Chapter 28
“You’re…you’re just a kid?”
I stared at the blonde woman on the ground at my feet. She knew she was going to die, but she just kept looking out the window at a car. No one could see us. This was a one-way glass. Everything else was mirrored.
What did this woman do to my father to deserve his judgment?
“Please, just don’t hurt my son. He does not deserve this cruel life. I won’t fight you. I…I knew this was coming. Just please not him. Not the only light in this dark world.”
She was still talking, her hands dragging across the window as tears fell down her face. People always cried when they died. Some yelled, screamed, and fought me, but in the end, it was always tears. It was like the final omission of accepting their fate.
“I am so sorry for you, sweetheart. You don’t deserve this.”
Her words were confusing. Nothing like my usual targets, she seemed sincere.
“Who are you?” I said aloud, trying to piece together why she was a target.
“It doesn’t matter, sweet boy. I am just an echo now…but please. Don’t hurt him.”
I looked out the window to where her gaze kept flickering. A kid not older than me was sitting in the passenger seat, bored and flicking lint from the open window.
“Please.” She sobbed again, shielding herself, her arms wrapping around her body as if she could block my blade.
“I’m not going to hurt him,” I said.
It was the truth. I was only here for her.
She nodded, seemingly calmed for a second, before she got off the ground and bolted for the door.
“Hey,” I called after her, running to reach her in the quiet hallway of the abandoned building she had been hiding in.
She didn’t stop, and if she opened the door at the end of the hallway, she would alert people to this hunt. I couldn’t let her do that. I would fail. My father would punish me for losing her. And if he had some other man take my place, it would be worse for her.
The kid in the car would be the tax for the inconvenience if I lost her.
“Stop!” I yelled, winded from the run. “Or your son will die.”
I didn’t mean I would be the one to end him, but the way she halted with her hand on the door made me think she thought I was threatening him.
“Please…” she said again, her voice a whisper at such a far distance. “Not him. Not my hope.”
I walked closer, eating up the distance and trying to reach her.
Her hand pressed the long metal line of the door, and the click felt like a shot.
No, I can’t…fail.
“Stop,” I shouted, my knife flying from my hand and landing in her back with a sickening sound.
Shit.
She gasped, and her hand fell from the door, her entire body falling forward to the ground.
“I’m…sorry,” I said to her body, her eyes open, tears falling free as the blood pooled around her.
“I can’t save you, lady. I’m sorry. But I can promise one thing.” Her breathing was so shallow, yet she didn’t make a sound. “I will make sure no one hurts your son.”
I looked out at the boy in the car, wondering if I really could keep that promise. I knew I wouldn’t tell my dad about him.
I placed my gloved hand on the glass, smearing the blood of the woman who finally stilled at my feet.
I didn’t know why I was watching the wind blow the kid’s hair around his face, but I couldn’t look away.
Normally, I cleaned up my mess, making everything disappear, but I didn’t have prints on this knife.
I was a ghost in the job, and the dumb city cops would mark it as a robbery gone wrong.
Chewing my lip, knowing my dad would have my ass for this, I dialed 9-1-1 on her phone with my gloved hand, and laid the phone down by her head.
Through the blurry red of the glass window, I whispered to the boy.
“No one is going to take away your light…”
I jolted awake, smacking my stupid fucking face and splashing water on my cheeks to sober up. That was Shiloh that day in the car—Shiloh, whose mother begged to be spared.
I promised all those years ago not to hurt him, but I broke that promise before I even made it.
I did hurt him.
I was the reason he was an orphan.
The reason his dad groomed him to be a killer.
I…took away his light…
The days blurred into one another like cigarette smoke, too thin, constantly lingering, and impossible to clear.
For five mornings straight, I woke up and checked the hotel bed because I was a fucking dog off leash, still unable to quiet the crushing hope bubbling in my chest that he would come back.
Each time I saw the bed empty, the realization and pain snapped a new piece of my soul with it, pulling me further into the darkness. The weight beside me wasn’t real, but the scent on the pillow that had been his consumed my senses.
For five nights, I drank shitty liquor until the room spun the way my head wanted to spin. For five nights, I fucked my hand until the burn of the rough touch brought tears to my eyes.
I replaced the mental pain with the physical. I had to forget the way he’d left me in the fucking street, with my face wet and my hands reaching out into the void of the night.
Empty and fucking useless.
Like me.
But as my father always said, “Absence is not erasure. It only teaches you the shape of what was taken.”
I wanted to break everything Shiloh had. He damned me for a mistake I couldn’t have known. So, I intended to make everything I did from now on as bright as a fucking billboard. I would break him the way he broke me. I would force him to see the darkness…or burn in his fucking light.
First things first, Shiloh didn’t fuck a lot of people. Apparently, he was a really good boyfriend to my darling sister.
He kept his dick in his pants when it wasn’t me stroking it. But there was one night when he caved to his urges because it wasn’t a pathetic animal, he could snuff out with his boot.
It was the first night of the hunt.
This was a female.
I saw her on the cameras.
The trail cams were set up to border the perimeter of my family’s estate.
He was farther into the woods than anyone else. The female interrupted his ritual, breaking the spell of his kill. The rabbit went free, and so he took her instead.
The way Shiloh brutalized this female’s cunt was beautiful. His blue eyes looked black in the night-vision. He was hauntingly breathtaking. The female was as damned as the rabbit.
He hadn’t held back from breaking her again and again. His thick cock ripped her cunt to fit him. His demands were robotic and unnatural to his usual tone and persona.
He likely wouldn’t remember her until her corpse was in his bed.
I started with small things that I could control. Renting a fucking car and getting back to Normal was first in line, but even bed hopping with different bitches for a few nights hadn’t scratched the itch to see the one woman I really wanted.
Will her cunt rip for me like it did for him?
I couldn’t stop jittering in my seat, cranking the music that played for the hunt and flooring it back to Alabama.
Xanthy sent texts to my phone, and I ignored her until one caught my eye.
X: Did something happen to my boyfriend while you guys were gone? He won’t talk to me. I know something is wrong. Where are you? Are you ok?
Me: Dunno.
X: Care, please. I know something happened. I hate being shut out. I can’t help the man I love. Please just tell me what happened so I can fix it.
Of course, Alexandra wanted to fix Shiloh, like he was some broken fucking toy she was bored with. She didn’t know how to do anything but spread her fucking legs. And I didn’t have to guess that was her way of helping him. The thought made me nearly crack my phone in half.
Me: He’s ur man, isn’t he? Ask him. Leave me tf out of it.
X: You don’t have to be so mean. I wanted you guys to get along. That’s why I asked you to go on the trip. I knew it was about his dad. You don’t know what kind of evil Edmund Anderson is. Did he hurt Shiloh? Is that what happened?
No, I did.
Me: They don’t get along. Past pain is a bitch to extinguish. You can’t just throw luxury shit in his face and fuck him into submission like Tyler. He’s human. Prob more than a lot of us. Give him time.
Tyler was my sister’s insipid ex-boyfriend. She dated him throughout high school and half her sophomore year of college. They broke up on bad terms.
Bad terms, including him breaking my face.
One of the many reasons I hated touch is that Tyler Veering loved it. For the better part of my school life, he lived to torture me. Xanthy was too stupid and too scared to end it until the fucker put me in the hospital.
I owed him a thank you.
He had the skinny, misfit boy breaking his body in the gym every day to be who I am now. And if he dared fucking return, someday I’d return the fucking favor.
X: Shiloh isn’t Tyler. I’m sorry I ever tried to make you two happy. I loved him. But he’s my past. Shiloh is my future. I hope. So please just fucking get along, Carrington.
Her future.
Not mine.
I pushed the pedal to the floor, letting the mile markers blur past me, and replacing the smiles, the moans, the fucking curses, and the pain.
I wasn’t going to let my fucking sister have a future with my Sunshine.
I’d kill her first.
Before I got back to the mansion I’d been avoiding, with the idiots I was so not thinking about, I stopped by a small hair salon.
Carmen’s Locked Lair.
It was an interesting name for a hair place. The delicate little blonde was fussing over some client. The body I saw ravaged by Shiloh’s darkness was bathed in a million lights that made her feel safe.
When people weren’t looking, she held herself, all the fake smiles disappearing with a worried glance. She constantly checked the doors to her building, fussing over the locks and carefully letting the clients in one by one before locking them back again.
My, my, Sunshine…You broke this woman. She wouldn’t be fun at all when I got to her. Hell, she would be begging to die before I even began.
Satisfied with my understanding of her routine and getting a good indication of her habits, I left the salon lot and went to a bar across the street. It was almost closing time for Carmen, and judging by the way she peered out the window longingly, I had a good hunch this was her crutch.
I ordered a fruity, shit drink, the same drink the two bitches from the first night of the hunt wouldn’t shut the fuck up about. I asked the bartender to give it to the woman when she arrived. It wasn’t the time to introduce myself yet.
Carmen wasn’t a woman who wanted attention.
She tried to avoid it as best she could, given the curvy beauty she had. Naturally, a lot of men and women were drawn to her, and I wondered if Shiloh had been, too.
It had to have been about power. He couldn’t have seen her in the dark. She could have been anyone.
The chant in my brain didn’t subside, and I got sidetracked. Before I realized the time, a ding at the entrance broke the spell of my mind, and I diverted my attention to the door.
Shit.
Carmen was there with her bag clutched to her chest. Her eyes wavered around the room, taking note of the few customers drinking here. She stopped when she saw me, then quickly put her head down and walked to the other side of the bar to sit down.
Dammit. I should have known my stupid face was too well-known around here.
“Ms. Vita, that man over there ordered you this sex on a beach.”
Carmen’s eyes flashed to mine in surprise, and then she shook her head and pushed it toward me.
“No, thank you, Carrington.”
Shit. Of course, she knew me.
“Ah, good to see you, Carmen. You look beautiful tonight. Is the salon business doing well? You’re just across the street, right?”
Carmen’s shoulders lowered, and I smiled wider.
“Yes. I’m doing well. I…haven’t seen you in a long time. How did the…hunt do this year?”
The mere mention of the word hunt made her cringe.
Broken indeed.
“Wonderful. We’ve raised quite a bit already for the charities. It has been a great turnout.”
Carmen was fussing with her blonde hair when I spoke again, moving my seat placement closer to hers.
“Have you gone this year? To the hunt? Caught by any masked men I should be jealous of?”
Her face paled, but my smile remained.
“N-No. I.. I skipped it this year. Tyler has a wedding he’s going to this weekend, and I didn’t want to impose…”
Now my smile dissipated like acid.
Tyler.
My obsession’s choice of women was somehow affiliated with Tyler of all fucking people?
A small, incessant world we lived in. I’d expect no less than the pool of Normal’s people would be soured with Tyler’s influence.
A quick glance at her fingers showed no rings, so Tyler must be a relative of Carmen.
“Ah. I see. Tyler has always required a lot of attention, hasn’t he?”
Carmen chuckled at my face. I was good at hiding many things, but my hatred for Tyler Veering wasn’t my strong suit.
“Yeah. My brother is as flashy as your sister.”
Ah. Brother. Shame she needed to die.
She seemed to hate my sister and her brother as much as I did.
“Yes, Xanthy did always need the prettiest toys growing up, or she’d throw a fit and get the nanny fired.”
Carmen wasn’t an idiot. She seemed astute enough to follow my hidden meanings. The conversation with her was interesting, nearly engaging. But it was all a means to an end.
“Whose wedding is Tyler going to?”
“Someone Xanthy knows. I don’t know. He’s always trying to get her back. But she has a new boyfriend, doesn’t she?”
Yes. My fucking Sunshine.
“She does. His name is Shiloh Anderson. He is a doctor-in-training at Kentucky State. Long-distance lovers and all that.”
Carmen seemed surprised that I gave so much information, but I did so to understand what she would do with it.
“I haven’t met him, I guess. Nice, Xanthy has someone that isn’t Tyler. Lord knows she’s better off with anyone but him.”
Hmm. So she doesn’t know who her nightmare is. How fun it will be to awaken her to the reality.
“Why’d you deny my drink for you?” I said suddenly, staring at the liquid still in the glass across the bar top.
Carmen’s eyes looked haunted, and I guessed it was likely from the fact that we served this type of drink at the hunt. Specifically, sex on the beach for the first night. It was clearly triggering for her. I wanted to press harder. But I had to be careful. Carmen was a broken, fragile woman.
She hated attention, and her scars were as visible on the inside as they were on the outside. Even with long sleeves, the marks across her wrists were evident to anyone who looked. She too wore a mask for people.
What interested me wasn’t the mask itself, but what lay behind it.
More importantly, how do I make her break, to shatter, and reveal Shiloh’s cracked facade in the process?
For all.
To fucking.
See.