, and though he painted himself with blood regularly, he was too fucking sweet to understand why nobody else was quite like him.
He was brutality’s most reliable witness, but he wasn’t a fucking participant.
“Yes, Daddy. You’re making yourself clear.”
“Good boy.” I pushed my thumb into his mouth. “Now, tell me about that folder.”
ChapterTen
Elijah
Old and newscars were buried beneath a mixture of dried blood and fresh claw marks—his smooth skin torn open and painted in red. The gashes he’d dug into himself were a stark representation of his distress and just the sight of it made my trigger finger twitch.
“I’m sorry.” He said, his words barely loud enough to be considered a whisper.
“Was I not clear enough when I told you I didn’t want you carving into your skin like this?”
“I… I can’t help it.”
I know.
The abuse was a coping mechanism for all the distress he suffered over not understanding the world the same way most humans did.
“My scars itch more when I’m upset, and I like to bleed, so I thought I should just bleed there. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“No, Silas, it doesn’t.”
I stepped between his spread legs, a wet cloth in my hand. A whimper left him, but he was resolute in his attempt to shield himself from me, using his hair as a curtain to mask his eyes and each twitch of his features.
I let him hide.For now.
He sat perched on Thea’s bathroom counter, mangled forearms resting on each of his thighs. I used the cloth to tend to his wounds. The knot in my chest loosened the cleaner he became, and when I dropped that bloodied cloth in the sink and reached for a cream Thea gave me, I could almost fucking breathe again.
I rubbed the recovery cream between my palms to warm it some before slathering it across each of his forearms. Per Thea’s instructions, I took extra care with the oldest scars, because it was those injuries that irritated him the most. I studied the tissue, running the edge of my pinky finger along the patches of discolored wounds. Elbow to wrist, he was covered, and though the fresh scratches he’d put there himself camouflaged some of the evidence of what his father did to him, it was still there, burned into his skin forever.
“Will you tell me what he did to you?”
“I don’t remember much of it.” He said. “Thea says I don’t have to make myself remember, but the scars I can’t forget because he did it every day.”
I put the cap on the cream and wrapped my hands around his hips, tugging him off the counter and into my arms. He wrapped his legs around me and shoved his face into my neck.
“I was his ash-tray. Every time he smoked a cigarette, he used my skin to put it out. Sometimes, his friends would give him money and they’d do it too. I don’t remember the pain. I just remember being scared.”
Baby.
“I’m glad you killed him.”