2
THEON
My phone buzzed on my bedside table for almost a minute, joining the several missed calls I had piled up there. From one person. She’d been calling since yesterday morning, and I knew what she wanted. I just didn’t understand why I was holding back from giving it to her.
A groan rumbled in my throat as I turned on my bed, lying face up. Each day, I felt better and better. Better than ever. It was like the rock in my chest was melting.
Everything was falling into place. I’d moulded, carved and crafted this mission for the past five years, and seeing it lined out perfectly in front of me had satisfaction slithering down my spine. It was time. Time for my favourite part. And fuck if imagining it didn’t make my blood rush.
I stood up from the bed just as the phone buzzed again, but I ignored it and made my way to the bathroom, where I stood in front of the mirror for almost five minutes.
Two hours later, I sent the woman’s money to her, figuring she wouldn’t stop breathing on my neck if I didn’t. She helped in sealing the first stage of my mission at that carnival night, and it was perfect.
I’d stood behind her as she sat on the ground, crying. And even when she got up and dusted her clothes, she didn’t turn around. She didn’t see me. She didn’t feel my presence, even though I was so close to her. Anyone who paid attention to her would have labelled me a creep with the way I focused my gaze on her head, her cry the sweetest melody to my soul. I loved it when she cried. I’d always made her cry. My mission was simple: make her life a living hell. To watch her crumble under the weight of the misery she’d so easily handed me.
My mission was to make her cry. My mission was to cause her pain. My mission was to push her to the edge—where death would be the only way out.
Just like she did to me.
She was all I thought about every single day. She haunted my every waking moment, but not the way she thought. I didn’t see the girl I once loved. I saw prey. And God, how easy it was to break her down, piece by pathetic piece.
I started small, just enough to make her question her luck—hacking into her card the second she paid for something, wiping out half of her balance before she even walked out of the store. She thought it was bad luck, a system error, but after the fourth time, it was impossible to ignore.
She’d changed banks ten times. Ten.
And now? She was too scared to trust any of them. No accounts. No cards. No security. She’d resorted to stuffing her cash in a piggy bank like a child. But that was nothing. That was just the warm-up.
Her real hell started when I took away her chances. Every interview, every job opportunity—it was mine to sabotage. Every time, I’d plant something so damning that they wouldn’t even bother calling her back. I wanted her to feel it, the crushing defeat, the hopelessness of it all. No matter how hard she tried, she was never going to escape me.
She didn’t know I was the reason she couldn’t make rent. Why she had to crawl back to her pathetic hometown, humiliated, and take whatever scraps she could find. She thought she was just unlucky, cursed even. But no, it was me. It’s always been me .
And the best part? I was just getting started.
We were in the same box, the same place it started six years ago. I’d always hated that big city, but here, I could make her dance to my tune anyhow I wanted.
I went to my laptop and brought up the footage of her living room which was seemingly empty. I’d planted my cameras there before she moved in seven weeks ago, knowing she had no other place to return to but there. I’d refrained from putting one in her room even if every atom in me screamed to do so. But it was everywhere else—kitchen, living room, hallway, backyard, front porch and other rooms except hers. However, there was a tree opposite her bedroom window, and I’d put one there, though it was of no use with the frosted glass she refused to clean.
Five minutes later, Ainsley appeared in the hallway, walking to the living room and to the kitchen. She had called a repairman to have her door and windows checked yesterday after I snuck in while she was sleeping. I had my own keys to her place, had to make one for myself before she arrived so I could get in and out easily without having to break in.
Seeing her so unease, damn, it fed the beast in me.
She was out of her house within an hour to volunteer for jobs, and a good idea dropped into my head as I watched her walk out in a high loose Bermuda jean shorts and bomber jacket, her wavy brown hair tucked in a facecap.
I might have the plan for us to meet, the best way to begin her madness.