Page 112 of Vile Bastards
I nibble at my thumbnail.
“I’m ready. Go get it,” I snap, affecting Aspen’s crisp tones in a way that makes me shiver. I sound so much like him that it scares me. Also, I know exactly which guards he had in his pocket. This one siphons twenty grand a month from my wallet, not an easy feat with Jonas breathing down my neck.
He suspects that I’m Ash; I know that he does.
If I didn’t think killing him would ricochet the mob back on Scarlett, I’d do it tonight.
The man moves away to retrieve the tarp from the garage, following me down the hallway to my father’s bedroom. I unlock the door with the key I stole, pushing it open, and gesturing for the—what does Scarlett call them? goons?—the goon to dump the tarped bundle on the edge of the bed.
“You’re excused.” I wave him away. Jonas will probably kill him when he wakes up, but I don’t particularly care. I’m starting to lose my patience with this game. The second guard comes in from the balcony, but what can he do? I’m Aspen Kelly, for fuck’s sake. I lift my eyes up in challenge, and the man returns to his post.
A cold, cruel smile takes over my face, and I can’t remember for a second there if I’m Aspen or if I’m Ash or if maybe we were never really twins at all, but the same person with split personalities. I reach up, using both hands to grab my dark hair and yank. White-hot pain shoves needles into my skull, skewering my brain.
“Ash desu,” I murmur. I say it over and over again. “Ash to yonde kudasai.”
I’m Ash; I’m Ash; I’m Ash. Please call me Ash.
My mother’s language calms me. It was me that she held in her arms, cradled and cuddled and kissed. Aspen never liked to be touched. He would pull away from her; he would totter after Jonas seeking water from a desert without an oasis. I was the one that Kasumi Kitagawa took to visit her elderly parents in the countryside, leaving her other son behind because her husband wanted to groom an heir for his growing empire.
What if she hadn’t chosen me? Why did she choose me? Happenstance? Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, pick an identical twin baby by the toe? I have no fucking clue, and that disturbs me. It disturbs me because I wonder how much of Aspen was wrong from birth—as I’ve always said—and how much was sheer chance.
Was it because my mother picked me up and held me to her chest when I was an infant? That she left Aspen in the crib, gently encouraging Jonas to pick up a baby he had little interest in other than as an extension of himself, a future henchman, a legacy?
I sit there for a while, listening to my father snore in the dark. My fingers twitch with sinful urges, just as they always did around Aspen, all those times I stood above him while he slept and wished I had the courage to kill him.
The world would have been a safer, better place if I had.
Some people just cannot be fixed. Some people just have to die. It’s naïve, stupid, and selfish to believe otherwise.
“I learned from the best,” I murmur, standing up and pulling the mask from my pocket. Even then, the smell as I unwrap that tarp is ghastly. I’m wearing gloves. I don’t really look. I can’t make myself look. Aspen dumped dead frogs in my bed; I dump dead girls in my father’s.
I bundle the tarp up, taking it outside, and then I set it on fire. Right there on our multimillion-dollar estate, I douse the foul thing with lighter fluid and turn it into a blazing blight, leaving a charcoal smell and rancid ashes in the middle of the pristine green lawn.
Based on my previous observations, I know that I have about three hours before Jonas wakes up for his usual nightcap. Sometimes, he watches torture porn and jacks off. Sometimes, he looks up missing girls and searches their names online to see if there are videos. Then he jacks off to those.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.
That thought rotates like a carousel inside my skull as I wash myself, wash myself again, wash myself until my skin is red and sore. Then I douse myself in the floral fragrance that’s always separated me from Aspen’s preferred spice and musk colognes. Scarlett likes my smell.
That’s what sticks in my head, makes me feel so guilty that I vomit in the toilet as soon as I’ve dressed myself in another of Aspen’s crisp suits. I wipe my mouth off and I try not to think about how I’m betraying Scarlett even now, of the horrible thing I’ve done.
