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Prologue

Killing Me Softly

Six years ago, September 16th

Ravenholm Secure Psychiatric Hospital, Dorset

Ravenholm Psychiatric Hospital was an expert in smothering chaos under the guise of calm . Pale beige walls, devoid of personality, drank in the light as if afraid to reflect it or disrupt the equilibrium of faux peace. And the faint scent of lavender consistently lingered in the air, enough to suggest tranquillity, but not enough to hide the sterility beneath. Everything and everyone inside here were all rotten. But it couldn’t look like that. If the outside emulated the inside, it wouldn’t work. And vice versa.

Appearances were deceiving.

As her mother always said.

She glared at the narrow window, a cruel slit of glass letting in fragile streams of morning light, painting the floor in deceptive ribbons of gold. It mocked her. Outside, the cliffs loomed like the jagged grin of a monster, sharp edges promising a final embrace. She’d happily dive right into that mouth. Or, beyond, where the English Channel heaved and roared, calling her to vanish beneath its freezing surface and shatter over the rocks below, finally ending this relentless nightmare.

At least then she’d have control of her own damn life.

And how it ended.

She couldn’t say any of that in here, though. Because everything here, in the room she sat in, had been controlled for her. All laid out perfectly so as not to cause her unrest. To soothe and calm. Build trust and conversation. Make her relaxed and at ease. Because they all knew how inside, she raged like an inferno ready to explode. As she had for so many years. Keeping all that in was bound to take its toll eventually. But not today.

I’m just a little girl. Get me out of here!

Two identical armchairs upholstered in muted fabric faced each other and this was where she spent most of her time coming to terms with her trauma. And hiding every single bit of it. The table between stood like a barrier, impersonal and impenetrable, eager to absorb nothing of the confessions whispered across its surface. And the vase of flowers in the centre was neutral and forgettable. Lilies . Deliberately unobtrusive. More green foliage with white petals. Isn’t that what they have in funeral homes? Whatever happened to roses ? It wasn’t ever roses. She liked roses. Blood red and thorny.

But that would be a catastrophic choice for a room meant to cradle fragile minds.

Her mind in particular.

And as she was here to prove she was ready for the outside, she had to remain just as muted. Because the person who held that possibility within the ink of their pen currently sat across from her, reading through the notes in her file. Dr Laura Pryce had been in her life for a while now. She’d been feeding her little titbits. Getting her ready for the outside world. So this was just a formality. She was now eighteen. No longer a child to contain within cheap walls. It would cost the government quite a lot to transfer her to a secure adult unit. And as Dr Laura always said to her, “It all boils down to money.”

Nothing boiled down to sanity. Or what was right .

Thank God for the black hole deficit in public funding.

Dr Laura Pryce hovered her pen over her page for a beat too long. She was sorting through all her emotions. Compartmentalising them into little colourful boxes. This was an important meeting she was conducting. Could make or break her. One wrong decision and she could lose her licence. Maybe her mind! So she smiled, a brief, polite curve of lips, to put the doc at ease. Laura twitched hers in response. A small gesture, barely perceptible, but to her, it was louder than a heartbeat. She had this in the bag, and it didn’t even look like she had to let anyone fuck her.

Dr Laura was one of the good ones.

A surrogate mother, if you will.

Unlike that bastard of a so-called doctor who’d put her in here in the first fucking place, detailing how she had a “fascination with control and dominance, a dissociative tendency that could evolve into detachment from reality under stress and a suppressed rage that may manifest in violent, harmful ways.”

Fuck you, Dr Kenneth Lyons. Fuck you very much.

“How are you feeling today?” Dr Laura asked, voice modulated to a steady, soothing cadence. That’s who Laura was. Steady. Even. Whereas underneath, there was something quite kindred about her.

She gave the doctor a smile so soft it felt borrowed from someone else. “Hopeful.”

Dr Laura nodded. “Good. That’s good. Hope is important.” She peered over to the mirror along the wall where, beyond, would be an array of doctors all looking on to assess all this.

She dipped forward, lowering her voice. “Is that what you need me to say?” She tilted her neck just so, widening her blue eyes to pussy cat levels.

Dr Laura cleared her throat. “There are no wrong answers here. This session is for you. For you to show us who you are.”

She crossed her legs, the fabric of her institutional dress scratching her knee. “I know, but I want to make you proud of me.”

“Is pride still important to you?”

“I want to make people happy.”

“What about making yourself happy?”

Her smile faded for a second before she realised and so she quickly plastered it back on. “I think I can be happy. Find my place in the world. I want a husband.” She held the doctor’s gaze. “Have a baby! I want to be a cleaner.”

“A cleaner?” Dr Laura wrote that down. “Why would you want to be a cleaner?”

Granted, it wasn’t the career aspiration most had. But she had limited experience of what roles lay beyond the four walls that had enclosed her within for years now. All she knew were doctors. Nurses. Cooks. But they all had to talk to people. And she wasn’t very good at that. She could do it when she had to. But it was draining. Whereas the cleaners here came when no one else was around. They worked mostly in solitude. She could handle that. Plus, she enjoyed making things look pretty on the surface. Because that’s how she was.

Pretty on the surface. Rotten underneath.

Like her mother.

And Dr Laura Pryce.

Besides, it was a job the people here could help her find. Cart her off to some other agency. Wash their hands of her once and for all. She couldn’t very well be a police officer, could she? Imagine that? Someone like her being an officer of the law. Or even in bed with those who catch people like her. That would be like sleeping with the enemy. Or worse, fucking a shrink!

Perish the thought.

“I want to make the world a better place.” She smiled again and wondered if she was coming across too much like a robot.

“That’s a commendable thing to want.” Dr Laura wrote something down. “And to seek companionship is also good. Do you see yourself as a mother?”

She swallowed. “I would be a wonderful mother!”

“It can be very challenging,” Dr Pryce peered over her clipboard. “You have to put the child first. Make sacrifices. You have to love your child. Do you think you have the skills to do all that?”

“Yes.” She placed her hands on her knees. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t be given the chance .”

Her voice was velvet and thorns, all warmth on the surface, but serrated beneath. Because why should she be denied something that every other woman was allowed? Whether they were ready for it, wanted it, would be good at it, or even knew how to do it. It was her right . As a woman. To procreate if she wanted to. It was literally the only use for a woman. Or so society believed. And as she wanted to rejoin that stupid society, then she should play the part. Push out a sprog. Drag it up. Watch it fail.

Like her mother had.

And like Roisin, she’d learn how to wield love like a weapon. Then maybe she would finally see her, like how she saw him .

“I’m ready, doctor. I’ve done everything everyone asked of me. Followed the program to the letter. Weekly group therapy, individual sessions, cognitive behavioural exercises. I’ve journaled, meditated, and explored the depths of my trauma.” She leaned forward, just enough to feel the slight crack in her composure. “Haven’t I been a model patient for you? Is there anything else you want me to do?” She bit her lip, as she should have her tongue. She’d gone too far. But Dr Pryce would rein her back in. She was good like that.

“You’ve certainly shown remarkable progress,” Laura replied, edging away from her stare.

The scratch of pen on page set her teeth on edge, a grating reminder that every word she spoke wasn’t just recorded but dissected. The doctors weren’t just listening. They were watching. Judging . And she wasn’t sure what the right thing to say or even do was. Her thoughts tangled, pulling her in opposite directions like a cruel tug-of-war. She wished someone would tell her the rules again. Like when she’d been a child. Do this. Say that. Smile here. Then we’ll love you. Simple. But that was the curse of being raised by madness. There was no one sane to mimic. No blueprint to follow.

She was sure that if she could only step back into the world, she’d figure it out. Watch the normal people, see how they lived, what they valued. But instead, she’d been locked away, kept behind glass like an experiment. Observed. Analysed. Picked apart by people who never cared enough to understand .

It wasn’t fair. None of it.

And it was all his fault.

She hadn’t meant to do those awful things. Hadn’t had a choice . Not really. The world was twisted long before she’d ever laid a hand on it. Of course, it had blurred her sense of reality. Of course, it had taught her that people were just pieces on a board. Replaceable. Expendable.

But she was smarter now.

Understood the rules .

“Tell me.” Dr Laura shifted in her seat. “When you reflect on your childhood, how do you feel now?”

She tilted her head, her platinum hair catching the sunlight. For a moment, she probably looked innocent. Ethereal, even. A reflection of what she might have been if the world hadn’t bled her dry and pushed her into this little box .

“There are gaps,” she said thoughtfully. “Blanks where memories should be. But that’s not surprising, is it? Trauma rewires the brain. When we’re children, we survive by forgetting. By building walls.” She met the doc’s gaze. “But I’ve worked hard to remember the important things. The good things.”

“And the bad things?” Laura prompted. “What happens when you remember the bad things?”

She smiled again, a faint curve of lips. “I’ve made peace with them. I’ve forgiven.”

Laura halted her pen over the pad. “You feel no resentment? No need for revenge? As you spoke previously in other sessions about?”

For a long moment, she said nothing. It wasn’t passive. It was deliberate. Coiled.

“No,” she said. “I understand that while I was born into their darkness, I don’t have to carry it. I can let it go. My parents don’t define me.”

Laura’s posture softened. “That’s a significant shift. What helped you reach that conclusion?”

She glanced down at her hands. “Time. Reflection. And learning about the truth.”

“The truth?”

“That they were monsters . But monsters aren’t born. They’re made.” She let the words hang between them before continuing. “They tried to make me one, but I’m not. I don’t have to be. I can be me. Whoever I want to be, right? I just have to make the right decisions. Take the right path.”

“And you believe you can? Make the right decisions?”

She hesitated. “Of course. Like my brother got to.”

Laura wrote something down. “You’ve spoken before about your anger toward your brother. The resentment. For how he escaped it all. And not being treated the way you were. For getting a life outside of… this. How do you feel about him now?”

“I feel…” Her mind flipped through the catalogue of words she’d collected like scraps of dirt while stuck in here. She picked the brightest, shiniest ones. “Happy for him. We’re all put in boxes, Dr Laura. His box differs from mine. Has a different colour. His is bright. Pink, maybe. And mine is a little duller. Green, perhaps. For envy. I know that. But I hope he’s out there thinking about me. I hope he’s safe. I hope he’s living a life he loves. Maybe he’s even fallen in love?” Her smile stretched thin, almost believable. “I told you, doctor, I feel hopeful.”

The words sat too sweet in her mouth, syrup coating the bitterness underneath.

None of it was true. Not a single word.

She didn’t want him happy . She wanted her chance. The life she’d been robbed of. She wanted to show the world, and especially the smug doctor who’d branded her too broken to save, that they were wrong. That he was wrong.

Dr Kenneth Lyons.

The name inked in bold letters on her original assessment notes burned under her skin even now. The thought of it sent a wave of nausea roiling in her gut.

Why had he spared her brother, but not her? They had both been children .

Why hadn’t she been sent to a home where someone would love her, cherish her, buy her birthday presents wrapped in shiny paper instead of prescriptions locked in blister packs? Why hadn’t she been saved from the therapy rooms and this suffocating glass cage passing for a window to the world? Why had he been allowed to breathe free air, to become someone? To live a life where he could walk away without chains dragging at his feet? And why— why —hadn’t he ever come to see her?

Did he think he was better than her? Less… ruined? Less dangerous?

Why had he left her to endure all of this alone?

It’s not fair.

She dug her nails into her thighs, carving crescents into her skin as if she could etch the rage there, lock it in a place where it wouldn’t show. But it boiled too close to the surface, threatening to spill over.

Dr Laura’s calm, clinical voice sliced like a scalpel through the storm raging inside her. “If you’re released, you won’t be permitted any contact with him. How does that make you feel?”

Her reply tore free before she could catch it. “Alone.”

Honest. Too honest.

Dammit.

Laura nodded, dragging her pen across the paper with an irritating scratch. Like a coffin nail hammered into place. She bit the inside of her cheek until the metallic tang of blood bloomed across her tongue.

Because it wasn’t just her freedom she wanted.

It was revenge .

Not just on the world that had kept her locked away in this colourless box, but on him .

The one who’d put her here. And the one who’d walked away.

“I think we’re making some progress,” Laura said, closing her file with a soft, patronising thud. “You’re finally being truthful.”

“Are you letting me go?”

“First, we have to decide who you’ll be. Make a plan for you. Those things take time.”

“Yes, doctor.” She forced the smile that felt like splintered glass.

Laura smiled back, and she rose to her feet, legs trembling under her barely contained excitement. The guard escorted her back to her room. A soft pastel-pink prison, designed to mimic the comfort of a young woman’s bedroom. All the rooms were just boxes tacked together with sticky tape. Pictures lined the walls. Jewellery sparkled on a neatly arranged stand. Artwork hung as if someone cared about the beauty of her thoughts. But none of it was real. Every item, every decoration, was lip service to an illusion of care.

No one cared.

No one had ever cared.

The door clicked shut behind her with a hollow finality. She stood still, listening for the fading footsteps of the guard. When silence settled over the room like a shroud, she moved. Dropping to her knees, she reached under the bed, finding the strip of tape hidden beneath the frame. With a quiet rip, she pulled free the small contraband phone—a gift smuggled in by Dr Laura Pryce herself. A woman, at least. Someone who understood . Someone who knew what it was like to be trapped at the cusp of adulthood, overlooked and underestimated by men .

Laura had been feeding her little morsels of hope for years. She didn’t just understand her needs. She believed in her. Had carved out a future for her—not to heal, but to survive. Quietly. Unnoticed. She was the first adult who hadn’t tried to fix her. Only point her toward the world and hand her the blade.

None as precious as this , though.

She stretched out on the bed, holding the phone above her like a forbidden treasure as she tapped into the videos.

And there he was.

A boy, barely eight, with translucent blond hair catching the light like spun silk, dancing his fingers across the keys of a vintage walnut piano. A prodigy. Perfect. Playing a timeless classic as if he knew how to evoke emotions through the medium of music. His delicate frame seemed almost too small to contain such mastery. He certainly looked as if he didn’t fit on the stool. But his fingers fluttered, teasing life from the keys, resonating a haunting beauty as timeless as the melody filling her room.

Her chest ached as the deep chords swelled, unravelling something fragile inside her. Maybe her soul? Her lost childhood? The love she didn’t know how to get? Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, but rage sharpened the edges before they could fall. How dare he make her feel like this? As if he were telling her story. As if he could understand what it meant to be broken, forsaken, unloved .

The boy then jumped off the bench and his bright, angelic face was at odds with the smugness of his vulgar bow. As if he revelled in the praise, in knowing he could draw the world to its knees with nothing more than his fingers.

Rapturous applause swelled from behind the camera, then Roisin stepped into the frame. Her mother’s face, so achingly beautiful it was cruel, shone with love, pride, and possessiveness, and she cradled the boy’s cheeks with both hands, leaned down, and kissed the tip of his nose with an almost reverent tenderness.

“You are my precious boy,” Roisin said, voice like silk, soft but unbreakable. “The only thing I love.”

Those words landed like shards of glass in her mind, cutting into the same old scarred places.

The only thing I love.

A tremor passed through her body as the rage built. Hot, molten, and endless. He had Roisin’s love, her undivided adoration. He was everything Roisin had chosen. Had been her entire world, and there had never been room for anyone else. For her .

And what was he doing with it? Flaunting it. Basking in it like it was his birthright. He hadn’t had to fight for her love. Hadn’t been starved of it, forced to scrape by on empty smiles and scraps.

She tightened her grip around the phone, knuckles white as she fought the urge to throw it across the room. The soft chords of the piano replayed in her head, unwelcome and cloying. Hopeful. Yes. She was still hopeful. Hopeful he would learn what it felt like to be cheated out of love. To be hurt by the ones meant to care for him.

She closed her eyes and for a moment, the melody twisted. He could play all the haunting music he wanted. But the grand finale? That would be hers. She’d compose it note by note, in blood and silence.

A love song turned requiem.

Some lessons in love leave scars.

Didn’t she know all about that?