AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I hope it doesn’t. I hope he makes it to ninety days. I hope he survives longer than he ever lasted at rehab, any one of the eight times I scrimped and saved and tried to rescue him.
Because on the ninetieth day, I’m going to kill him.
Me. Just me.
After all, I’m the one who killed Klaus Herzog. I murdered him in a frenzy—all fire and blood. I discovered an opportunity, and I took it before I could be enslaved for the rest of my life.
Leo won’t die the same way. No knife across the throat. No blood arcing to the ceiling. No mad scramble as his insides are shredded.
I’m going to kill Leo like the animal he is. I’m going to stop his heart with a single injection, straight into a vein. It’s more mercy than he deserves.
I leave the gallery door ajar and head back to the loading dock. Trap is sitting in the driver’s seat, his knees outside the door. He sighs as he hauls himself upright.
He must be exhausted.I’mrunning on adrenaline, and I haven’t driven back and forth to Philadelphia, been caught in a shoot-out, or suffered a wound bad enough to need stitches. Once we get Leo locked away, I’ll take Trap back to the house. I’ll get him out of that too-small sweatshirt and load him up with painkillers or a double-shot of whiskey, whichever he prefers.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod, even though I’m afraid I’m not strong enough. But if Trap takes Leo’s arms, carries the weight of his head and his chest… I should be able to hold onto his feet. I hope. I pray.
Trap opens the back door of the van.
Leo is in a wheelchair. Four steel clips on the inside of the van anchor heavy ropes, securing the chair against rolling during transport. A thick strap is fastened around my brother’s chest, holding him upright. His arms and legs are bound to the chair’s metal frame. A shapeless black hood covers his head. His neck is bent at a sharp angle, like his nose is made out of a three-ton weight.
I can’t see his face. His wrists are thin, like they belong to a scarecrow. He’s wearing a T-shirt that used to be white, and his jogging pants are filthy. A heavy wet stain announces that he peed himself, and the stench tells me he lost control of his bowels too.
I make a strangled sound, a question that I don’t know how to put into words. Trap doesn’t answer. Instead, he hauls himself into the van. He pushes a metal ramp out of the cargo compartment, clanging it to the ground and setting a dangerously steep angle for the wheelchair.
“Let’s go, shitbird,” he says to Leo. He works the heavy metal clips, kicking the ropes away from the chair’s wheels.
“Careful,” Trap says to me. I see his lips start to purse, start to form the wordPrincessbut he stops before he breathes another syllable.
Leo, though, realizes someone else is on the dock. “Who’s there?” he calls.
His voice is as familiar as my own. It’s filled with fear, of course. And he slurs his words. He’s high. Trap said that. But I have no doubt that’s my brother under that hood. That’s my twin.
Trap pushes the chair down the ramp, not bothering to cushion the jolt at the bottom. Leo grunts, or maybe that’s a whine. He twists his head to the left and then to the right. “Is someone out there? Help me. Please, help me. This man is trying to kill me. Please!”
Please. That’s the last word I heard Leo say in Herzog’s mansion—right before I was raped the first time.
“Okay?” Trap asks. I wonder what my face looks like, to make him sound so worried.
I nod.
Trap starts to wheel the chair into the warehouse.
“Someone?” Leo asks. “Anyone?” And then he shouts, “Hey! Can you hear me? Is anyone there! Help!”
Trap slaps the hood with an open palm. “Shut the fuck up, asshole.”
Leo quiets down.
I can’t allow myself to feel sorry for him. Forget about what Leo did tome. He’s a rapist. He preyed on slaves in Herzog’s mansion, conned innocent women with candy bars. Those women were my sisters. Siblings by choice, after what my blood brother did to me.
Trap pushes the chair through the door. Down the hall. Into the elevator, which takes us three stories underground.
The gallery door is still ajar, just the way I left it. Trap turns the chair around and takes the door with his shoulders, backing into the room. He nods for me to close the steel barrier behind him, and all three of us hear the locking mechanism engage.
“Where am I?” Leo asks. “What are you doing to me?”
