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“No, I really don’t think so.” I tilt my head. “I think… You made the mistake nine years ago.”

“You’re talking about Sherry’s kid,” he states, no longer playing dumb.

“Sure am.”

His lips compress into a bloodless line. “Kid was a fucking liar.”

“Careful,” I growl.

“He was.” Steven leans back as far as the zip ties allow. A raw, red abrasion rings his wrist where he’s sawed against the plastic. “That little freak was always causing shit between Sherry and me. Crying about everything. Making stuff up.”

I step forward, and Steven instantly clams up. My shadow falls over him, swallowing the light, as I circle his chair.

I walk behind him—not touching, just letting him hear my steps on the gritty concrete.

“Ten years old.” I come around the other side; Steven’s gaze follows, wary. “You saw polish on his fingernails, and that called for punishment, didn’t it? I think it was an excuse. Made your tiny, shriveled-up dick hard for a change when you were hurting someone so much smaller than you. So much weaker… It’s okay to admit it, Steven.”

Steven laughs, a thin, erratic sound that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’re sick, man. Twisting it around like that. You’re all the same—no one ever believes the truth.” His voice cracks on the last word.

I keep circling. “What’s the truth, then?”

“That kid was a pervert. Everyone thought he was so innocent, but I saw the way he looked at me. Always sneaking around, always listening.”

I punch him in the jaw, then crack my knuckles.

“Jesus Christ. He was fucking ten! The only way he was looking at you was with terror.”

My prosthetic slams into the side of his head.

“You beat him badly enough to put him in a hospital.”

He’s barely finished spitting a tooth onto the floor when I drive the heel of my boot into his shin, splitting the fabric, then the skin. Steven screams, the sound jagged and high.

When the scream breaks off, he’s gasping, lips wet with spit and snot. “I’m gonna kill you,” he whimpers, but it sounds like a wish, not a threat.

“You almost killed him,” I remind him, and jam two fingers into the notch of his collarbone. He convulses, head snapping back with the force of it. The zip tie around his wrist shreds off a strip of skin, blood welling up in an instant.

He grinds his teeth through the pain and sneers up at me. “He fell down the stairs.” I laugh loudly like I’m fucking insane, and Steven pales. “She told you…?”

“After I beat her and held a gun to her head.”

“That bitch.”

I slap him, open-palmed, so hard his head ricochets and comes back on a delay. “Try again.”

“The fuck you want me to say?” he yells.

“That you beat a child, then when you were afraid somebody might hold you accountable, you pushed him down the outside steps, so Sherry could film it.”

I break his nose. Blood fountains down his shirt, hot and sticky, and for a moment he’s just stunned, gurgling. I let him sit with the pain until the initial shock starts to dip toward numbness.

“You know what seeing nail polish did to him the other week?”

He grunts, spitting a chunk of clotted blood onto the ground. “Not my…” He has to stop to wheeze. “…fault that he’s… too fucking sensitive.”

I scoff, disbelieving. “Nine years after you were finished with him, I opened a box of nail polish and his body reacted like you were standing in the fucking room ready to beat the shit out of him.”

Steven looks away. “Like I said—”