Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Xeniya Morozova
Present
Isat on a therapist’s couch in front of Dr. Emma Hayes, my psychologist and the identical twin sister of Gemma.
Telling all my deepest, darkest secrets to a woman who looked like a clone of the doctor who helped the Lethean Order—whether it was forced or not—was uncomfortable.
But then, any other therapist would have turned me over to the authorities by now.
After all, if I ever told one I planned on murdering hundreds of men and that I indeed had an actionable plan and an actionable target, I would have been arrested by now.
Dr. Hayes’s sessions were off the books. Did she still have a legal and ethical responsibility to turn me in? Yes. But since I had saved her life, her sister’s life, and her daughter’s, we let all of that slide.
“So what brings you in after so long away?” Emma asked.
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. It had only been two months. She made it seem like I hadn’t come in for years. I pinched my lips together and stared at her.
Telling her that her twin forced me to come in today probably wasn’t the best choice. While I was very open to and thankful for therapy, I still hated it. It was still like pulling teeth.
My gaze drifted around the small room. The couch I was sitting on was soft blue, and so was the chair directly across from it where Emma sat. The walls were off-white, and abstract paintings of the ocean hung on them. It was simple and stereotypically therapeutic. Unoffensive and clean.
After what was probably seven minutes of silence, Emma finally asked, “How are your dolls doing?”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
She nodded slowly—you know, the way therapists do. “How many do you currently have?”
“Six.”
“Did you want to discuss them?”
“Not particularly.”
Emma nodded again and let the silence sit between us. She was very comfortable with silence. She wanted me to fill it, but I was feeling like a bratty teenager today. I didn’t want to be here. Her sister had forced me. So I didn’t want to fill the space or tell her anything.
But silence was also horrifically painful. “I cut off Aleksandr’s dick and sent it to Severin.”
Emma stifled a laugh and waited for me to say more.
“I wish I could have been there when he opened it, but he did it in a room where I don’t have cameras, which is frustrating because I placed the box in direct view of my cameras.”
I went on to tell Emma random facts about my dolls to fill the time. And when we only had two minutes left, I got up and said, “Well, great. That looks like all our time.”
Emma smiled and studied me. “Yes, it is. See you next week, same time?”
Oh, God, no. “Yes.” I smiled through my teeth.
“Great.”
I turned the doorknob and looked back at her, and as I did, I was hit by the memory of the time Gemma took my IUD out after giving me a full-body exam and some of the worst news of my life.
I faltered and pressed my head to the door, my eyes closed.
When I opened them, I looked back at my therapist and swallowed.
“That’s what you came in to talk about.” Emma nodded knowingly.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I have been getting debilitating flashbacks.”
“I see.”
I sighed and turned my whole body back to her. “I can’t have this happening. I’m supposed to go to the Russian compound tomorrow and hack Severin’s system to help him find the mole in his camp.”
“And you can’t have your flashbacks getting in your way.” Emma’s eyes tracked back to the couch, inviting me to sit back down. “I see you prefer doorknob therapy today.”
Apparently, I tended to drop the biggest therapeutic bombs at the end of all our sessions. Emma called that doorknob therapy.
I laughed and sat back down. “Yes, I guess so.”
“Well, good for us; I never schedule anyone after you now.”
“I guess that makes you a good therapist, anticipating your client’s needs.”
Emma said nothing. She just waited for me to go on with the bomb I had dropped. “The other day, at the cocktail party where I got engaged, I had a flashback to seeing the footage of my sister while I was being held at the compound.”
“Are felicitations in order for your engagement?” Emma asked jokingly, then returned to being serious. “But that wasn’t the only flashback?”
“Right,” I said. “You know how purple is a trigger for me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I think I discovered another one.”
Emma nodded.
“Fluorescent lights.”
“Fluorescent lights,” Emma repeated.
“I was visiting the hospital with Gemma and Niamh, and I had a flashback.” I wrung my hands and stared at them. “Well, I had a lot of them. I flashed through a lot of my memories of college, before…”
I trailed off, and Emma waited for me, holding the space. I told her all the memories I could, and we talked about them and how they made me feel for roughly another forty minutes.
“I guess I’m just afraid that remembering all of the before times is going to cloud what I need to do.” I clutched one of the throw pillows and played with the fringe.
“Which is?”
“First, discover all the members inside the Russian mafia involved with and protecting the Lethean Order, and then excavate them all.”
Emma cocked her head. “Even Severin?”
“Especially him. Come on, Emma, you know exactly why I have to kill Severin.”
She rubbed her chin. “Yes, but do you know why?”
I sighed and glowered at her. “My revenge isn’t just about me. It’s about all the women and men the Order kidnaps, tortures, and kills.”
“And you worry if you keep having these flashbacks, you won’t be able to do your job.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Do you think they could have something to do with my, uh… condition?”
I hated saying the real words because they made it too real, but I couldn’t avoid the truth anymore.
Nervously, I twirled a strand of my silver-white hair around my fingers. My hair had leeched all its color after what happened, and now I struggled even to dye it. It never held dye for long.
So I wore wigs to fit in… and hunt my prey.
“It’s definitely possible,” Emma said slowly. “It’s hard to know how your condition affects your mental health. There isn’t any research.”
I shook my head: psychologists and their research.
Emma noticed. “What I mean to say is that it’s possible your condition contributes, but trauma could also cause flashbacks like this.”
I nodded. “Right…”
“But since we don’t know, it seems like the first thing we need to do is come up with a plan for when these flashbacks happen. And they will.”
“I don’t want them to happen.” I squeezed the pillow harder.
Emma tapped her notepad with her pen. “The goal is to stop them, but in the interim, they may still occur, so we need a plan. First, let’s talk about ways to ground yourself when you feel one coming on.”
Emma went over about five grounding techniques, from naming five things I could see to holding something cold to cognitive phrases I could repeat in my head to tapping and breathing techniques.
Then we came up with a plan for what would happen if a flashback happened while I was with Severin.
A plan that included a lie. Given what could trigger it, we decided to go with a story close to the truth: that I had been assaulted and sometimes I had moments.
It was close enough to the truth to work.
“So, do you feel more ready to go to Severin’s house tomorrow?” Emma asked.
No. I inhaled sharply. “Yes, I guess…”