Page 75 of The Birthday Girl
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. Hisjoints 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.