Page 13 of Cipher's Baby Girl
Movement on one of my primary monitors draws my attention. Rose is in the main room cleaning again. Her brow furrows in concentration. I adjust the focus. She looks so impossibly young, so vulnerable, so sweet.
Rash enters, saying something that makes Rose smile—a genuine smile that transforms her face, bringing light to her eyes.
My stomach clenches into a hot, ugly twist. The reaction is so visceral that it momentarily disrupts my breathing pattern.
She's never smiled like that around me.
But why would she? I represent everything she should fear—violence, control, obsession.
I watch as Rash leans against the counter next to her, casually invading her space in a way that would normally make her tense. But she doesn't flinch from him. Instead, she relaxes, her body language open and unguarded. She trusts him.
My teeth clench.
He's too close. Too familiar. Too fucking comfortable with what isn't his.
The rational part of my brain acknowledges that Rash is harmless—a young brother who treats Rose with genuine kindness and friendship. The irrational part wants to rip his arm off as he reaches down and pats her shoulder. I can almost feel his bones breaking under my hands, the specific pressure required to snap his radius and ulna simultaneously.
I force myself to look away, to focus on controlled breathing techniques. But my eyes keep drifting back to the monitor, cataloging every interaction, every smile, every casual touch between them.
She deserves normal. She deserves someone undamaged.
Someone who’s not a freak.
A memory rises unbidden from a carefully compartmentalized section of my mind.
I stand in the kitchen, fascinated by the pattern of water droplets on the window, a seven-year-old boy calculating the mathematical relationship between their size and distribution. Beautiful, perfect geometry in nature.
"What the hell are you doing, dipshit?” My father's voice shatters my concentration.
“The raindrops follow a Fibonacci sequence in how they—" I begin to explain, excited by my recent observations. The backhand catches me across the face, snapping my head to the side and splitting my lip. I don't cry out. I learned early that the sounds of pain only escalate his violence.
"There's something wrong with you, boy," he spits, his face contorted with disgust. "Always in your own world with your numbers and patterns. Your mother asked you to set the table ten minutes ago. Normal kids listen when they're spoken to.”
Eyes downcast, I move quickly to the cabinet for plates. My cheek throbs and I taste blood as my tongue runs over my lower lip, but I focus on counting silently—one plate, two plates, three plates—numbers calm the storm inside me.
“Hey, you little freak!” He grabs my arm, plates crashing to the floor. "Why can't you be normal?"
My mother stands in the doorway, watching. She doesn't intervene. Instead, she sighs, that familiar sound of disappointment. "I don't know what's wrong with him, Frank. The school counselor suggested we get him tested."
"Tested? For what? Being a weirdo?” My father's fingers dig into my arm, bruises already forming beneath his grip. "There's nothing wrong with the boy that a good beating won't fix."
Later, after the belt, I sit in the locked closet for hours, tracing patterns on the wall in the darkness, retreating into theworld of numbers where everything makes sense, where there are no unpredictable explosions of violence, no confusing rules that change without warning.
The memory dissipates, leaving behind the familiar taste of bile as I refocus on the screens before me.
Rose has moved to arranging freshly cut flowers in a vase. Rash sits nearby, occasionally glancing up to say something that makes her smile.
That smile haunts me. Makes me wonder what it would feel like to be its recipient. To be the cause of light in those beautiful eyes.
I open the camera controls for the common room, zooming in, adjusting the angle for a better view of her face. The clarity is exceptional—I can see individual eyelashes, the small scar near her temple, the way her pulse flutters in her throat when she laughs.
This isn't security anymore. This is pure selfish indulgence.
Ghost's words echo in my head. "There's a line between protection and stalking."
I've crossed it. I know I've crossed it. But I can't stop.
On the screen, Rash says something that makes Rose laugh—a full, uninhibited sound that I can see but not hear. Instinctively, I reach for the audio controls, turning up the directional microphone in that section.
