Chapter 8 The Game #2
Lucas gasped as August wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling him into a kiss that was both sexy as hell and freakishly melodramatic.
Still, he kissed back. Of course, he did.
His husband was such a strange amalgamation of deeply disturbed and disgustingly romantic.
Even covered in blood. He loved him so much.
When August released him, he stumbled a bit. Jericho reached out to steady him with a quiet huff of laughter.
August turned on Bev. “Now where were we?” he asked cheerfully, wiping a speck of blood off his cheek. He made a show of opening his headphone case and placing them into his ears.
He didn’t bother to wipe the smile off his face. “Round one,” he announced, with the bright patience of a game show host who’d run out of commercial breaks. “We’ll start easy. Did you ever love your son?”
Once more, she brightened, nodding vigorously.
“Be specific,” Lucas said. “She had two sons. She only hated one.”
“Did you ever love Zane?” August corrected.
She sneered, then looked away, sweat dripping down her melted face, reminding Lucas of rain on a windowpane. Her mascara had long since surrendered, pooling beneath her eyes like bruises. When the silence stretched, August shrugged, steadying her other hand, preparing to take her other pinky.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, voice strangled.
“Oh, did we forget to mention that there was a penalty for failing to answer within the allotted timeframe?” Jericho asked. “Our mistake.”
“Wait!” she screamed as the blade pressed deep enough to draw blood.
“If we don’t follow through now, how will you learn?” Jericho asked.
“I loved my son. I—I did. Of course, I did,” she screamed.
“Loved? Past tense? Say love. Say Zane. ‘I love Zane.’ Be specific,” Lucas said again, getting in her face until they were almost nose to nose. “Nobody is falling for your bullshit.”
“I-I—” It was like even with her own flesh on the line, she couldn’t choke out the words.
“Let’s start with something slightly easier,” Atticus said. “Did you ever physically assault your son?”
The older woman had the audacity to roll her eyes. “Disciplining a disobedient child is a parent’s responsibility.” She gave them all another sneer. “One clearly Thomas should have utilized more often.”
Her scream ripped through the night air as another finger fell into the crisp green lawn. The grass glistened wetly, dew and blood indistinguishable under the floodlight.
“Oops,” August said. “My hand slipped.”
“It’s fine,” Lucas said. “I already know she lied. I saw it the first time I touched her.”
“Care to try again?” Atticus asked. “You still have eight perfectly good fingers left. We could always go back to question number one?”
“If you didn’t want him, why not just put him up for adoption?” Jericho asked. “Or did you just want him to be the cup you poured all your hatred into?”
“I already told you. My husband wouldn’t allow it,” she spat, whipping her head around to Lucas. “That’s the truth of it.”
“Why didn’t she love me?” Zane whispered over the comms. “Ask her that.”
“I doubt she’ll be honest,” Atticus murmured quietly.
“I’ll get the truth out of her,” Lucas said, angry on Zane’s behalf. “Even if I have to dig around in her brain with a psychic ice pick.”
“Zane wants to know why you didn’t love him like you did Gage,” August said.
A slithery smile spread across her face, similar to the slash that was Lucas’s joker smile. It looked equally ghoulish with her flaking, caked-on lipstick. She sat up a little straighter, like it hadn’t occurred to her that Zane could hear every word. “Oh, he’s listening?”
“Do you think he’d miss the opportunity to hear you scream for a change?” Atticus asked.
Bev’s chin tipped up, queenly reflex fighting the restraints. “He always was a little coward,” she said, “hiding in the shadows like a little mouse, letting Gage shield him.”
August’s green eyes looked pure black in the shadows. The wind stirred his cape. “Shield him from what, Beverly? You?”
“From life,” she spat. “He was always so pathetic, still is. Letting that husband of his abuse him.”
August didn’t give her the dignity of a warning. The knife was efficient; his grip was brick. The sound, again, was small. Wet and final. Her scream wasn’t. Atticus had the rag ready this time, pressed down hard, his mouth a flat line.
“Round two,” Jericho said, cheerful again. “Why the tabloids?”
Bev panted, face slick, eyes glassing with tears she’d probably practiced for years. “He forced my hand. He—he cut me off. He told lies about me to my friends. He—he’s vindictive. He wanted to ruin me.”
Lucas snatched her wrist. A flash, a glossy dining room, ten women at a luncheon leaning forward while Bev performed sorrow like a song—We don’t choose our children, do we?
—and the way the table hummed with the thrill of judgment.
Another flash: Bev scrolling her phone at 3 a.m., trawling her own name, deleting the comments that didn’t worship her.
The dopamine hit of attention. The empty pantry Zane stared into at fourteen because she’d refused to pick up groceries while they were out of town; her new designer handbag sitting like a trophy on the counter.
“Lie,” Lucas said softly.
“Oh, Bev,” August murmured.
The blade kissed bone. Her scream tore the night. Bev jerked, sobbing, and the sound folded back on itself. Lucas felt the echo.
Atticus switched rags, worked quickly, then cut a packet of lidocaine and injected around the wound with a calm that was almost obscene. “You keep lying, you’re going to give yourself arrhythmia,” he said conversationally. “Drink.”
He tipped a bottle of water to her lips. She swallowed twice, almost choking, then coughed, spots of red blooming on the gauze. Once more Lucas caught the scent of copper, antiseptic, and wet roses hanging heavy and too sweet.
Jericho paced restlessly. “Round three. When Gage died, did you ever—at any point—wish it had been Zane instead?”
The night shifted. Somewhere, a cicada wound down mid-song.
Bev’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “No,” she said, too fast. “Never.”
Touch.
The funeral, too bright, too white, lilies and cameras. Bev clutching a handkerchief that didn’t catch any tears while she looked at Zane like he had stolen something. Zane at eighteen, crawling into his big brother’s empty bed just to try to reconnect. Bev yanking back the covers, her voice cold.
Don’t be morbid; it’s inappropriate. Get up.
A night years later, Bev drunk, mascara like claws, whispering, you should have been the one to die.
Lucas’s face didn’t move. “Lie.”
Bev’s denial collapsed into shrieking; it didn’t matter. Jericho’s hand stayed steady. The next finger went with a wet pop. A mist of blood caught the light, brief as breath before the wind carried it away.
Atticus worked again, gauze, pressure, an IV line now taped to the inside of her elbow. “We’ll keep you upright,” he said, matter-of-fact. “We’re not done.”
August tilted his head, almost tender. “Round four. Have you ever hit him?”
Bev’s nostrils flared. “I already answered this. I disciplined him. You people don’t understand boundaries. The world has gone soft.”
Lucas clenched her wrist tight.
A bathroom door locked. Zane on the other side, small fist banging while Bev counted backward from ten the way a yoga app had taught her, then realizing she could simply leave him there. A wooden spoon. The welt it left. The word she used—correction—because it sounded better than rage.
“Lie,” Lucas said.
The knife came down again. Bev’s head fell back; her voice ripped the dark. Somewhere in the maze, a night bird shrieked in alarm and vanished into the hedges.
Atticus’s gloves were pink to the wrist now. He didn’t seem to notice. He looked at Lucas. “You getting what you need?”
Lucas didn’t answer the question. He glanced at August. “She’s saving something. There’s a pocket she hasn’t touched yet.”
“Good,” August said, delighted. “Round five. While he was a child—before Gage died—did you ever protect Zane? From anyone? Including yourself.”
Bev blinked, a weird little tremor passing through her. “Yes,” she whispered. “Of course.”
Lucas gripped her wrist once again.
A neighbor’s dog. Zane at six, laughing, hands outstretched, Bev jerking him back so hard his shoulder bruised while she smiled for the neighbor.
Gage stepping between them on a later day, voice shaking, saying stop it, Mom, and Bev slapping him for the audacity.
A parent-teacher conference: the teacher, gentle as she said Zane seems tired, and possibly malnourished.
Bev cutting her off, calling Zane manipulative and a picky eater while Zane folded in on himself.
Lucas let go. “Lie.”
August didn’t need the cue twice. The blade flashed; the bone yielded. The air trembled with her scream, raw, jagged. Bev slumped, almost sliding sideways, and Atticus’s hand shot out, palm flat to her sternum, pressing her upright with clinical efficiency.
Atticus spoke quietly into his mic. “Vitals holding. She’s not going into true shock yet. Hydration, sugar.” He glanced at August. “Layer your questions. Keep her talking. Rage actually helps.”
“Always does,” August said, almost fond. He tapped the knife against the table. Each metallic tap felt like a ticking clock counting down to her confession.
Lucas closed his eyes, focusing not on the old woman’s skin beneath his palm but the wall she was trying to throw up to protect…something. “What is it? What are you not telling us?”
“Nothing,” she snapped, blinking rapidly, her lips parting as she began to suck in rattling breaths. “What do you want from me? No matter what I say, you’re going to kill me anyway. Just do it. I don’t care anymore. I’m not answering any more of your stupid questions.”