Page 32 of Kill Me Sweetly

Shep was sound asleep, but I had to tell him about today, what Four had said, because what we’d thought was bad was far worse. These people didn’t just need to be stopped; they needed to be dead. And if there was one thing me, Mason, and the Saint brothers did well, it was returning evil to Hell, where it belonged. And that was exactly what we had to do now.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JJ

Gently,I kissed his lips, happy when he opened his tired eyes. His fingers tenderly rubbed up and down my arm as I snuggled into him, my head on his chest. We were silent for a while before he spoke.

“Sorry to wake you.”

He shook his head lazily. “I’m glad you did. What happened with Four and Aziza today?”

I closed my eyes briefly and took a deep, soothing breath. “It was awful, Shep. He’s been through so much, and either he can’t process his life, or this is all he knows, so it’s accepted.”

Shep squeezed me a little tighter. “We’ve seen the horrors humanity inflicts on one another, JJ. It shouldn’t surprise us, but it sounds like it did. Want to tell me about it?”

I didn’t. I really didn’t want to relive the day that had ended with Aziza feeling she needed to sedate Four just so he’d get some sleep.

“Okay.”

I started with how she’d gotten Four to actually talk. Shep wasn’t shocked as he’d noticed Four’s attachment for me growing daily. Then I got into the whole thing.

“At what age is your first memory, and what was it?”

“I was very small, no age, screaming. A lot of screaming.”

I fell onto the couch, my legs feeling like they were kicked out from under me just by that one sentence.

Aziza, didn’t spare me a glance, her focus solely on Four. “Can you tell me about that memory?”

Four’s voice was monotone, devoid of any emotion as he recounted this piece of time in his life.

“I sat on the floor in a kitchen. I remember smelling something sweet. There were a few other people like me on the floor too. But there was a boy on the table. I couldn’t see from where I sat, but he was being whipped.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Were all these people on the floor and the boy on the table the same age?” Aziza asked questions as if she were unaffected, but I imagined she’d heard so much and learned how to control her emotions well.

“Some. Others a little older…some younger.”

I was going to throw up. I didn’t dare move.

“Tell me another memory?” Aziza was jotting notes on her pad, but they were quick.

His eyes fluttered as if he were flipping through papers in his mind, searching. “I would get cookies when I completed a job. Sometimes a cupcake. Those are my favorite times.”

That also explained his love for sweets. I wanted to ask a question, but Aziza beat me to it.

“Were you allowed to talk when you had the sweets?” She smiled, a tactic I’d seen used in the past. Showing one emotion, hoping it was mirrored back. But he didn’t smile…never smiled.

“Yes. Only if the job was done right and we were sitting at the table with our reward were we allowed to speak. But what we said had to be worth hearing.”

Fuck all of these guys.

Aziza sighed, and I knew the next thing out of her mouth was going to suck.

“What happened if you didn’t do the job right or failed?”

“We were punished.”

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