Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
“They do not,” she’d said in affront.
“Ahem, do we or do we not have two dozen cupcakes in the car for the gang of cake bandits?”
When Theo had wrinkled her nose at him, he’d kissed it, then said, “Go see your aunt, pchelka.” A solemn tenderness to his expression, this man who knew all her complicated emotions when it came to Keja. “If you need me, I’ll be right here.”
Theo wasn’t expecting an attack. That wasn’t where the danger lay with Keja.
Her aunt wore pale purple scrubs. That was a special-order item according to the information that Pax had been sent as a result of his standing as the head of the Marshall family. Since Keja had never officially been cut from the family line, just listed as dead, responsibility for her fell to the family.
Theo knew Pax would’ve accepted that responsibility regardless.
Now he held power of attorney over her person, as she’d been judged unable to care for herself—and, as such, he had full access to her medical records. So Theo knew that Keja’s counselor had ordered the purple scrubs after Keja kept on going into psychotic meltdowns at being asked to put on the green scrubs that were the usual patient uniform at this facility.
She was fine with seeing others in them, but she would not wear a set.
Echoes of trauma. Memories of a brutal violation.
Now her aunt took a seat on the other side. Unlike in the old movie that Theo had recently watched with Yakov, they didn’t have to pick up devices to talk to each other through the glass. It wasn’t soundproof. Was designed to let them speak freely but without physical risk to Theo. “Aunt Keja,” Theo said. “You look well.”
No madness in her gaze today, Keja smiled that sad smile Theo had seen before her aunt shot her. “As we both know, looks can be deceiving.” Her next words held a sharp edge. “They tell me your brother holds power of attorney over me. Seems I’m unfit to care for myself or to make my own decisions.”
“You don’t need to be concerned,” Theo said. “Pax understands that you’re eminently capable the vast majority of the time, and he has no desire to contradict your decisions or micromanage your existence. However, there are times when you are . . . unreachable.”
Also in the medical records had been a notation about a recent incident where Theo’s aunt had attacked a fellow inmate: a slender blue-eyed blonde. Had the guards not pulled Keja off, she’d have broken the other woman’s neck.
“I’m in solitary confinement now for the safety of others,” Keja said, one eye twitching slightly. Raising a hand, she pressed her finger under that eye. “Side effect of the medication they’re testing on me. I asked to be part of the guinea pig group and I assume your brother must have authorized it, because they let me into the trial.”
Hope for her aunt had Theo leaning forward. “What’s it designed to do?”
“Regulate certain processes in the brain. I can’t give you all the technical specs but they’ll be in my medical records. Irritation at the twitch aside, I feel calm most of the time.” Humor lit up the blue, a hint of the woman she could’ve been had Marshall Hyde not savaged her. “Or I think so, anyway. I might be the crazy person who doesn’t know they’re crazy.”
Throat tight, Theo pressed a hand to the glass. “I don’t know how to feel about you.” It came out raw, drenched in pain. “You saved fifteen lives, and then you took the lives of innocents whose only crime was to look like me.”
Like version 2.0.
“I love you and I understand you,” Theo continued. “I also hate you for what you did . . . And I hate myself because I was the second subject. I’m only mentally better than you because you went first, took the first hit.”
Keja pressed her hand against Theo’s. “Don’t, little niece.” Severe words belied by the strange tenderness in her expression. “We are neither one of us the worst monsters. That title goes to the ones who made us.”
Her eyes grew hard, black bleeding in from the edges in a creeping tide. “The counselors and shrinks want me to accept fault, but I see doing that as capitulating to what he did to me, as shifting blame from where it rightfully lies. He killed those women—because he created me.”
Theo didn’t know what to say to that. The counselors were right in that Keja couldn’t move forward until she accepted culpability for her crimes. But Keja was also right—she wouldn’t be this damaged being if her father hadn’t mangled her brain.
“Not that it matters.” Dropping her palm from the other side of the glass, Keja sat back. “I’m in this facility for the rest of my life.”