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“Leave her to me.”
7
UNA
“I don’t understand.”
I can feel the wrath of his glare on both of us even before his hand lands heavily on Finn’s shoulder.
“What do you not understand, boy?”
Finn’s eyes lift to mine. His are so like mine—the same bright blue. But of course they are. We’re twins, born on the same day nine years ago. But there’s one important difference between us: I’ve learned to turn my eyes into walls, blocking prying eyes from peeking into what I hide inside my head.
My twin brother hasn’t figured out how to do that yet. His eyes reflect his heart so openly to the world that it breaks mine.
“I asked you a question, boy. Have you gone deaf?”
My hand curls into a fist. I hate when Papa does this. He’s hard on both of us. Really, really hard. Monstrous, even, like when he’s taken his belt—or worse, an actual whip—to us. But he’s downright cruel to Finn sometimes. Because he sees the softness in him. The kindness. The heart.
All of these are things our father would surgically remove from the world at large with a hatchet, if he could. Which is probably why he’s in prison.
That’s not where we visit him, though, of course. Twice a month, Dr. Thompson or one of her assistants picks us up from the group home in Denver and brings us here, to Coal Creek Hospital. It’s not that kind of hospital. It’s not for sick people. It’s for people like our father. People who are…angry, like him.
We’re not allowed to talk about coming here. Dr. Thompson says if we do, it will mess up her work and her book. Plus, she says it will mean we won’t be able to come visit our father anymore.
I’m not sure that’s really the horrible threat she thinks it is. But the thought of what he’d do if he knew we broke the rules is enough to keep us quiet.
Not that we have anyone else to tell, anyway.
The group home in Denver isn’t the worst place we’ve been since our father went to jail. But just the same, we’re outsiders there. Sometimes, I want to tell them all our real last name—that we’re O’Conors, not Blakelys, and that if they keep teasing Finn, I’m going to tell our father, The Executioner, about it. That would get their attention.
But I won’t. No one can know our real last name. They can’t know who our father is. They can’t know that we used to live in a big house in a really nice town in southern Connecticut, outside New York.
No one’s ever really known our last name anyway. In Connecticut, we were Una and Finn Murphy. Papa always told us it was to protect us. That he worked for dangerous people doing dangerous things, and no one could ever know what our real last name was.
“But you, Una, you will always know what you are, that you have the heart and the drive of an O’Conor.”
Our father never really lived in that big house. Eloise and Carla, our housekeeper and nanny, did. We’d see our father maybe four or five times a year, and that was it. Until the night when men who worked for him came and told us we had to leave. That we had to pack right away, that no, we couldn’t say goodbye to Eloise and Carla. And that our last name was now Blakely.
“Well?” Our father snaps coldly at my brother. “Are you deaf?”
“N-no, papa,” Finn stammers, staring at the rabbit in his hands. “I just…Mr. Fluffy is my friend.”
Please, no.
I know it’s coming, but I’m helpless to warn my brother. The back of our father’s hand cuffs his ear, sending him reeling down onto the grass. Mr. Fluffy—the speckled brown bunny, brother of the all-white rabbit in my hands, Snowball—starts to flee. But our father snatches him up quickly and shoves him back into Finn’s shaking hands.
“Do it.”
“Papa—”
I flinch when he whirls on me. “You’re next, Una.”
I go cold, my eyes widening.
“You want us to—”
“To kill them, yes.”
