Chapter 3
Kaiser
It was a simple job: shadow the Poisoner’s daughter. Monitor her every move. Don’t engage, unless one of the Poisoner’s enemies tries to harm her. Then, protect the asset.
It should’ve been easy. She’s eighteen and freshly enrolled in Unitas University.
Sure, her father has powerful enemies, but none of them have made a move yet.
It’s a piece of cake to stalk someone who isn’t expecting it. Most people live comfortable lives. They never had to sleep with one eye open in case someone tried to stab them in their sleep. They move through life, oblivious.
This girl is more oblivious than most. She hasn’t just been sheltered and protected for most of her life; she’s been kept in a bubble.
Locked down. She’s been homeschooled for years and barely has any friends.
Barely any contact with anyone other than her father.
And now she’s living in a big house near campus, all alone.
She thinks she has more freedom, but it’s an illusion.
I’m watching her. Following her from home to campus and back again. I’ve been doing it since the spring.
By the end of the first day, it was clear that this girl was going to drive me fucking crazy.
It doesn’t help that she seems to have been designed in a lab to tempt me. Pouty lips, big brown eyes, petite with perky tits. She dyes her hair white blonde, and I constantly imagine threading my fingers through those silky strands, taking hold, and drawing her head back. Controlling her.
But that’s not the job. I’m not supposed to get close. But the more I watch her, the more I want to.
She’s constantly eating candy or cookies or cake, and it makes me want to sit her down and feed her properly.
She talks to flowers and trees. She hugs the trees, too.
Most people would think she’s weird, but she fascinates me.
I’ve studied her like I’d study a dangerous opponent.
In the fighting ring, I had mere seconds to read my opponent and find his weaknesses.
The most dangerous opponent was one who was unpredictable.
Not understanding someone’s behavior would get me killed.
I don’t understand this girl at all. She lives in her own little world. At first, I didn’t think she understood how to behave, but now I think she does and just chooses to break the rules. She’s half feral.
Right now, she’s bouncing around campus carrying a big basket and wearing an outfit that I’ve only seen in porn. Why? What is she doing?
She’s up to something.
At one point, she stops and looks around. I get a thrill knowing she’s looking for me.
I want to get closer. I want her to notice me.
I’ve never wanted that before.
I watch her talk to some male students outside their dorm. They’re leering at her, drooling over her tits and ass. I want to gouge out their eyes just for looking at her.
And for what? There’s no reason for me to hurt them; they’re not threatening her. But I want to kill them all the same.
She’s just a job.
She disappears into the dorm, and I grind my teeth, wanting to follow her.
Instead, I force myself to stay put. I check my phone and see that my brother has texted.
Jaeger: Movie night.
This is his weekly invitation to watch a movie at his place. He and his woman love holiday movies, the cheesier the better.
I should hate watching those sorts of movies, but I go to watch them anyway. I want to like them. I want to understand them. What would it be like to be one of those cheerful people on the screen? To feel basic things like love and connection?
The hardest part is watching my brother’s woman cuddle up to him. He looks at her like she’s his world. He loves her enough to die for her, and she loves him right back.
I wonder sometimes how it would feel to love someone like that.
But it’s not to be. My heart’s too scarred to feel much more than hate or the occasional surge of bloodlust. Even when I’m with a woman I’ve hired for the night, I feel nothing.
It only reminds me that I’m numb to all decent human emotions and always will be.
Except now, I’m feeling something new. Something I’ve never felt before.
Kaiser: can’t tonight
Jaeger: You still watching the girl?
I don’t answer. There’s no reason for me to be the only one watching her all this time. I can tag someone else in at any time.
But I don’t want to. How can I explain that I want to be the only one to follow her? To watch her?
To prey upon her?
My obsession is growing. And that’s dangerous. A good fighter can’t become too fascinated with an opponent; that’s how you make mistakes.
She comes out of the dorm, and I put my phone away.
She looks the same—her clothes aren’t rumpled and her makeup isn’t smeared.
It wasn’t a hookup, although she does look satisfied. And her basket is empty.
She’s walking up the path, straight toward me. I imagine stepping off the path and grabbing the back of her neck and forcing her to face me.
My hand starts tingling, the long, dead nerve endings waking up.
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this much sensation on my skin.
I lost the ability to feel anything long ago.
In the fighting rings, it was an asset. I felt pain, but it was far away.
Like my skin had become armor, and I could only register any brutal blow as heat or pressure.
It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to touch someone. I usually hate the way it feels—or doesn’t feel. The lack of sensation reminds me that I’m a shell of a man.
Makes me feel half-dead.
But ever since I laid eyes on her, I’ve imagined touching her.
It’s probably because I haven’t fucked anyone since I started this job. I should just go to Camille’s and hire a woman for the night. But I don’t want to leave this girl’s side.
Lately, every time I go to jack off, I imagine her face. My cock swells whenever I see her, and it’s getting harder and harder to ignore. Makes me want things I can’t have.
She passes me as I’m hidden in the shadows under a tree. She can’t see me, but she pauses and looks around like she senses that someone’s stalking her.
Satisfaction roars through me. I’m so close, I can smell her perfume. Or at least, I think that strong smell is her perfume. Smells like roses and there aren’t any rose bushes around.
I’m strongly tempted to step out from behind the tree. Two steps and she’ll notice me.
And then what?
Only my loyalty to my brothers keeps me from grabbing her right now and taking her somewhere we can be alone. Where I can touch her all over and figure out why she’s gotten under my skin.
I follow her home, keeping a distance between us. There’s nothing else I can do.
Then I spot an enemy, a shadow slipping along the sidewalk across from us.
It’s a man in a baseball cap, talking on the phone. I’ve seen him before on campus but never this close to her home. He’s like me in this rich neighborhood. He doesn’t belong.
He watches her bounce up the sidewalk and disappear into her home, then finishes his call and leans on the brick wall opposite her house.
Watching her, like I’m watching her. He raises his hand to light a cigarette, and the flare of light illuminates the pentacle tattoo on his hand. The symbol of the Vesuvio Mafia family.
Showtime.
I check my mask—a skull bandana that covers half of my face. I cross the street silently and jump him before he takes the second puff of his cigarette. I jab a hand into his throat, and he chokes and drops the phone, his hands rising to defend himself.
Too late. I punch him in the gut, making him double over with a gasp.
I propel him into the shadows so I can interrogate him. “Who sent you?”
He attacks without warning, fists swinging.
I let him get a punch in just for laughs, his blow glancing off my biceps.
I feel the shock of it, and I know it must hurt, but I can’t feel it.
I can’t feel anything anymore. I hit him with a haymaker, and he goes down.
The scent of his blood rises in the air.
The guy struggles to rise, but he’s too stupid to know he’s beat.
He’s a typical foot soldier, too dumb to tell me anything.
I already know he was sent by the Vesuvios, the sworn enemies of the Poisoner.
There’s no reason for him to be watching my target unless he’s up to no good.
I take great satisfaction in slamming his head into the sidewalk until his body goes limp.
I pick up his phone and hit redial. It’s a burner phone, so there aren’t any saved numbers, but whoever I’m calling has a Metropolis area code.
“Joey?” a gruff voice answers.
“Joey can’t come to the phone.” He’s too busy bleeding out at my feet.
“What? Who is this?”
“I have a message for Don Vesuvio.” I don’t think I’m talking to the head honcho, but it might be one of his sons. “Tell him the Poisoner’s daughter is off limits.”
He cusses me out. “Says who?”
“Fraternitas.”
He sucks in a breath, falling silent as dangerous men often do when I invoke the name of the brotherhood. The Vesuvios are a powerful family with a stronghold in this city, but no one fucks with Fraternitas.
Instead of arguing with me, he hangs up. Probably to call his bosses and tell them what happened. Letting everyone know that if Vesuvios wants the Poisoner’s daughter, they’ll have to go to war with Fraternitas. The fear will ripple through them, and they’ll think twice about attacking my target.
She’ll be safe another night.
The man at my feet comes awake. I lean down and break his neck, feeling a rush of disappointment that the fight is over so quickly. My blood is pumping hot through my veins. I want a worthy opponent, more fighting, more blood spilled.
This is all I’m good for. Killing and fighting used to be the only time I felt alive.
At least, until I saw her. I’m not sure why she makes me feel things. I don’t understand it, don’t like it, but I can’t stay away. I want more.
I still smell roses. The floral scent is stronger even than the smell of blood and waste from a freshly dead body.
I pick up the body and stuff it in a trash can, which I then wheel down the street to the empty mansion where I’m squatting.
I wheel the whole thing right into the basement, where I’ve stashed some tarps and a kiddie pool in case of this very situation.
I’ll wash any traces of blood off the sidewalk and call on my Fraternitas brothers to help me dispose of the body tonight.
But first, I want to check on her.
The lights are on in her bedroom, so I scale a wall, climb a tree, and settle in to watch her go about her bedtime routine. If she looked out the window, she’d notice me sitting in the tree, wearing my skull mask.
But she doesn’t, and I don’t know why it fills me with disappointment. I don’t know why I want her to notice me.
Lately, she’s stopped watching the terrible teen vampire show she likes and has been getting herself off every night.
First, she grabs the tattered paperback she keeps next to her vibrator.
After rereading her favorite pages, she touches herself until her hips are grinding in the air.
She gasps like she can’t get enough air and pushes her shirt up to fondle her own tits.
Then her back arches, and she moans, long and low.
The sexiest sound I’ve ever heard. She comes until she’s limp in the bed.
The first time I watched her do it, I nearly fell out of the tree.
She reads the same book over and over again. I’m tempted to break in and read it myself. Study it to see if it will help me understand her.
No, I can’t get close to her.
But that doesn’t mean I’ll let anyone else touch a hair on her head.