Page 173 of Cruel When He Smiles

“Ready?” my lover asks, his voice still low and only for me. I nod and he presses a kiss to the back of my neck and lets out a content hum. “There’s my good boy.”

The silence in the room changes the moment I take a step forward.

My mother’s eyes flick to mine, and for once, they don’t hold the high ground. There’s no triumph in her gaze, no superiority curling at the corners of her mouth. Just static—confusion trying to claw its way to confidence. But it never reaches her face because I’m not flinching or bending.

She opens her mouth, maybe to try again, to say my name the way she used to or remind me how ungrateful I am, but I cut her off before she speaks. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to.

“Everything ends tonight.”

Three words. That’s all it takes.

I keep walking until I’m standing directly in front of her. Her posture is still too good, even while restrained, and she’s still too proud to look helpless. But I see the panic under her skinnow, crawling in the tightness around her mouth and the subtle twitch in her fingers.

“You don’t get a monologue,” I say flatly. “You don’t get last words or confessions. You’ve already told your story a thousand times, and none of it ever belonged to you. It was about control. It was about obedience. It was about making me so afraid of disappointing you that I forgot what it felt like to breathe on my own.”

She glares, lips parting in preparation to interrupt, but I keep going.

“I’m not going to stand here and tell you how much you hurt me. That would be giving you what you want—validation. Reflection. Proof that you left a scar deep enough to matter.”

I crouch in front of her, knife still in my hand, held low at my side like it doesn’t mean anything.

“I could tell you how many nights I spent curled up in a bathroom trying to convince myself your voice wasn’t real. I could tell you how many years I spent asking strangers to love me in the ways you never would. But I’m done giving you the satisfaction.”

Those truths aren’t for her. They’re mine now, and I’m done bleeding them out for her benefit. Her eyes flick to the knife, and I see when she starts putting things together in her mind.

“I’m a med student,” I continue, calm as I’ve ever been. “You know that. You know I’ve studied anatomy long enough to know exactly where to cut to make it last. Where to nick to make you bleed out slowly. Where to slice so your body goes into shock and your brain takes minutes to fade.”

Her nostrils flare and her hands pull against the restraints, but she still doesn’t speak.

“I know every nerve that would make you scream. Every artery I could graze to make you feel what you made me live with. But I’m not interested in that.”

I stand slowly, lifting the knife into her line of sight. Her eyes lock on it again, but I keep mine on her face.

“I don’t want you to suffer, Evelyn. Not the way you made me. I don’t want to give you the satisfaction of thinking you’re worth that much of my time. I just want you gone.”

Her lips part, and that’s when I lift my hand and drive the knife into her jugular with surgical precision.

Blood pulses down the front of her blouse. The knife slid in so cleanly that it takes a moment for her brain to process what’s happened.

The sound is faint at first—the wet, uneven hitch of her breath, the subtle gurgle as blood fills her throat. It should be louder, messier, but all I hear is my own pulse steady in my ears.

She’s still staring at me like she’s trying to find a thread of control, some last pull to yank me back into place. But there’s nothing left. The machine she spent years constructing is gone, and for once, she’s the one trapped inside the silence.

Her eyes start to go glassy, her breathing rattles once, then slows; and still, I don’t look away. I watch as the life drains out of her eyes, making sure the last face she sees is mine—the boy she thought she could program. The boy she built from obedience and fear, crafted like a weapon and polished like a mirror so he’d reflect only what she wanted to see.

That boy is gone. There’s no submission in my spine anymore. No cracked edges for her to wedge her claws into.

Then I twist the knife.

Her pupils dilate, and the whites of her eyes start to bleed red. Her jaw tenses once, then slackens. The pulse in her neck flutters against the blade like a final twitch of defiance, but it doesn’t last. I know exactly how long it takes. I counted for weeks during my rotation in trauma, dissecting how long the brain can function without oxygen. It’s less about death and more about the process—the absence, the retreat. I wait for it.

I wait until the twitching stops.

Then I exhale.

It isn’t relief that fills my lungs. It isn’t pride or grief, or any of the shit books and movies say you’re supposed to feel when you finally kill your abuser. It’s clarity—cold, clean clarity. The kind that only comes from knowing you’ve just done what no one else could. I gave her the one thing she never gave me: a quiet ending.

Liam is behind me again before I’ve registered his movement. His hand closes over mine, fingers gently prying the knife away. I let it go, not because I’m finished, but because he’s asking me to.