Page 13 of Obsession

“You’re only alive because I allow it. You hear me? You breathe because I allow it. Don’t for a second believe you’re worth something.”

As she walked away, I let my gaze fall upon the dead kitten on the table, where it lay in a thick pool of blood.

That sensation of numbness inside me cemented into something so solid, yet so empty, that not even Mrs. Ashton’s smile could reach through again. Nothing could.

“Here, eat this.” Mom placed a buttered slice of stale bread before me.

I stared down at the circular plate surrounded by blood, and my stomach growled on cue.

6

SAVANNAH

Abeat of silence passes while I let his words settle. The insistent ticking of the clock on the wall and the guard’s sudden cough steal my attention for a moment. My mind reels as images of Robbie as a ten-year-old boy flood my mind.

It dawns on me that Elliot was right. Iamout of my depths. The coldhearted killer in front of me has just told me in a detached voice about how his mother forced him to slaughter a kitten. What am I supposed to say to that?

I shouldn’t be here. I’m not cut out for this job.

My eyes flick down to the recorder.

“Have you got any other questions for me today, ma’am?”

Swallowing, I try to gather myself. “Is that why you think you are the way you are?” Motioning with my hand, I continue, “A serial killer.”

“Do I think I have been sentenced for the murder of fourteen women because my mother made me kill a kitten?” He keeps watching me intently, and I want to unzip my skin and run for the door. The question feels juvenile.

“I think anyone can be made into a killer given the right circumstances.”

“You were only a child?—”

“But I was an adult man when I kidnapped those women.”

Chewing on my cheek, I sigh and look out the window at the darkening clouds. “You wouldn’t have killed those women if it weren’t for how your mother treated you.”

He hums, drawing my attention back to him. The way his gaze warms my face has heat rising to my cheeks. “Are you trying to justify my actions, ma’am? Find a reason behind them?” The chair creaks beneath his weight as he leans his upper body closer. “I knew what I was doing. It wasn’t in revenge.”

I lean in too, ensuring he sees the intensity in my gaze. “I beg to differ. You may not be aware of your actions. But you take back the power and control you lacked back then when you kill. You do the things that ten-year-old boy wished he could.”

“Do you enjoy psychoanalyzing me, Savannah?” he purrs in a heated tone I feel down to my toes. His breath mingles with mine; that’s how little space is between our mouths, yet the guard says nothing.

I flick my eyes between Robbie’s, noticing the flecks of hazel in the blue. “I could ask the same of you. What have you noticed about me since we sat down?”

“Are you brave enough to find out the answer,Savannah?”

Fuck…

I should draw back and create space between us, but his magnetism is impossible to escape. I want his tattooed hands on me. I want to feel the pleasure he can bring with those calloused fingers. I even want the pain he could inflict if he let his monster out to play.

I want to taste death at his fingertips.

“You’re a people pleaser, Savannah. You have tried to live up to other people’s expectations of you all your life. For reasons, unbeknownst to me, you never feel good enough.” With ashrug of his broad shoulders, he says, “My guess is that it has something to do with your vegetative father.”

Sitting upright, I gasp. “How do you know about my father?”

While my heart never beats in a normal, healthy rhythm around this lethal man, it’s now smashing the bars of my ribcage, like the other condemned prisoners in this building.

Those sinful lips reveal a hint of a smile, but there’s nothing sweet about it. “I know a lot of things about you.”