Chapter 7 Lennox #3
“I tried to run once,” Kage continues in a whisper, looking off into the distance as if he’s reliving the moment.
“I made it just far enough that I thought I had a fucking chance. But then he dragged me back and made me regret even thinking about telling someone. Safe to say I never tried that shit again. I guess after a while I just became...numb to it. Just resided with the fact that that was my life.”
Tears burn at the corners of my eyes but I refuse to let them fall. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I’ve never told anyone. I didn’t want to burden others with my feelings.
” Kage sounds disgusted, almost as if he shouldn’t be affected by a sick piece of shit taking advantage of a goddamn child.
“So now I spend my free time finding these pedo fucks and ridding the world of their evil. One. By. One.”
I look between Kage and the sack of shit strapped to the chair and suddenly, having his own dick in his mouth isn’t enough. Isn’t enough justice for the kids that suffered endlessly at his hands. For Kage.
“His name was Dan. Some lowlife fuck my mom started dating when I was four. I don’t blame her, though.
My real father left her when she got knocked up at seventeen, so she had no one to help her take care of me.
Dan was older, some big time drug dealer.
He made enough money to give my mom whatever she needed. ”
I don't move as he speaks. I just stay as still as possible. Now that he’s finally letting me in, I don’t want to scare him off.
“Dan was great to my mom. Spoiled her. Spoiled me, even. But I quickly learned that behind every kind gesture was a very high price.” He stares off into nothing, transported back into that dark time.
“He tried to kill me once. Beat me within an inch of my life when I was twelve. I was in a coma for weeks, and when I woke up my memories were fucked. Bits and pieces of my life, missing. Dan disappeared after that but I never forgot him, even if he was just a hazy memory. That’s how I ended up with you and Silas.
He’s the one who took care of me, who comforted my mom when she thought she was going to lose me.
“When I turned seventeen, I went looking for him. The man who'd haunted my childhood. Turns out, ‘Dan’ wasn’t even his real name. That revelation made everything harder. I had no money for a private investigator, no connections. Just rage and a shit internet connection.
“So I went deeper. Past the surface web, into the filth where monsters think they can hide. That’s where I found Jimmy.
He calls himself my handler, but he’s more than that.
He’s the brain behind every move we make.
Jimmy can trace anyone who dares to post children online, like a digital bloodhound sniffing out the disease.
But I’m the blade that cuts the cancer out.
One name at a time. One scream at a time.
Because I know what it’s like to be a kid with no one coming. ”
I remember the first time Kage came home to us.
I was fourteen and my dad told me Kage had been in a car accident and him and Grace would be staying with us.
He didn’t talk much. Didn’t look anyone in the eye.
Most days, he stayed locked away in the guest room, only emerging to eat or use the bathroom.
At night, I’d hear him; raw screams, torn from somewhere deep within his soul.
He never remembered them the next morning, or at least pretended he didn’t.
I used to sit outside his door in the dark, my back against the cold wall, just listening.
I don’t know why. Maybe because I never knew what it felt like to be completely alone and he shouldn’t have had to either.
One night, I cracked. I knocked gently, almost as if I didn’t want to spook a wounded animal. “Kage?” I whispered. “You okay?”
Silence. Then the door creaked open a few inches. Just enough to see one eye, bloodshot and shining. “You heard that?” he asked, voice low and raspy, like it hurt to speak.
I nodded. “I hear it every night.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, just stared through me as if I was a ghost that refused to leave.
“Want to come in?” he finally said. That was the first time he let anyone in.
Into his room, into the maze of whatever haunted his mind.
We made a pact that night, that it would always be him and I against the world.
I didn't know it at the time, but we were about to ignite something far more dangerous than either of us was ready for.
Trevor wheezes then, a rough wet sound that brings me back to the present. To me standing in this house. To Kage and the pictures that surround us.
“Kage, I—”
Before I could take a single step towards the bleeding man, Kage pulls a gun from his waistband and aims it at Trevor’s head. “Any last words before your brains decorate the wall?” he asks, voice flat and emotionless, as though death itself had learned how to speak.
Trevor starts sobbing, his voice cracked, high-pitched and pathetic, every syllable making my skin crawl. “Please,” he choked. “I—I didn’t touch them. I just kept them here, I swear to God, I didn’t touch them—”
“God. You fucks always invoke Him at the end. As if He’s going to show up and save you.” Kage laughs, pressing the gun hard into Trevor’s forehead. “Sorry to disappoint you, but no one is coming. Tell the Devil I said ‘hello’.”
I move towards Kage, careful not to step in the spreading pools of blood. Reaching for the gun, I meet his eyes. “Trust me,” I whisper, calm and steady, even though I feel far from either.
He hesitates. His finger steady on the trigger, jaw clenched, weighing the risk.
He’s trusted the wrong people before. Once was all it took to turn trust into a loaded weapon.
But after a breath, he hands it over. Our fingers brush, the touch electric.
Hot and charged, intimate in a way nothing else in this room was.
Blood was still dripping in the background, a man dying at our feet and somehow, this was the closest I’ve ever felt to him.
I crouch beside Trevor, his eyes wide and frantic, darting between me and the gun.
“I didn't touch them! I'm sorr—”
“You know what the worst part is?” I ask softly. “You’re not even sorry. You’re just scared, and you know what? You should be.”
He opens his mouth, maybe to lie again. Maybe to beg.
I don’t let him finish, though. I shove the gun in his open mouth and shoot, the sound ringing out as loud as a bell in a cathedral.
Sharp and final. Blood explodes against the cracked drywall, Trevor’s body slumped to the side, twitching once before going still.
The silence in the room is deafening. For the first time ever in my life, I just killed a man.
I’m a murderer, and I can’t even bring myself to be sorry.
My hands are shaking; not from fear, but the adrenaline of taking a man's life. Of playing God and making this man’s last breath my final decision.
I look over at Kage with a smile on my face only to see rage in his eyes.
His fingers tighten around my throat as he drives me back, my body hitting the wall with a jolt.
The rough surface scrapes against my skin, and my head snaps back hard against it, the shock of it blooming like fire behind my eyes.
“Bro, what the fuck—”
“Why did you do that?” he’s screaming in my face, the anger evident in the way he grips my throat. “Now you’re really in it and you can’t take it back! You have blood on your hands, blood that wasn’t yours to fucking spill in the first place!”
“I wasn’t going to just sit here after everything you told me and not do anything about it!
” I'm screaming now too, pissed the fuck off that he thought telling me this wouldn’t change anything.
“I won’t let you do this by yourself! You’re not alone anymore, Kage.
It’s you and me against everything, remember? ”
Kage stares at me for a beat too long, almost as if he’s trying to decide if I mean everything I’m telling him.
His eyes drop down to my lips, lingering there for just a moment before looking back up into my eyes and crashing his lips against mine.
A rush of electricity courses through my veins, a feeling I’ve never felt before, especially not with a man. It’s too fucking much.
Pushing him away, I hold on to his shoulders and stare back at him.
I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, but despite everything telling me how wrong this is, I’ve never felt anything more right.
There’s always been a sort of chemistry between us, more than two brothers should feel for each other.
We’ve toed the line before, more flirtatious than physical, but this feels like a long time coming and exactly what I didn’t know I needed.
I pull Kage back into me, kissing him with a passion that feels so foreign to me, but I don’t let it stop me.
Turning our bodies, I slam him against the wall and take the lead, tugging his shirt over his head and tossing it to the side.
We crash back into each other, only stopping for Kage to remove my shirt in turn.
The dead man in the chair behind us is long forgotten. Everything falls away as Kage and I finally let go. At this moment, nothing else exists. Not the blood, or the pain from the past. We’re just two broken boys clinging to the only thing that’s ever made sense. Each other.