“He liked turning things into games. He would take my brother and me down to the basement and tell us to fight. Said it would toughen us up.”
Her pen pauses.
“What happened during those fights?”
“We fought until one of uscouldn’t get up anymore.”
“And then?”
“Then he chained the loser down there.”
She sits very still.
“He would leave us there for twenty four hours. Sometimes longer. Said it built character.”
The room on her screen stays quiet while she listens.
“He made us watch him do fucked up things,” my jaw tightens at the memory. “Sometimes he made us do them too.”
She looks up from her notes.
“I was raised in cruelty, it stopped shocking me,” I add. “I started seeing it as part of how the world works.”
I lean back slightly in the chair.
“And once your brain learns to see the world that way, it doesn’t turn off.”
She nods once.
“So you learned to stay alert.”
“I learned how to read a room before anything happened. The way someone walks. The tone in their voice. If you pay attention long enough, you can see violence before it starts.”
“And that helped you survive.”
“I stopped assuming people are safe,” I answer. “I assume they’re dangerous until proven otherwise.”
Her pen moves again.
“I want to ask how you experience empathy,” she replies evenly.
“I understand it,” I say. “I just don’t always feel it.”
“Give me an example.”
“If someone dies and they aren’t mine, I don’t care.”
That is the cleanest way to put it.
“And if they are your loved ones?”
My jaw tightens.
“Then it’s different.”
Different means I would burn the world down without hesitation. Different means I wouldn’t sleep until every fucker that hurt Brooke was gone.
“I don’t usually care when people die.”
