Page 30 of Twisted Hearts

She shuffled around the table before I directed her to sit on my lap. I tucked her into my arms and hugged her, rocking with her in my tight embrace as I buried my face in her neck. Her story helped me fully understand why her mind was twisted up like a knotted rope.

When I loosened my grip on her, she rested her head on my shoulder, and her words bounced off my neck. “He raped four girls in a two-year timeframe, and I’d helped lure them into his car. I sat in the front and listened to him have sex with those screaming girls in the back seat. Hearing them scream, beg, and plead for him to stop tore me apart worse than him raping me ever did. He wanted them young, like me—eleven, twelve, and thirteen-year-olds.”

Her trembling arms squeezed tighter around me as she took in a heavy and shaky breath. She attempted to talk, but she became so overcome with grief, her words remained lodged in her throat. Hearing Megan’s weeping cry fractured the strength of my resolve, and I closed my eyes to contain the sting that had started in them. I’d never experienced this level of empathy before. Megan was dragging emotions out of me that made me realize that I was still human. It also made me realize how deeply I cared for her.

My hand swept up and down her back, trying to ease the pain of what she’d endured. I didn’t know what to say to her. There was nothing I could do to take this horrible shit out of her head. There was nothing I could do to make her not have those horrible fucking experiences. I couldn’t do shit but hold her and hope she had won or would one day win the battle over her pain. It was a pain etched so deep, it had soaked into her bones.

She pushed words through her sobs, but I could hardly understand her.

“Megan, I didn’t fully understand what you said, but it sounded like you said he killed those girls.”

She sniffed and wiped her eyes, but no matter how much she wiped them away, the tears continued to flow. Her hands trembled so hard when I took them between mine, the movement shook my entire body.

Her bottom lip quivered as she fought to maintain control over her upset nerves. My throat tightened. Hearing and imagining the amount of pain she’d endured and seeing the amount of hurt that was still coursing through her body had my fucking nerves upset. She shut her eyes tightly as tears seeped out and fell, leaving a trail down her cheek. She forced her words out.

“He killed them, Aaron, and he made me watch. He raped them with me in the car listening. Afterwards, he’d marched me into the woods with them. He made me watch him while he killed them. He told me it was what he’d do to me if I told anyone or didn’t do what he asked me to do. The suffering they endured at his hands was the scariest thing I had ever seen. He strangled one girl to death and got off on it. He came on her while he was strangling her. She screamed and hollered for me to help her, but I was too scared. All I could do was watch, cry, and scream right along with her. He strangled the next two and stabbed the fourth when it took too long for him to strangle the life out of her.”

My body was so alive with rage, hearing Megan’s story that I had to take deep breaths to calm myself. “God, Megan, baby.” I blew out a long harsh breath. My mind struggled with the images of what she’d gone through. None of what she was telling me had been in the news articles. This was the part of her horror that she’d likely not told another living soul. This was likely the part that had fractured her mind. This was why she was able to endure being around my MC. She’d already experienced hell on every level. She’d felt it, smelled it, tasted it, heard it, and seen it.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through shit like that.” I leaned my forehead down until it touched the side of her head and rested against her curls. “Fuck,” I growled as I clench my fist.

After another deep breath that I blew out slowly, I was ready to speak again.

“I’m glad you killed that motherfucker, Megan. I thought I was touched by darkness, but anyone who preys on innocent girls deserves their own room in hell. I promise you if he weren’t already dead, I’d hunt that dead-dick bastard down and kill him myself. I’d kill him slowly.”

A small smile curled Megan’s lips after I revealed to her that I would kill Carlos if he was still alive. A touch of the pain drifted from her eyes as well.

“Over a two-year period, I was raped by Carlos and David while my foster mother did nothing to help. I lured four other girls straight into the hands of a monster who raped them before killing them. I may as well have been killing them myself. I couldn’t take it anymore. If it had been only me, I probably wouldn’t have killed my foster parents, but I couldn’t let another innocent girl die.”

Megan shook her head, seemingly shaking away the bad memories as she swiped at the tears leaking from her swollen, red eyes. Now, I had a better understanding of why Megan wasn’t bothered by witnessing death, especially the death of a man.

“I couldn’t allow another girl to be raped and killed. Laura and Beverly came up with different scenarios on how I should go about handling my situation. Like lacing their drinks with antifreeze or cutting the brakes on the vehicle. I assumed that they meant their suggestions as jokes from teen girls talking about things they would never really do. But, it was Beverly who had shoplifted the switchblade I used to stab my foster family to death. She’d given it to me to protect myself with. She told me her real father, before he passed away, had made her carry one. She showed me where to stab a man in his inner thigh that would end him. I’m sure she’d had no idea I’d been daydreaming for months about ways I wanted to kill my foster family.”

This explained Megan’s loyalty to those women. They had attempted to help her and listened to her when no one else would. They had given her a weapon to protect herself against monsters.

“Two weeks after Beverly gave me the blade, Carlos came into my room. Marina and David were used to my screams, so I knew that they wouldn’t bother to check out what was truly happening between Carlos and me. I waited until he took his dick out. The knife was in my hand the entire time. When he climbed on top of me, I jammed that blade in his neck with all my might. At the library, I had studied the different places to stab someone and what type of damage the wound would cause the body. While other teen girls were chasing boys and shopping for party dresses, I was studying effective ways to kill someone. I also made a habit of stopping at the various crime scenes that were a dime a dozen in my neighborhood. Seeing gunshot wounds and stab wounds on the streets also gave me an idea of what would kill a person. My situation had turned me into a freak, a teen who studied death more than I studied text books.”

A deep breath seemed to give her enough strength to continue as her body rose and fell against the tight grip I had on her.

“I must have hit the right artery on Carlos that night because blood squirted from his neck like I’d opened a faucet. He was in such shock that he’d bled all over me before he realized he was dying.”

Megan’s tears had stopped when she spoke of killing Carlos. Good.

“I kept stabbing him everywhere, not caring where the knife landed as long as it was going into his body. I stabbed him until my hands became too slippery to keep going, but that didn’t stop me. I wiped my hands on the parts of my bed covers that weren’t covered with his blood before I climbed on top of him. I sat, staring down at him whimpering and gasping in pain. I enjoyed seeing him suffer. I didn’t harbor any remorse for what I was doing to him.”

Her warm breath kissed my cheek when she lifted her head from my shoulder and glanced into my eyes.

“I felt more in my right frame of mind while I was killing Carlos than I’d felt every time he’d raped me. He had the nerve to apologize, but I kept stabbing him. I didn’t stop stabbing him until his body went cold. Although he was likely long dead, I didn’t stop stabbing him until I reached the number of times he’d raped me.”

Megan sucked in a deep breath after dropping her gaze from mine. She had no idea how glad I was to hear that that bastard had suffered.

“When I walked into David’s room, I found him lying in his bed asleep. I climbed into bed with him and started stabbing him through the covers. I didn’t say anything to him as I took his life. He screamed and yelled loud enough to wake the neighborhood. He fought for his life, hitting and scratching me, but I was so consumed with rage and anger that I didn’t feel his licks. I expected that Marina would at least check to see why David was screaming, but she never came. Once I was done with David, I turned the blade on her.”

Megan glanced up and searched my face. I assumed to see if I was viewing her differently. I was sure all she glimpsed in my eyes was hate for the people who’d hurt her.

“After the police arrived, they found me covered from head to toe in blood and muttering to myself about how I wanted to keep killing them. The authorities must have automatically assumed I was crazy. They cuffed me and drove me to the Pinewood Mental Institution where I spent a month before they transferred me out of the state of Texas to Ravencrest in Arizona. I don’t know how the authorities were able to process me without a hearing or a trial or the legal processes that I’d expected, but they did. They sent me to one of the most secure mental institutions in the country, and I was glad for it.”

Megan eyed me for a silent moment. My eyebrows rose as her story continued to claw its way into my brain. I shook my head, attempting to shake off the gripping tugs the story had on my heart.

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