Chapter 5
Sunny
I stuff a strawberry into my mouth while scrolling through my second phone’s list at lunch, searching endlessly for the next person on my hit list. I just know one of these fuckers has more information. The only question is: How am I going to make them talk?
I mean, I know how to chop off some fingers, but some dingleberry once said torture doesn’t actually make a person spill the correct beans … they just spill any bean and hope you’re satisfied.
I don’t need more lies.
I need them to point me in the exact direction I require.
Dammit. If only that motherfucker hadn’t gone into hiding.
Grumbling, I put my phone down on the table and scarf down more strawberries coated in Nutella while trying to blend in with my group of girls happily chatting about their day.
“Wow … You look like you’re having a great time.” Levi’s voice grates on my soul. “What are you doing?” He plants both his hands on my shoulders, and I place my phone face down on the table in front of me.
“Nothing. Why are you bothering me?”
“I’m just checking in on my favorite sister.”
I roll my eyes. “You don’t have another sister.”
He flops down beside me. “Exactly, so it’s important to stay up to date on the one I do have. So how are you doing, sis?”
“Hi Levi,” my friend Delilah says, throwing him a cutesy smile as she stops eating her salad just because he’s arrived.
“He’s taken,” I tell her, and her mood instantly sours.
“Well, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s hot,” one of the other girls, Vivian, says.
“Thanks,” Levi says, winking at her. “She’s right, though. I am taken.”
I tilt my head, annoyed he’s here. “Don’t you have someone else to bother?”
“No.”
“Your girlfriend is waiting for you,” I say.
“She has Apollo and Grey to entertain her,” he retorts, then he snatches one of my strawberries right out of my cup.
But before he can put it in his filthy mouth, I’ve already grabbed his wrist.
“You take one teeny tiny bite, and I will cut out your tongue and feed it to you,” I growl.
A smirk slowly spreads on his face. “Now that’s the Sunny I remember. So very … cheery. I still can’t decide whether or not Mom was joking when she gave you that name.”
“Ha-ha, Apollo has infected you with his terrible jokes, I see,” I retort, and I snatch the strawberry back from him and place it on the lid of my cup so it doesn’t soil the others that are still untouched by his fingers.
“You holding up okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I grumble.
“C’mon, talk to me. Tell me what’s been bothering you.”
I throw him a look. “You are.”
“That’s my job,” he says.
Another one of my brothers, Max, flicks the back of my head. “Hey, Sunny.”
God, they are so annoying. “Get your hands off me.”
“Back to your usual self, I hear,” Max says.
“I never said anything was wrong with me,” I say. “Can y’all back off? I’m trying to eat here.”
“Then tell us why you were gone for a whole damn week,” Levi says.
I narrow my eyes at him. “None of your business.”
“Did you even tell Mom?” Levi presses.
“We were all worried sick about you,” Max says.
I groan out loud. “I really despise you all sometimes.”
“You don’t mean that,” Max says.
“Yeah, you love us, don’t you?” My third brother, Elliot, sits down across from me, butting aside my girls until they all grab their trays and leave.
Goddammit.
“What is this? Some sort of intervention?” I bark.
“We’re worried about you,” Levi says.
I stare at them with a coldhearted gaze. “Don’t be. I’m perfectly fine. Especially on my own. Without any of you.”
Levi raises his brow at me like he thinks he knows me better. “Ahh, so that’s why some lone cop brought you to the hospital on the brink of death. Because you’re ‘fine.’” He makes quotation marks with his fingers.
I grab his fingers and bring them to the veins in my throat. “Feel that? That’s my fucking heartbeat, and that’s as close as you’ll ever get.” I shove him away again. “Now beat it and let me eat in peace.”
Elliot suddenly snatches my phone off the table.
“Hey!” I shout, but he’s already bolted off with it. “Give that back!”
I pull out my knives.
“Sunny … not in here,” Levi growls.
“Fuck that,” I bark back at him, and I jump up from my seat and go for the chase, wielding my knives like goddamn arrows, intent on finding their prey.
“Give me back my phone, or I swear to God, I will puncture your balls and hang you on my wall by the hairy skin like a goddamn mounted head!”
Elliot shrieks and darts off, panic settling in his eyes when he throws one glance at me over his shoulder. Good.
Elliot rushes past every seat and table, screaming his head off, before flopping my phone in the hands of none other than Xavier Caruso.
“Take it! I don’t want her wrath! I just needed her to listen to us!” Elliot squeals.
Xavier looks completely befuddled, and his eyes find the screen in the few seconds it takes me to make it to him, but when his eyes finally find mine, they grow big.
I stop right in front of him and hold out my hand, staring him down with such ferocity that he begins to shiver in place.
“Give it to me. Now.”
He slides my phone my way through the air, planting it in my hand without even looking away. So easy to command. Precisely how boys should be.
“Good boy.”
And I turn around and march right back to the table I was sitting at, where Levi and Max are waiting for me.
“Oh shit, she’s got it back,” Max mutters.
“Elliot, you fucking pussy!” Levi yells across the hall as Elliot bolts off.
“You,” I growl, and I grab him by the collar of his shirt. “You think I’d let anyone steal my fucking phone?”
“It’s not about the phone,” Levi replies.
“You wanted my attention? You got it,” I hiss back, leaning in, still deciding whether or not I’m going to knock some teeth out of his pretty mouth for attempting to prank me.
“I just want to know what happened to you,” he says.
The sincerity in his voice catches me off guard.
“I know that doctor told you something important,” he adds. “Something bad, right? Please, talk to us.”
God. If only he wasn’t so incessantly good to the bone.
My face wrinkles from all the hatred flooding my body, and I shove Levi back into his seat. “No.”
I waltz off, leaving my strawberries with him.
“Wait, you haven’t even finished your lunch!” Max says.
“I’m not fucking hungry anymore,” I growl back at them over my shoulder.
It’s only half the truth. They keep prying into my life like it’s theirs, and it makes my stomach churn. But the other half is that I am still hungry … hungry for revenge. And I know just the way to satiate that hunger.
I march out the door and head straight for the parking lot, but the second I hop onto my bike, a guy with wavy, pure blond hair and the most obnoxiously handsome face blocks my motorcycle.
Orion Navarro.
“Get out of my way,” I hiss at him.
“Take me,” he says.
I frown. “What?”
His lip drops into a cutesy pout. “Please.”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes right now.” Grinding my teeth, I growl, “Move.”
He latches onto my bike’s handles. “It’s not a joke.”
“I don’t take passengers,” I say.
His blond locks fall over his ample shoulders as he leans in. “I don’t want a ride … I want you to kill me.”
My jaw slowly drops.
How does he know …?
“Make me your next victim.”
Is he insane?
I pull my knife from my pocket and hold it under his chin. “Who gave you that information? Was it Xavier?”
He doesn’t even seem remotely fazed by the fact that I have him at knifepoint. “No, I figured it out on my own, and I am so, so fascinated.”
I push the knife deeper into his skin until it begins to bleed, and a slight whimper escapes his lips. “Then un-figure it.”
“I can’t,” he says. “I need this. Please.”
What the… What is wrong with this guy?
“You want to die so badly?”
He nods several times.
“Then do it yourself,” I growl, and I tear away my motorcycle and drive right past him by a hair, still clutching the knife that just scratched his precious fucking skin.
Xavier
I wait until the sun goes down to make my move, hoping I’m quick enough before Sunny arrives. I stare at the man leaning against a grimy-looking shop at the far end of Crescent Vale City.
That’s him. That’s the picture I saw on her phone when Elliot shoved it into my hands for those brief few seconds.
It wasn’t much, but her screen showed a time, a date, and a location, along with the man's name and photo. I didn’t have time to take a picture before she snatched it back from me again, but the mental snapshot was enough to memorize the exact details.
If it’s important to her, it’s important to me.
When the man pulls out a smoke and retreats into the small alley to the side of the shop, I get out of my car and shut the door. My hand is firmly pressed against the needle in my pocket as I make my way to the alley, sweat droplets rolling down my neck.
No time to regret decisions you already made, Xavier. Just do what you came here to do.
When he’s turned around to check his phone in private, I approach the man from behind and pull the needle from my pocket, then stab him in the neck. I grab his arms to make sure he doesn’t struggle or try to fight me off as I inject the drugs into his system.
It was easy enough to get access to them, thanks to Orion’s half brother Heath, who hooked me up with one of his past dealers back when he still struggled with addiction.
He didn’t ask why I needed the details, and I didn’t tell him out of my own volition either.
We had a mutual understanding, and I appreciate his discretion.
No one needs to know I’m aiding a killer and making her life just a little bit easier.
And if she won’t tell me what’s going on, then I’ll find out on my own, by watching her every move.
The man sinks to the floor in my arms, and I slowly pull him farther down into the alley so he can’t be seen from the road, then leave him there.
Tucking the needle into my pocket, I bolt away and head back to my car, then check my watch.
A motorcycle drives up the street, and a smirk forms on my face.
Right on schedule.
I sit back as Sunny stops near the shop and turns off the engine. She pulls off her helmet, and her velvety black-and-green hair swishes from side to side, dazzling even me. She leaves the helmet and grabs a bag from the small compartment in her motorcycle, then marches toward the shop.
I’ve parked just far enough so she won’t get suspicious, but close enough that I can still watch what happens. She waltzes toward the entrance, peeks through the door and pauses, then goes around the back toward the alley.
I’m sure she was looking for him in there, but surprise, I already took care of that.
She glances back and forth a couple of times to make sure no one is watching her before she closes in on the guy. I lean in and stare through the window in front of me as she opens the bag and pulls out a butcher’s knife.
My jaw tightens, and it suddenly becomes hard to breathe as she raises the butcher’s knife and hacks away.
Chop, chop, chop.
One limb after another.
All of his fingers, his arms, his head.
Nothing is left unscathed as she takes out all her rage on this man I’ve left incapacitated, like a live prey left for a carnivore, ready to digest whole. The way she annihilates and butchers her victims is beyond this world, and I am in awe at the sheer hatred pouring out of her.
What did this man do to make her so upset?
I swallow when she stops and looks down at her victim, blood caking her clothes.
We’re out in the open, and she doesn’t even care in the slightest.
Amazing.
Suddenly, she turns around, and I duck for cover in my car, praying she didn’t spot me again.
My heart beats in my throat as I’m curled up in my seat, waiting for time to pass. She hasn’t knocked on my door yet, though.
Did she see me, or was I just panicking?
I look up and witness the carnage in front of me, the blood-caked ground, her perfectly fit body all suited up in a clean outfit as she hops onto her motorcycle to leave the scene of the crime without a care in the world.
She’s really got to take better care of her tracks.
When she’s gone, I pull out my phone and dial the number my mom and dad told me to call when things go tits up, and I need to get rid of something fast.
“Yeah?” There’s a cool voice on the other end of the line.
“It’s Xavier. I need a cleanup crew for a body. No questions, no traces.” I gulp. “And don’t tell my fucking parents.”