Page 20
Chapter nineteen
Face to Face
Aaron did go straight to his room.
Some might call that growth.
But the second he stepped inside and tossed his bag onto the bed, something sharp and unbearable clawed through his chest. He stared at the mattress, the dented pillows, the faint mess of sheets and even though it had been a year since Taylor had last been on that bed, the memories hit him one by one, and he couldn’t bash them away as if he were playing a game of whack a mole.
Because Taylor having been in his bed had ultimately caused his death.
It had never been perfect. Nor even normal . And it had never been what he had with Kenny—not even close. But it had been something . Taylor, for a while, had been something real. Someone real.
And now he was gone.
Not just gone. Extinguished . Snuffed out as if he never existed. As if his life hadn’t mattered. And, yes, Taylor had fucked up. Big time. He’d let his desperation cloud his judgement. But even if the whole roofie thing hadn’t happened, Aaron knew they had a time limit. Because his heart had always been with Kenny. It didn’t mean he wanted him to die .
Especially not by his own flesh and blood.
He swallowed hard, his mind wanting to take him into the darkness where the air whispered, this is all your fault . If he let it, he’d spiral. And he couldn’t afford to spiral.
Not when she was still out there.
But standing in this room, in this fucking graveyard of memories, was unbearable. The guilt curled in his gut. He’d known the first time he met Taylor that he would ruin his life. He hadn’t expected to be the reason it ended.
His feet were already moving before he could think. He tore off his shirt, yanking on jeans, a hoodie, grabbed his bag and stuffed what he could inside, then fled, needing air, needing out .
He hesitated only for a second before rapping his knuckles on Mel’s door.
Not that it would help. Not that walking into a room where another person had once lived and died because of him was going to make this any easier. But at the very least, he needed to tell her about Taylor before she found out through campus gossip.
Silence.
He knocked again. Still nothing.
Aaron frowned, pressing his ear to the wood. Huh. Maybe she’d already checked his room, seen he wasn’t there, and gone straight to their lecture. Or, more likely, her date had gone well, and she hadn’t even made it home. Fishing his phone from his bag, he checked his messages. Nothing.
He dialled her number, his phone at his mouth as he made his way down the corridor and back out onto campus. His police escort was doing a shit job of blending in. Standing by the entrance in full uniform, eyes tracking him as he approached. Aaron rolled his eyes. Yeah, okay, fair enough, this wasn’t about subtlety. It was about making sure people knew he was protected. So he gave the officer a nod, then kept walking. Mel’s phone rung out into nothing. Unease prickled at his skin. He opened WhatsApp instead and sent her a voice note:
“Hey, just knocked for you. Guessing your date went well? Look, I need to talk to you about something. I’m heading to lecture, but maybe we can ditch it? Get a coffee. Obvs, I mean tea. Or fuck it, let’s have a smoke. See you in a sec.”
He zoomed off the message, shoved his phone back in his pocket, and headed toward the lecture hall block, already scanning the gathering crowd of students waiting outside. They were all so fucking oblivious that another of theirs had been taken. That someone they had sat next to, partied with, seen in the corridors, was lying on a slab somewhere. But that was how it always went, didn’t it? Life kept moving. And it was always Aaron left standing in the wreckage, knowing what it cost.
His police guard took up position opposite Lecture Room Two, but Aaron wasn’t paying attention anymore. He scanned the crowd.
No Mel.
He shifted on his feet, eyes darting to the whooshing entrance doors, half expecting to see her stumble in, walk of shame style, makeup smudged, hair a mess. And he’d feel guilty, ruining her high with what he had to tell her. But she never came. The lecture theatre doors opened, students shuffling inside for Advanced Developmental Psychopathology.
Kenny wouldn’t be lecturing today.
Neither, it seemed, would Dr Pryce, as a different faculty member was already at the front, setting up. Aaron hesitated. His pulse kicked up. Where the fuck was Mel? Dragging his feet, he wandered in, dropping into the back row, keeping his eyes on the doors, ears on his phone.
The doors shut. The room settled.
Mel still didn’t arrive.
The lecturer started talking. Some bullshit about today’s core module, and Aaron should pay attention. Not just because this was his final year. Or because every note mattered. But because the subject hit too fucking close to home.
“What makes a killer? Is it their biology, their environment, or some perfect storm of both?” The lecturer started, pointing up to his presentation slide. “Throughout history, we have dissected the minds of those who commit the most heinous acts, trying to pinpoint the moment they ‘became’ something monstrous. But what if, instead of a single moment, it was a lifetime in the making? What if the foundation of violence is laid not in adulthood but in infancy, in the silent corridors of early development, where nature and nurture wage their quiet war?”
Aaron bounced his knee with restless energy.
Checked his phone again.
“Today, we’ll discuss the intergenerational transmission of psychopathy and trauma. A phenomenon that raises a critical question: Are some people destined to walk the same path as those who came before them? Research in developmental psychopathology suggests that psychopathy, like trauma, can be passed down. Not just through DNA, but through the environments we are raised in. A child of violence, neglect, or manipulation does not simply inherit genetic predispositions. They inherit a blueprint for survival. Their neural pathways are shaped by fear, their attachment systems wired for distrust. If a parent shows no empathy, does the child ever learn what it looks like?”
God, Aaron couldn’t switch this man off.
“Take, for example, the offspring of known offenders—”
Especially when he said that.
“Children raised in the shadow of their parents’ crimes. Studies have shown that children who grow up in homes where extreme antisocial behaviour is normalised often display early indicators of psychopathy: impaired emotional recognition, an inability to form secure attachments, and, in some cases, a dissociative detachment from their own actions. But is this fate? Or is there a way out? Some argue that intervention, therapy, and conscious choices can reroute a seemingly predestined path. Others suggest that the echoes of our past—our genetics, our childhood experiences—leave an indelible mark, one that shapes our future in ways we cannot control.
“So, as we go through today’s lecture, I want you to consider: If we could predict violence before it manifests, would we have a moral obligation to intervene? And more importantly… does a child born in darkness ever truly get to step into the light?”
Sharp vibrating on Aaron’s leg jolted him as if a blade had pressed into his skin. He yanked his phone out, Mel’s name flashing on the screen. Relief surged.
Had a great night last night, thanks. I’m into bondage!
But relief was short lived when another text came in. A photo. Mel . Bound, gagged, and strapped to a chair. Eyes wide, terrified. Tears streaking down her face. The phone fell from his hands, clattering to the desk, as if just dropping it would make this not real.
No.
No. No. No. No. No. Fuck no!
This wasn’t happening.
Not again.
“Mr Jones?” the lecturer’s voice pierced through the fog, sharp, expectant.
Aaron fumbled for his phone, drowning out the white noise of whispers and shifting seats around him. He then looked up, dazed, vision tunnelling on the man at the front.
“I know you get extra tuition here, but it would still benefit you to listen to my lectures.”
The cat was out of the bag, then? Everyone knew. Or at the very least, suspected. Extra tuition. The oldest fucking code in the book. Whispers swirled, heads turned, and under normal circumstances, that would have mattered. He should have felt something about it. Shame. Rage. Embarrassment.
He felt none of it.
Because his vision blurred, not from shock. Nor anger. From pure, unfiltered terror as another photo popped into his chat.
Mel.
A belt wrapped tight around her neck. Eyes closed. Tears streaking her cheeks.
His body moved before his mind caught up and his chair slammed backward as a hush fell over the room.
“Are you going somewhere, Mr Jones?” The lecturer’s voice came over the stunned crowd.
“Yeah.” His voice was flat, almost unrecognisable.
“You’ll be marked as absent.”
“Whatever.” Aaron didn’t care.
Nor did he care about the scattered murmurs following him as he slung his bag over his shoulder and thundered toward the exit. Nor care about the lecturer watching him go. Or anything at all except getting to Mel. And he shoved through the swinging doors into the corridor, gripping his phone like somehow staring at it harder would change what he’d seen.
It didn’t.
It wouldn’t .
He peered down one side of the student centre, then the other. Where the fuck was his police escort? His eyes darted, frantic, until he spotted him over by the vending machine, relaxed, thinking he’d tucked Aaron safely away inside his lecture. He opened his mouth to call, but his phone rang.
Mel’s number.
He answered. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Hey, baby brother. Did you get to see my birthday gift? Even dead Taylor’s hot, right?”
His blood ran cold, entire body locked up.
“Go fuck yourself,” Aaron snapped, voice sharp, teetering between fury and panic. “Where’s Mel? Let her go.”
A soft chuckle.
“Chill, bro.” His sister’s voice dripped with honeyed teasing, and it made him feel physically ill. “She’ll be just fine… as long as you come here. Oh, and without your little police friends. Don’t alert them, don’t try anything clever.”
Her voice dipped lower, colder.
“Because if you do?” She sighed, almost mockingly. “Mel will have a little accident. Autoerotic asphyxiation. Taylor was into that, wasn’t he?”
“You fucking—” His words choked off, rage strangling him. “How do you expect me to ditch the police ?”
A dramatic sigh came through the line.
“I know how good you are at sneaking away. You used to do it all the time. Remember? When you were fifteen, sneaking out of your foster house every night to go fuck that bloke? What was his name again? Turned out to be a little nasty, didn’t he? But don’t worry. My doctor gave me his address and I took care of him for you.”
A sick, suffocating feeling spread through Aaron’s chest.
She had…
No. No.
“I mean, honestly,” she continued, her tone mockingly sweet, “do these people not know who you are? Who we are? And if he’s capable of doing that to you, imagine what he might have gone on to do to others. It’s really a national service, I’m giving here.”
Aaron couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe .
“You used to sneak out of the halfway house too, right? Just to go clubbing. Always evading authorities when you wanted to get laid. Now do it to save your friend’s life. Because you have ten minutes. As for every minute you’re late, she’ll lose a finger.”
Aaron pulled the phone away from his ear, trying not to cut the call to send Kenny a text.
“Where am I going?” He glanced over to the police officer, but he’d been called away by security, off rushing to somewhere else. Well, that made that easier. Maybe Kenny had called them. Unearthed where she was, and they were heading there now. So he snaked through students to the exit, while also sending Kenny a text. But, fuck, his battery was in the red. He hadn’t charged it at Jack’s last night and hadn’t checked when he got to his room. “Where do I go?”
“Follow the music, baby brother. Follow the music. You remember the music, don’t you?”
Aaron’s phone died.
“Fuck!” He burst out of the other end of the building toward the back, glancing one way, then the other. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes! He had no time. Not enough to launch over to Kenny’s office. No time to do anything but run. Despite what Kenny had said. Despite everything. He couldn’t leave Mel to her fate. He had to hope the police had been called to Kenny as he was onto something.
So he ran.
Not just ran. Pelted as if hunted. Limbs burning, boots pounding the pavement
He fumbled with his phone, shoving it in his pocket and hoping to fuck the text had got through to Kenny before it died, and he sprinted to the back of campus. Along the river. He knew exactly where she was. All the memories had come loose now. The same abandoned space their parents had once used to store things that shouldn’t have existed. The one he’d stumbled upon when he’d discovered her. Follow the music. The music his mother played at full volume when Aaron thought she was just dancing when, in reality, she’d been hiding her misdeeds. From him. From the world.
He pushed through the pain. Through the ice-cold terror gnawing at the edges of his mind. He should go to the police. That’s what a rational person would do. That’s what Kenny would tell him to do. “Don’t do anything stupid.” But the police were too slow. Too wrapped in fucking procedures. Aaron knew what they’d do. They’d log the report. Pull surveillance footage, issue alerts, track signals. Set up containment perimeters. And by the time they actually moved?
Mel would be dead .
And he wasn’t fucking waiting for that to happen.
The police hadn’t saved any of the other victims. Not Kenny’s sister. Or Rahul. Taylor ! And he could not have yet another person die because of him .
His lungs burned as he tore through the woodland, feet pounding the uneven earth beneath him. The trees were dense, thick canopies swallowing the daylight, their skeletal branches clawing at his hoodie as if trying to stop him. The river roared nearby, its waters dark, relentless, churning against the rocks as he sprinted alongside it. He barely registered the twisted roots threatening to trip him, the wet, moss-covered ground slick beneath his boots. His body moved on pure instinct, legs aching, pulse pounding like a war drum.
He was leaving Ryston behind.
Running toward a place that had never been a home. Only a graveyard of memories. The little village of Wilton. Picturesque and rotting. Pretty on the surface but steeped in blood beneath the foundations. Like him. His house was gone now though. Reduced to nothing but an empty lot, overgrown with weeds, the land marked for new development. They wanted to erase what had been there. Erase the ghosts. Build flats, bring in new families, pretend the land hadn’t once housed monsters.
And Drew Whitmore’s house? Boarded up. A SOLD sign out front. The same fate awaited it. Raze it. Rebuild. Make something clean out of something rotten.
Aaron didn’t stop.
The past could burn for all he cared. Because he wasn’t here for ghosts.
He was here for Mel .
Adrenaline kept him moving, faster, harder, until he burst through the weeds and bramble-strewn land, mud spraying up his legs as he tore across the clearing. There, he saw it. The warehouse.
A rotting, forgotten husk of a building, its remains menacing. Half the roof had caved in long ago, leaving jagged beams jutting out at odd angles, like the exposed ribs of a carcass left to decay. Windows were either shattered or too dust-covered to see through, metal sheets peeling away from the structure’s sides, rust eating into every surface. The air smelled of damp, mould, and the metallic tang of old, forgotten industry. A place where his parents had once operated in the shadows.
Aaron launched at the door, banging his fist on the rusted metal. Hard. Loud. Unrelenting. “Open the fucking door!”
Silence.
Then, the groan of rusted hinges.
The door swung open to reveal Mel. In the centre of the room. Bound, ankles tied, wrists behind her back, body rigid. Her breath hitched the moment she saw him, her entire frame trembling, tears carving fresh tracks down her face, her wide, panicked eyes pleading to him as she fought against the gag stuffed into her mouth.
Aaron surged forward. But a poke at his back stopped him. A blade. Close. Too close.
“Ah, ah, ah.”
Slowly, so fucking slowly, he turned his head.
Standing close enough to touch, with a knife pressed into his back just enough to remind him she could end this whenever she pleased, was her .
Aaron’s blood ran cold.
She looked too much like their mother. A nightmare twisted from the same bloodline and shaped into something feral, unpredictable, and wholly unrecognisable. But her eyes .
Jesus, her eyes .
Blue. Striking blue. Like his own. But hollow. Dead behind the surface yet brimming with electricity. Purely chaotic . Like staring into the eye of a hurricane just before it swallowed you whole. Her hair was jet black, obviously dyed, as he knew she was really a blonde. Maybe that was what she’d done to get to Kenny’s mother, pretending to be Kenny’s dark-haired twin sister.
She would pay for that.
“Wow.” Her voice was syrupy, teasing, as if she was speaking to an old friend instead of the brother she was holding at knifepoint. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
With the reservoir of self-preservation not yet run dry, he angled his head to Mel. “Let her go.”
“Does it look like you make the rules in here?” She rested a hand on her hip, the one holding the huge blade. “I do. Me . Mable, by the way. That’s what they call me now. Like they call you Aaron.”
“I did everything you asked. I’m here. Alone. Let her go.”
“Sit down.” Mable pointed the blade at a chair opposite Mel’s. “We need a long overdue conversation at least, no?”
“If you think for one second, I’m going to let you do anything to her, or if you think I’m going to do anything to her, you’re wrong. Drew already tried that and failed.”
“Pastor Whitmore?” She shuddered. “God, he really was the worst , wasn’t he? Used to do some horrendous things to me. I suppose you were spared that childhood trauma. As all others.”
Aaron’s jaw clenched. The way she spoke, so flippant and blasé, about something that should have been horrifying was chilling. He didn’t know the full extent of her story. Not really. Just fragments he’d pieced together from Kenny’s notes, from his own deductions, from looking at her now. And despite everything she’d done—everything she was about to do—he couldn’t shake the sliver of pity clawing its way up his throat.
Why had their mother treated them so differently? Why had she cherished him—or at least performed the act of cherishing him—while brutalising his sister? Was it as simple as gender? Was that all it took to decide who was worthy of love and who wasn’t? Or was there something more insidious at play? Had their mother seen something in her—some latent, writhing thing —that she wanted to snuff out? Or worse, had she tried to cultivate it?
And if the roles had been reversed… would he have become her ?
It was like watching his last lecturer’s theory unfold in real time. The intergenerational transmission of psychopathy and trauma , ripped from sterile academic discussions and laid bare in the flesh. He could almost hear the lecturer’s voice echoing in his head— Are some people destined to walk the same path as those before them?
That was it, wasn’t it?
This was the game his mother had spoken of. A case study waiting to be written. A profile waiting to be built. The age-old dilemma: nature versus nurture. And the answer? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know
“Sit down,” Mable said. “You’re making the place look untidy.”
Aaron glanced around the warehouse. A rotting relic of their past, a place steeped in so much blood, it should have been burned to the ground long ago. The space was cluttered, damp, reeking of mildew. Coppery. Metallic. Cloying . Their father’s old antiques were still here. The so-called business. The smoke and mirrors. A front for something far more sinister. How many people had walked through these doors and never left? Been dragged beneath the floorboards, chained to the walls, and left to rot in the bowels of a building that should never have existed? How many had suffered slow deaths? Or endured hours, days, weeks of torture before their bodies finally gave up?
Aaron’s breath came shallow, uneven, his feet stumbling back over something soft, limp. A slumped figure in the corner. Curled in on itself.
Dead .
His stomach dropped.
“Oh, don’t worry about him.” Mable waved the knife toward the corpse, as if it was nothing more than an old piece of furniture, a discarded thing she no longer needed. “He was a test subject.”
“Test subject for what?”
“How to kill you slowly.” She sauntered over, nudging the body with her boot, rolling it over.
Mel let out a muffled scream through her gag, and Aaron gulped.
He knew that face.
Wide, lifeless eyes staring at nothing.
Archie .
From his first year in halls. The kid he’d had an altercation with. The kid who’d looked at Aaron as if he was a freak. Who’d treated Rahul with disdain.
Mable crouched, running long, lazy fingers through Archie’s matted hair, as though he were a pet she’d grown bored with.
“He wasn’t very nice to you either, was he?” Mable hummed, stroking the corpse like a doll. “Pastor Whitmore gave me all your notes. He’s surprisingly conversational when behind bars and not able to pin me down.” Mable stood. Kicked the body. “He said sorry in the end.” She sighed, almost wistfully. “But apologies don’t cut the mustard with me. His or Mr Whitmore’s.” She looked over at Aaron and smiled. “Did you know Mum told Whitmore to track you? Watch over you? That he fed her every scrap of information about you to her? Told me he found you after that incident when you were fifteen. Tracked you ever since. Consequences, bruh. There’re always consequences.”
Aaron’s stomach churned, his heartbeat thundered, but deep, deep in the darkest corner of his mind, one terrifying thought whispered. If I had been raised like her… I might have agreed.
Mable tilted her neck in an afterthought. “Did mummy teach you that, too? Or was your consequence ignorance?”
Aaron couldn’t tear his eyes away from Archie’s blank, staring face. The kid had been an arsehole, sure. But he hadn’t deserved this . No one did. But to Mable, he was just a lesson. A cautionary tale. She saw people as experiments. As variables.
Aaron was understanding just how deep that went.
Mable dragged a single blood-caked finger across Archie’s forehead, her eyes gleaming with a manic, electric intensity. Wild, untethered, and utterly unhinged.
“He struggled more than I thought he would.” She snorted as if amused by that. “I mean, really, I was just warming up. Just testing a few ideas. But he gave up so easily. He disappointed me. But I suppose that’s men, isn’t it? They just don’t have our pain threshold, do they, Mel?”
Mel let out another choked sob, her body jerking against the restraints.
“Oh, come on, sweetheart.” She waved a hand dramatically, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like you knew him well. Not like Taylor. Now there was a man who just lay down and let me have at him.”
Mel squirmed, her entire body shaking, but Mable just sighed and let go, stepping back, hands on her hips.
“Why are you doing this?”
Mable turned to Aaron. Expression darkening. The shift was so abrupt it sent a shiver down his spine.
“You don’t have a theory? Aren’t you meant to be getting into heads like mine?” She watched him as if he was some strange, incomprehensible thing.
“I stole your life.” Aaron honed his inner Kenny. “You’re angry because I got to be the golden child. The cherished one. The beloved son. And you?” He wanted to offer a sympathetic look, but he wasn’t sure if she deserved one. “Got the real Howell experience. The one they shielded me from. And you want me to suffer for that?”
Mable tucked the knife under her armpit, freeing her hands to clap in slow, mocking applause. “Well done. Gold star.” Her smirk curled like smoke, toxic and smug. “Can see why he’s the teacher’s pet, eh, Mel?”
Mel made a muffled noise behind her gag, eyes wide with panic.
Mable then ducked behind Mel and reached for something half-hidden beneath the dust-covered crates. Aaron was about to launch forward. To tackle her. Jump on her but she straightened just as quick as the thought came, an old revolver dangling from her fingers. An antique, its barrel dulled with time, but its menace undiminished. Aaron’s stomach clenched. One of their father’s relics, no doubt. And like all relics in their family, it was never just for show.
She raised it level with his head. “Sit down.”
Aaron didn’t move.
Mable sighed in theatrical exasperation. “Shall we see if this still works, then?” She tilted her wrist, adjusting her aim.
Then she fired, and the blast cracked the air apart.
A white-hot whisper scalded past Aaron’s temple, so close the wind stirred his hair, and the bullet slammed into the wooden beams behind him. Splinters exploded outward, sharp and stinging as they nicked his skin. The deafening report swallowed everything. His pulse. His thoughts. Mel’s muffled scream.
A high-pitched ringing swallowed the world.
Aaron staggered back; equilibrium shredded. He blinked, desperate to focus, but the warehouse blurred at the edges, shifting and spinning as if the ground had been ripped from beneath him. His knees buckled, balance gone, body betraying him as he dropped heavily onto the chair. The vibrations of the shot still pulsed in his bones and the smell of burnt gunpowder was thick in his nose.
The chair’s wooden arms bit into his sides. He tried to push up—too late.
Mable moved behind him.
He didn’t hear her. He couldn’t. The ringing in his skull was too fierce, swallowing the rustle of rope, the scrape of fabric against the floor. But he felt it. The sudden, suffocating constriction as rough cords snapped tight around his wrists, yanking them behind the chair. The burn of fibres slicing into his skin, cinching him into place.
By the time the world swam back into focus, the damage was done.
His hands were bound. He was trapped.
“There we go. Now we can have a proper conversation.”
Aaron swallowed against the metallic taste in his throat, heart hammering. The reverberation of the gunshot echoing in his skull.
Fuck .
This was bad.
Really fucking bad.
Mable snuck in front of him, eyes blazing with old rage, old wounds festering beyond repair. “You know what makes me so fucking angry?” Her voice dropped lower, rougher, nearly breaking with rage. “It’s not that you got to be normal. Got to believe in fairy tales. Were allowed to leave . Nor even that they made me this chaotic, messed up, fucking psycho.” She gripped his face, forcing him to look at her. “It’s what they made you .”
Aaron’s pulse roared in his ears.
“ Weak . They made you weak. Gave you feelings . Now you have friends . And you’ve fallen in love .” She shuddered and let go of his face as if she couldn’t bear to touch him any longer. “But don’t worry.” She twirled the knife between her fingers, casual, playful, as though she hadn’t just ripped open her own scars in front of him. “I’m going to fix that for you.”
“What do you mean?”
She smiled, pointing the knife toward Mel. “You still think you’re better than me. That you’re different. But I know the truth. Just like everyone, you’re one bad day away. One push, one loss. One person taken from you in just the right way and you will be just like me .”
Aaron shook his head, forcing himself to keep his voice steady. “You’re wrong.”
Mable’s smile widened. “Am I?”
She took a step toward Mel.
Aaron’s body locked up.
No. No. No.
“Let her go,” he roared, voice shaking now.
Mable hummed, tapping the flat of the blade on Mel’s cheek, making her flinch.
“You’re going to have to make me.” The tip of the knife pressed lightly into Mel’s skin. “And I wonder just how far you’ll let me go before the Howell breaks free. And do you know what the exciting part is?” She peered over her shoulder with a sickening smile. “When your boyfriend sees you as nothing but a Howell monster, he’ll never see you as anything else.”