Chapter Forty-Two
Keifer
Just look at them.
Grinning at each other like they belong together. Like everything before this meant nothing.
Presley doesn’t even know she’s making a fool of herself.
Smiling.
Laughing.
While I sit here, choking on the betrayal she shoved down my throat. After everything I did for her. After all the ways I broke her open and showed her the truth. She thinks she can just... belong to someone else?
No.
She belongs to me.
Rygaard's just a fucking placeholder. A distraction. A warm body in the bed she was always meant to crawl back to. Once he’s gone, once I drag her back home… She’ll remember.
Her body will remember.
The way it used to ache for me. The way her soul used to snap under my fingers. It doesn’t matter how much he’s ‘fixed’ her.
He’s polishing up a corpse. He’s kissing scars I carved. He’s fucking a grave.
She’ll never be what she was before I got my hands on her. I made sure of that. Every needle. Every pill. Every time we tore her apart and stitched her back together just to rip her open again.
I can still see it… The way she cried, at first. Tears streaking her filthy cheeks.
Begging. Praying. Fighting.
Until I showed her how good it could feel when she stopped struggling. When she let go. When the drugs blurred the pain into heat, and she started begging for more.
More hands. More mouths. More ruin.
Presley was our little doll. Our ruinous masterpiece. And Rygaard thinks he can just… Own her?
The rage in my chest burns hotter than anything.
It burns so hot it almost feels like love.
My cock throbs painfully, trapped under the weight of my jeans.
Watching the way her lips wrap around the fork, sliding slow, obscene, I imagine it’s me she’s sucking down, greedy and hollow-eyed, just the way I taught her.
God, the things we did to her mouth. The things she let us do once the drugs gutted her soul.
I clench my fists at my sides.I want to unzip and jerk off right here, staring at her, claiming her across the room.But not yet. Not yet.
She’s not mine again… Yet.
“Soon, you little whore," I growl under my breath, voice soaked in venom and sick desire. "Soon you’ll be screaming for mercy again. Soon you’ll watch that bastard bleed out right in front of you."
Kemper shifts beside me, sniveling like the useless fuck he is. “Hey, man," he whispers. "Let’s get outta here before someone sees us.”
Pathetic.
Weak.
I don’t even turn my head. "Shut the fuck up," I hiss. "I’ll leave when I’m goddamn ready."
He hesitates, then flees like the rat he is, slipping into the dark.
I focus back on Presley. On the way Rygaard touches her. Too soft.
Too careful.
He doesn’t know her like I do. He doesn’t know what she needs. How she needs to be torn apart to feel real again.
Rygaard pulls his phone out, eyes still locked on her… But then he stiffens. His gaze shifts. And it lands right on me.
For a second, the world narrows. Just me and him, breathing the same poisoned air.
He sees me.
He knows.
My blood roars in my ears.
Fight or flight boiling under my skin. Then Rygaard explodes from his seat, chair crashing to the floor behind him. Charging straight toward the entrance.
Straight toward me.
Fuck.
The darkness welcomes me like an old lover.
I slip between its fingers and vanish, the night swallowing me whole. "Until next time, bitch," I mutter, smiling so wide it hurts my face.
Next time… I'll make sure she doesn't survive the goodbye.