Page 33 of Leo, My Partner

“I told you I want to stab him in the heart.”

I take his shaking hands in mine. “Have you ever stabbed anything before?” He shakes his head. “Okay. I’ll give you a quick lesson.” I look around and grab a butcher’s knife from the block on the counter. “Take this. Get a solid grip on it. Good. Now—” I move behind him, wrapping my hand over his “—for the heart, you’ll want to stab down and put all your body weight behind it.” I raise and lower his hand in a fluid motion, careful to avoid our bodies.

“Okay,” Ty whispers.

“The breastbone and the ribs,” I say as I tap his chest with the flat of my free hand, “is hard to break through. You’ll need extra power behind the strike. If you want to stab him somewhere that will give you the same result for a lot less effort, I’d suggest stabbing in the neck. Right at the jugular vein. You’ll open it up and his frantic heartbeat will do the rest.” I let his hand go and move back to my bowl.

Ty gives the knife a few more swings, smiling as he slices it through the air.

“You already have good form,” I mention as I swipe over my belly. The bandage is gone, but there will be a scar left.

His grin is still bright on his face when he looks at me. He places the knife back in the butcher’s block and moves back to his makeshift workstation. “It’ll be my first. Firsts are big deals.”

I shrug again, doling out more ingredients so I can start another batch of cookie dough. “Sometimes.”

We work in relative silence for a few minutes, other than Ty telling me what I need to add to the cookie recipe.

While he’s adding food coloring to the vanilla he’s mixed in his bowl for the homemade red velvet cupcakes, Ty looks up at me cautiously. “What was your first kill like? How old were you?”

I glance over at him quickly. No one has ever asked me that. I volunteered the information to June and Blu when Blu asked where I’d been for so many years. Ivan never inquired—all he knew was my father wanted me out of his house and the reason was because the reform school didn’t work. He knew I was just like him and didn’t need to know any specifics. I told the story before, but no one ever asked.

For some reason, it makes my heart thud. I’m not sure if it’s from excitement to share this story with Ty or giddiness that he even asked, but I’ll take either one. “Do you want to hear about my first body or the entire story?”

Ty searches my face, his soft with what I can only describe as sympathy. “All of it,” he whispers.

Turning back to my bowl, I pour my dry ingredients into a bowl and make sure everything is mixed properly before I begin my tale.

“When I was eight, I was sent to a reform school that was supposed to temper my behavior and get rid of the urges to set fire to shit and murder any animal I came across. Those are usually the first signs of a psychopath.” I look up at Ty to gauge his reaction, but he only meets my eyes briefly with a nod before he goes back to scooping the cupcake mixture into their tins. “By that time, I’d killed a few strays I found—setting most on fire to see how they burned—and my father’s business partner’s prized poodles. They were both white and fluffy. I wanted to see what the red of their blood looked like against their fur. They caught me in the act of that one.” I think back to that moment, a bloodied knife in my hand and the body of one the dogs in front of me while I held the other close, watching its blood flow from the wound I just gave it. There was no way I could have denied it, even if I wanted to.

“After paying an outrageous amount to compensate his business partner for his loss, an apology, and probably some serious ass-kissing, my dad promised his partner that’s he’d fix it. He got the bright idea that this reform school would make me act normal. So in the middle of the night, these men abducted me. They tossed me in the back of a van, my hands and feet zip-tied, and drove me states away.”

Ty gasps, looking up at me from the bowl he’s still scooping cupcake mix out of. “In the middle of the night? You didn’t know they were coming?”

I shake my head. “Not really. That’s their whole thing. They grab kids in the middle of the night so they can’t try to run away.”

“That’s awful.”

“Didn’t bother me,” I tell him with a shrug. “My parents were whispering about it before they came for me. I didn’t fully understand it, but I heard my dad repeating the directions back to the director of what was expected when they came. So I was more prepared than most. Honestly, I wanted to see what they would do. I was more curious than scared.”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Leo,” he mutters with a twinkle in his eyes. I shoot him a wink, making him blush.

“Anyway,” I pick the thread of the story back up, “when I got to the school, I was told what was expected of me. It was a glorified military school. Wake up at six, physical training at six thirty. Breakfast, school, chores, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t give a fuck. I wanted to do my own thing. But I needed to bide my time until I could get out. I had to pretend. Blu used to give me lessons on how to act like a normal person with feelings, so I tried that.”

“Blu is the psychiatrist who’s dating your business partner, right?”

“Yep. I hope you can meet him one day. He’d be fascinated by you.”

Ty looks up at me with wide eyes. “Why? Did I do something?”

“You’re with me. He’ll want to know why so he can further study our …” I wave my spoon around trying to find the right words, dough dropping onto the counter. “…mental state. People like us aren’t supposed to feel deeply. It’s surprising to him as a medical professional, so I’m sure he’s going to want to ask you questions.”

“Fun,” Ty deadpans.

I chuckle, then get back to telling him about what led up to my first kill. “Pretending worked for a while, but I was never good at controlling my emotions at that age. Small shit would set me off—I got into a fight once because a kid was chewing too loud.” Ty gives me a wide-eyed look that makes me laugh as I’m scooping dough onto the pan. “I was ten. I blame it on my age.”

“I bet,” he mutters.

“After that, I stopped pretending. I was the way I was. Most of the other kids there had ASPD so it was whatever. The director, Mr. Eldridge, hated me.” I see Ty’s eyes flash with recognition at the name. “It was like he looked at me, saw my dimples, curly blond hair, and blue-green eyes, and loathed on sight. He would single me out, making an example of me. If I was in a group that got caught doing something, he would beat me and make them watch, saying that the pain of them observing was punishment enough. That was bullshit, but he didn’t care. I was tough, so I could handle it, but it got old fast.

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