Legacy (Sociopath Series Book 2) by Lime Craven
Note
LEGACY begins a month after the SOCIOPATH’s epilogue, seven months after the pretty little bullet.
TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO
Aeron
Aged six
Woodland near Ridgewood Reservoir, New York City
I am Jack in the box. Black box.
Black box is Mama’s car. I sit in the front, because shotgun! just like Daddy always says. See, Daddy drives like he plays piano, all shuffly and bumpity, so Mama never gives him the keys and he has to sit beside her. But not tonight.
Tonight, she made him lie in the trunk, and I got to sit up front.
I’ve never stayed up so late before. Sky is all bruised, mixed up like Play-Doh, and the screen of my Gameboy hangs in the dark like a green moon. Mama parked up by the trees a while ago and then took Daddy by the arms because he can’t walk no more.
Bag on his head. He can’t see, you know.
I was gonna sleep, I promise. But my bear slippers were still all sicky, and the smell was everywhere in my room, and even though my eyes were hurting, I couldn’t make them close. Thump, thump, thump inside me. Jack in the box in my body, thumping and hurting until he can come out.
Mama said we had to drive somewhere quiet. Somewhere with trees. I like trees, and driving in the nighttime is real cool, so I wasn’t sad about getting out of bed. But it’s cold now and Mama and her digger shovel have been gone a long time. I’m shivering under my itchy blanket, and soon, my Gameboy’s gonna run out of battery. The game sucks without the music on, but Mama made me promise to be quiet—even though I’m not always the bestest with promises, her eyes went as dark as the sky when she said it. So I’m being good. I can do that if I try real hard.
After Mama took Daddy into the forest, I rolled the window down. I like the little sounds—dirt falling off her digger shovel, leaves rustling, wheels on the road far away. We passed a lake on the way in, a huge one filled with black water, and the mud smell covers the sicky smell from my slippers. Trees are everywhere, like two hands closing in on Mama’s car. They make Jack thump harder. Now my chest hurts. Aches. Stings.
We’re going to leave Daddy here. A house is the wrong place for a man with a bag on his head; people will notice, and I’ll be glad when Mama calms down. One minute he was on the floor and she was just watching her shows; next minute, he’s in the trunk and she’s all f*ck-clucking like a chicken, mad, so mad. They say crying is for babies but it’s for mamas too.
She cried when I was born. She tells me most days when we’re having toast or cookies. I tore her up from the inside out, she says, and I think, well, that’s also what she says about Daddy. Maybe it’s just what boys are meant to do. One day at school, we were doing spellings with Mrs. Heinneman, and we did tear. You know what? You can say that word two different ways to mean two different things, but not for Mama. To her, it’s like they mean the same.
A loud scrape comes from the trees, and then there’s Mama, walking slowly toward the car. She looks tired, dragging the digger shovel behind her so mud follows like a fat worm, and her dress and boots and jacket are covered in dirt. I hide my Gameboy under the blanket, but I don’t know why. She said I could play if I was quiet.
The first thing she says when she opens the car door is, “When were you sick on your Mr. Bears?” The smell makes her mouth twist up.
I shrug. “Bedtime.”
“Oh.” She puts the key in the ignition and the engine rumbles to life. “Oh.”
It’s like she’s staring at a mountain, far, far away.
“Aeron?”
I push my face into the itchy blanket; I don’t want her to see that Jack’s thumping made me cry. “Yeah, Mama?”
“In an ideal world, we would not have done this.” She gulps. Puts the car lights on, scrunches her eyes up, and starts to drive. “But we sure as hell don’t live in an ideal world.”
I don’t know what an ideal world is.
Maybe it’s one with daddies.
CHAPTER ONE
Aeron
Vicious Circle (noun): a carousel for grown-ups. Roll up, roll up!
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a f*cking great day to be me.
I love my top floor board room; the way today’s sunrise melts through the windows, carnage echoed in its translucent crimson hues. I love Leo, who sits beside me near the top of the table, her lip gloss fresh and her hair smelling like butter and honey. I love the acidic edge my authority casts over the other people in the room; six of my Lore Corp news editors, my attorney, Detective Posner. And God help me, I love the smell of empathy in the morning.
You just wait for the good detective here to spill the beans. By the time he’s done, I’ll not only be able to taste the empathy—and the fear—smoking off every other human being in this room; I’ll be able to carve myself a slice. If there’s one thing the public eats up with a spoon, it’s gruesome murder, and Detective Posner is about to give us the scoop. Let’s go for a swim in the bloodbath, shall we?
Posner’s barely swallowed his water before he begins speaking, and it gives his voice a choked, gurning quality that makes me want to flinch. “I hope you guys don’t mind me calling in this early. I got a lot of shit on my plate.”