Page 113 of Don't Shoot Me Santa

“That’s one of the oldest debates in forensic psychology,” he said evenly. “Nature or nurture. The truth? It’s never one or the other. Some children are born with traits. Impulsivity, detachment, lack of empathy. Psychopathy is rooted in genetics. Others are shaped by pain. Neglect. By the stories they’re told. The frameworks they’re raised inside.”

She nodded. “And by love?”

That silenced him.

Because love was where the lines blurred most.

She stepped closer. Enough for Kenny to see the hollows beneath her eyes. The hairline fractures coming not from grief, but from years of bracing for what might come next.

“I’m not here to defend anyone,” she said, voice fraying at the edges. “Please don’t mistake me for one of those mothers on the news—crying denial, insisting their boy would never hurt a soul.”

She looked down at her trembling hands.

“I… wanted to hear from someone who might understand.” She drew in a shaky breath. “What it means to love a psych…” She paused, recalibrating. “Someone… you’re afraid of. Someone who… doesn’t feel things the way other people do.”

Kenny narrowed his eyes. “Are you afraid of someone, Ms Harrow?”

“I’m afraid of the Almighty.” Her smile was wan. Measured. “That’s why I follow the path. I obey. I do what’s asked.” She touched her cross again.“Tell me something, Dr Lyons, does Roisin’s child love her?”

Kenny clenched his jaw. “That’s a complicated, highly nuanced question. One without a clean answer.”

“Because the answer isn’t ‘no’?”

He met her gaze, feeling the shift. The game beneath the words. “The love a child feels for a parent doesn’t always come from safety,” he said. “Or tenderness. Sometimes it’s forged in survival. Sometimes it’s obedience mistaken for love. Especially when love was used to control.”

And Aaron—Christ,Aaron.

For so long, Kenny had watched him twist himself into shapes to keep people comfortable. To stay needed. Be safe. Aaron had learned early how to disappear in plain sight. How to weaponize charm. Intelligence. Sexuality. Not because he lacked emotion. But because he’d never been allowed to feel it honestly.

And yet, somehow, he’d survived it.

He’d come to Kenny with teeth bared and eyes wide open. He’d challenged everything Kenny thought he understood about boundaries. Intimacy. What it meant to earn someone’s trust after they’d been taught to fear it.

And still, Aaron loved. Fiercely. Recklessly.

Not despite the damage, butthrough it.

“Children raised in violence often become masters of performance,” Kenny said aloud. “They read people betterthan they should. Learn to manage adult emotion before they’ve even understood their own. They figure out how to love in the safest way possible. Through silence. Surrender. Sometimes even submission.”

He paused, the ache in his throat unfamiliar and unwelcome.

“But that doesn’t mean the love isn’t real. It just means it came at a cost.”

“And Roisin? Does she love?”

“She sees him aspossession.” He desperately clung to the clinical hoping it might steady the spin in his chest. And without thinking he’d let the unthinkable slip. That Roisin had a child, and that child was a boy.Aaron. “Not a person, but an extension of her legacy. That’s not love. It’s control.”

Margaret gave a small hum, as if tasting the thought. “And what would that do to a child?”

Kenny answered before he could filter it, the words slipping like reflex. “It creates a fracture. One that’s hard to see from the outside. A child raised as an object of someone else’s mythos, especially by a parent with narcissistic or psychopathic traits, learns early on that affection must be earned. That love is conditional. Transactional. It teaches them to contort themselves to be seen. To be good enough. Adored enough.”

“And how might that manifest in someone?”

“In most cases, as anxiety. Hypervigilance. Chronic self-blame. But in others… especially if there’s trauma layered over those early patterns, it can become something darker. A hunger for control. A craving for significance. For worship. Because if they were never truly loved, they’ll either chase that feeling endlessly… or punish the world for withholding it.”

He held her gaze. Steadfast.

Because what he’d said was no longer theory.