12. Chapter 12 – Sloane
Chapter 12 – Sloane
“J ust do it!” Tamen hissed, leaning further against the incredibly sharp point of his knife that I held to his chest.
“You’re broken.” I whispered, pulling the knife away from his chest completely and stabbing it into the earth along the edge of the building.
A sane person would have walked away from Tamen, quit their job and stayed clear of the maniac sitting on the dark ground before them. A sane person would have run for their life, especially given how quickly he had been to threaten it in the beginning.
Maybe I wasn’t as sane as I thought. Letting go of his hair, I picked up his keys from the ground and clicked the unlock button on his Mercedez, “Take me home.” I demanded, stepping backward as his long legs bent under him to stand up. “And you owe me four hundred dollars.”
He gazed at me as though I was the unstable one before he reached in his pocket and pulled out a metal cigarette case, sticking one between his lips and lighting it up, all while never breaking eye contact.
“I could have killed you.” He tilted his head to the side, pulling the cigarette from his lips and tipping his head back to blow it up into the air instead of at my face. “I still might.”
Perhaps the moment frozen in time between us was my chance at setting the record straight and taking back some of the control he loved to hold over me. Or maybe I was still drunk from the bottle of wine I drowned.
Shrugging one shoulder, I pulled the cigarette from his fingers and took a drag, loving the way his eyes tracked my every motion the entire time. “And here I thought you were finally going to break the tension that’s been building between us and fuck me.” I popped my lips at him dramatically and then dropped the tobacco stick to the ground, crushing it with my shoe. “Take me home.” I repeated, walking around his car and opening the passenger side door to get in. “Or I quit.”
He rolled his jaw back and forth and then sighed, bending down to pick up his knife and stare at the dirty blade. “I should make you walk home for desecrating my favorite blade.” He wiped the dirt and earth off the sharp edge against his thigh. “Do you have any idea how dull it will be now?”
I sat down in the seat and shut the door, crossing my legs as he slid his massive body down into the car with that annoying grace of his that I wanted to both mimic and tease him about. “Don’t pout. It isn’t very becoming of you. Though I should have guessed you were a dicktim.”
“What the hell is a dicktim?”
“You in a nutshell.” I mused, forcing my hands to stop shaking from the adrenaline crash now that he wasn’t actively trying to strangle me and I wasn’t holding him at knifepoint. “You’re a dick, and then you play the victim when someone calls you on it. dicktim.”
He scoffed as if the word was unimpressive, but I also noticed the slight smirk on his face as he started the car.
Slipping my phone from my bag, I pulled up my payment app and found his name connected to the contact card, typing out a scathing message. I tucked it back into my bag and waited.
His phone pinged in his pocket, and he glanced at me from the corner of his eye before pulling it out and reading the message out loud.
“ My charge for being your doll this evening. But the game is changing and you’re about to be my bitch, Ken.” He dropped his phone to his lap, “You have to be fucking kidding me.” I simply shrugged as he went on, “You said four hundred dollars, but this is for five. What could I possibly owe you five hundred dollars for?”
“Four hundred for the wine I ordered waiting for your dumbass to show up before I realized what you were doing to me, and another hundred for the show I put on in that restaurant on my way out because of you.” Licking my lips, “Those kinds of dramatics aren’t cheap, and neither am I.”
He chuckled lightly and then clicked his phone, typing something else out, and moments later, the notification of payment came through on my screen with his own message.
I’ll take all your clothes off anytime you ask me, Barbie. +$500.00
There was a tip added to it for another two hundred dollars with another message.
For the world-class performance. +$200.00
“Pleasure doing business with you.” I replied smugly as he pulled his car out into the city streets, aiming it toward my apartment building.
Silence hung between us for a while as he traversed the busy confusing streets before the questions rattling around in my head got too loud to ignore. Driven by morbid curiosity, I risked my sanity and delved into the turbulent depths of his clearly unstable mind, a maelstrom of erratic thoughts and unsettling emotions.
“You’re not a good person, are you?” The question escaped my lips, a small sound in the suffocating stillness, and his grin—a silent, shadowed thing—appeared in the darkness, his gaze averted.
“You already know that.” Was his reply. “I’ve never pretended to be good.”
“But you’re like—” I searched for the right words, a chilling weight settling in my stomach, but nothing captured the sheer awfulness, the blatant disregard for decency, “Criminally bad,” it felt like a gross understatement.
His scoff was a sharp, disdainful sound, as if the word itself had physically offended him. “Baby, my morality no longer exists, and I’m about as immune to the law as a ghost. Especially here in the states.”
“How?” I whispered in speculation.
“I’m too good to get caught. Too efficient.”
“At what, exactly?” Lost in thought, I didn’t realize he was pulling into the loading zone until the quiet shush of his car settling into park broke my concentration. “Whatever it is, you use that knife to do it, don’t you?”
What the fuck was wrong with me that I was sitting there, waiting for him to confirm what I was sure I already knew. Tamen was a killer. He used that shiny gold handled knife I had held against his heart to kill people. I should have been ripping the door open and tossing him a ‘see ya in another life’ over my shoulder as I googled job openings near me. Not still sitting in his car, waiting for the verbal confirmation I didn’t even need.
“I could tell you that.” He slowly turned his head, the muscles in his neck tense, his eyes burning with a monstrous intensity, and I knew then what lurked within. More than just a workplace bully, he was a depraved man, his business suit masking a cruel and unsettling nature. His casual cruelty felt like a cold, sharp object. The air around him felt thick with malice. “But then I’d have to kill you.”
“Jesus fuck.” I hissed as my held breath released through my teeth. “You’re certifiable.”
His lips curled into a cruel, almost mocking smirk—a blatant challenge—before he leaned back against his headrest, eyes narrowed and gleaming. “And yet here you are, alone with me, contemplating if you should invite me up to your place so I can fuck you like the wild animal I really am.”
His arrogant demeanor broke the spell, and I scoffed, shaking my head at the thought of doing what he suggested. “Actually, I was getting ready to tell you I can’t work for you anymore. You’re too cocky, self-centered, and cold.” Opening the door of his car aggressively, I grinned back at him and got out. “Get that wound stitched before you get an infection from whatever other bodily fluid was on that knife before I pushed it into you.”
The maniac just kept grinning and then winked at me. “See you tomorrow at eight for training, Rainbow.”
The car door slammed shut with a sharp metallic clang, and as I walked away, my hips swayed rhythmically, a silent message for him to contemplate while the night doorman silently watched the departing vehicle.
I couldn’t go back to Prism and that man.
If I did, I’d do something stupid.
Like let him fuck me like the wild animal we both knew he was. Because damn, if that didn’t sound like a fantastic time.