Page 45 of The Birthday Girl
The silhouette resolved into a familiar jawline, the same one she’d stared at during every therapy session while confessing things she’d never told another soul.
He sat in a leather chair as if he had been waiting all night, hands folded loosely on his knee, his tie still knotted like he had come straight from the office.
His smile was faint, but charismatic, as though nothing about this meeting was strange.
Tahlia froze, her lungs seizing mid-breath. “Dr. Farrell?” The name scraped from her throat as her fingers curled into fists.
Behind her eyes, the courtroom flashed, her therapist’s measured voice carrying to the jury. “In my professional opinion, Ms. Banks displays classic signs of schizoaffective disorder, manic type, with comorbid antisocial personality disorder...”
“The one and only,” he said simply, his voice so calm the sound threaded into her bones.
Her teeth ground until her jaw ached. “You sold me out.” The words burned hotter than anything said in the courtroom, hotter even than her laughter when Danielle’s body went still.
“You sat on that stand with your educated smile, and you dissected me in front of strangers like I was a fucking frog. You called me broken, you called me sick, and you buried me alive in that place.”
Farrell didn’t flinch. Instead, he leaned back in his seat, one arm draped across the chair as if her rage were nothing more than weather passing through.
“I told the truth you gave me,” he replied evenly.
“That shit doesn’t make what you did any better!” she hissed, taking a step toward him, her fists trembling at her sides. “I trusted you!”
His smile widened just enough to show teeth, a predator’s patience. “And you still should. Since the day you finally crossed the line, I’ve been more than your therapist. I’ve been your accomplice.”
“My-my accomplice?” Her breath stuttered, her fury quickly morphing into confusion, curiosity, the dangerous edge of hope.
“Yes.” He nodded, a smirk curling the corner of his lips.
“Fuck that!” She shook her head to clear the fog.
Dr. Farrell was good at playing with her mind, and she no longer trusted his silver tongue or the way he could twist her words into weapons against herself.
“I ought to kill you where you stand,” she said, her voice a razor’s edge.
“You should,” he agreed softly. “But you won’t.
Because you know I’m the only one who ever really saw you.
Not the jury. Not the cops. Not even your family or friends.
Me.” He pointed at his chest. “I listened. I understood. And now…” He rose from the chair.
“Now I’m going to give you everything you’ve always deserved. ”
“And why would you do that?” She lifted her chin, glaring at him sideways.
Farrell’s expression shifted, the clinical mask slipping away to reveal an intimacy she’d never witnessed before. “Do you know when I first fell in love with you, Tahlia?”
“I remember the exact moment,” he said, voice dropping to a whisper that crawled across her skin.
“You were the only one clapping in that courtroom when Tyriq cleared my name. Everyone else cried, whispered, and pointed fingers. But you—” He inhaled, his breath uneven for the first time.
“You were radiant. You clapped for us, and I thought—my God, she understands me. She isn’t ashamed of dark hunger. She celebrates it.”
“Then, when you strolled into my office, I figured you felt the same as I. Why else would you choose me as your therapist? Out of all the others, you came to me. You wanted to be close, didn’t you?”
Tahlia balled her fists tighter. “You arrogant son of a bitch. I came to you because I needed a doctor.”
“No, you needed me—all of me,” Farrell countered, his tone rising with conviction. “You always did. I saw it in your eyes when you sat across from me. It was then I chose to watch over you to ensure you were always protected.”
Tahlia’s lips curled back over her teeth. “So you’ve been following me?”
“Following?” He shook his head, stepping closer, his shadow cutting across her face. “No. I kept you safe from a world that didn’t deserve you. Do you want to know why?”
“Why?” she asked, chest heaving.
“Because you’re mine. And when I killed Tremaine and Jimmy…” He paused, a smile ghosting his lips as though he were recalling something intimate. “I did it for you. Every cut, every note of their screams, it was a love song, Tahlia. My gift.”
For the first time, her composure wavered, and her voice broke into a rasp. “You… what?”
“I killed Tremaine and Jimmy,” he repeated, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead before he leaned in, his words a hiss meant only for her.
“They’d planned to rob you, but I got to them first. No one will ever hurt you as long as I’m alive.
” He gently moved a stray hair from Tahlia’s face and placed it behind her ear.
“Baby, do you know how close the police were to arresting you? They were circling you like wolves, eager to tear you apart? They wanted you in a cell. Forever. So I gave them something else. I contacted a detective and informed him that Danielle was in danger, and then I testified. Not to betray you, my love, but to protect you. Jail would have buried you and left me without access to you. The hospital was something that I could manage, a place where I could reach you.”
His smile deepened, serene and terrifying. “I made sure they couldn’t cage you somewhere I couldn’t follow. Everything I’ve done, and everything I said under oath? It was all to keep you within my reach.”
Dr. Farrell opened his arms wide. “Come to me, baby. I’m yours and you are mine.”
Tahlia’s world tilted as she watched him, the ground beneath her feet suddenly unreliable.
The revelation hit her like cold water, washing away the fury that had sustained her through eighteen months of captivity.
She had spent countless nights plotting his destruction, imagining the precise ways she would make him pay for his betrayal.
Now he stood before her, claiming that betrayal had been salvation.
Her mind raced backward through the timeline, reassembling the pieces with this new information. Tremaine and Jimmy, the two bodies she had nothing to do with, but had claimed. She had never known who killed them. She only felt a dark satisfaction that someone had.
Then there was the matter of her ex-boyfriend.
Tahlia slid into Dr. Farrell’s awaiting arms, peering up at his eyes. “Did you have anything to do with Tyriq?”
He grinned and nodded, his eyes twinkling with pride. “Absolutely. It was I who gift-wrapped his body parts and left them on Shanice’s doorstep. He hurt you, my love. I couldn’t let him get away with that. What kind of boyfriend would I be if I did?”
“A horrible one,” she replied in awe.
“Right.” Dr. Farrell clapped his hands. “But enough about him. I have a surprise for you.” He pointed to the far side of the room at a ridiculously large box, held together with a simple red bow, its size obscene. “Happy birthday, baby,” he said, voice soft as silk. “Open your gift.”
Tahlia’s fingers twitched against her thighs as she approached the box.
She ran one chipped nail along the silky ribbon, savoring the texture as her tongue pressed into the back of her teeth.
A smile flickered at the corner of her mouth as she tugged the bow loose.
The cardboard walls collapsed outward with a loud clap, each side hitting the floor in perfect unison.
The metallic scent of blood struck her first. Then came the vision that branded itself forever in her memory.
Tyriq had been arranged inside the container, his body contorted unnaturally.
Mottled purple bruises bloomed across his ashen skin, while blood-soaked bandages barely covered the lacerations carved into his flesh.
Each labored breath whistled through his lips.
When his gaze found hers, terror dilated his pupils to black pools, reducing him to something fragile and primitive.
His joints bent where they shouldn’t, suspended in that terrible space between existence and oblivion, each methodical injury revealing the signature of someone who had taken their time and had savored their work.
For one slow moment, Tahlia’s mouth went dry. The room narrowed to the faint rasp of his breathing and the hiss of Farrell’s breath behind her.
She straightened and looked at him, her voice quieter than it had ever been before. “Is this for me?”
Farrell’s nod was as gentle as his smile. “Yes, baby,” he replied. “Do with him what you will.”
Tahlia’s lips parted, something like awe flickering across her face before it melted into a smile. She turned back to Tyriq, his body trembling in the box, and let the sound of his terror fill her.
Dr. Farrell told her to do with him what she would, and that she did. All night. For days, weeks, even. Tyriq’s screams continuously split the house, a high, keening sound that threw up dust motes in the lamplight and spilled through the open window into the night.
Tahlia did not wince, nor did she move to comfort him. She only watched him, her eyes bright, a small, slow smile uncoiling at the corner of her mouth as the scream continued and the room held them both, predator and prey, locked in the last light of the night.