Chapter 5
FIVE
ZAYNE
It was supposed to be easy.
I had five simple rules.
Rule number one. Kill or get killed.
Rule number two. Catch them before they catch you.
Rule number three. Never go to the same place twice.
Rule number four. Learn everything about them. Leave nothing behind.
Rule number five. Never let it get personal.
She was meant to be nothing more than another body. Another pattern. A piece of the puzzle, I was building one corpse at a time. I was supposed to keep my distance. Watch from the shadows. Finish it clean.
But since last night, something went wrong.
Maybe I was turning selfish. Maybe it was just an instinct. I went up there not to stop her before she jumped so I could kill her first, but to make sure she didn’t jump at all.
Watching her brought me a kind of calm I didn’t recognize.
She lived a life I never had. Ordinary. Full. Watching her move through it felt like stepping into her skin, borrowing her breath, her moments, her warmth.
I had watched many before her. I learned their routines, their weaknesses, and how easily they could be taken.
Catching them was simple.
Catching her would never be.
She was always surrounded by people. A social butterfly. Some people noticed. Someone who would be missed.
Even when she spoke too much and always needed to have the last word, she never cut others down. She carried more heart than anyone I had ever watched from afar.
Somehow, she brought back a trace of hope I thought I’d killed years ago.
Maybe she made me believe that a monster like me could be tolerated by someone that pure.
Maybe that was the lie I needed.
When I was a teenager, I used to read about fate. About people who meet to learn lessons. Others who guide you toward the right path. And the rare ones who stay, teaching you how to be loved.
I don’t dream anymore.
What use are dreams to someone like me? Just distant illusions of a boy who wanted to be anyone else but himself.
I knew I was incapable of loving anyone. Everything I did was about control. About filling the hollow space where power never existed before. Killing made me feel untouchable. Like I was God. I decided who breathed and who didn’t.
But even God has weaknesses.
She was mine.
So there I stood, in a cemetery in central New York, watching as her father’s body was lowered into the ground. She didn’t shed a single tear.
She never noticed I was standing near a tree, a black hood pulled over my head. My attention drifted to a random headstone nearby.
Nicolas Blake. Fifty years old. Poor bastard.
I lifted my gaze back to her. She now stood at the front, while everyone around her waited, expecting words. A speech. Closure.
But she froze.
No tears fell, but her body was locked in place, her eyes fixed on the crowd until a tall woman stepped in and gently guided her away.
Last night, on the rooftop, she dropped a piece of paper with the words I forgive you.
But she wasn’t ready to forgive anyone.
Something inside me stirred. A pull so sharp it made my jaw tighten. Part of me wanted to take her away from all of it. Another part wanted to bury her alongside her father.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
I repeated the rules in my head, clinging to them like scripture.
But they no longer worked.
So I made new ones.
Five rules.
Just for her.
Rule number one. Do not fall for Emily Beckett.
Rule number two. Do not let Emily Beckett fall in love with you.
Rule number three. Never touch her.
Rule number four. You have to kill her.
Rule number five. You will not allow any other man to have her either.
Present day
She walks in with her blonde hair twisted into a loose, careless bun. Strands slip free and cling to her forehead, trailing down along her jaw like a long curtain she keeps pushing back. Her glasses slide low on her nose, and she nudges them up with two fingers without realizing she is doing it.
She wears a tight black skirt that hugs her hips, stretched smooth around her ass as she moves. Her white shirt is buttoned wrong. One button skipped, another strained.
The mistake pulls my attention to it and refuses to let go.
My left eye started to twitch.
Something is different today.
She is not the confident little girl chasing answers about the infamous Zayne Mercer. That version of her is gone. This one looks cornered. Like a small animal that realizes, too late, it has wandered somewhere it can’t escape.
Did she figure it out?
She clears her throat before sitting down, the chair scraping softly against the floor. Her notebook opens carefully in front of her, pages lifted as if they might tear if she rushes them. She writes the date with slow strokes.
October 1st, 2016.
I watch the way her chest rises and falls, just a little too fast. My gaze lifts, meets hers, and holds.
“Shall we start, Doctor?” I say, a quiet laugh slipping out.
Her smile comes late and leaves early. It doesn’t reach her eyes. A faint sheen of sweat glistens along her hairline. She wets her lips, clears her throat again, and nods.
“Today I would like to go a bit deeper into your past,” she says. “So tell me, Mr. Mercer, what was your relationship with your mother?”
“I never had one.” My eyes drift back to her mouth.
“And your father?”
“I had one. He’s dead now.” I tilt my head slightly. “Some people are better off dead.”
Her pen pauses. She adjusts her glasses and starts writing again.
“Tell me more about him.”
“What’s there to tell?” I ask, watching her hand move across the page.
She stops writing. Slowly, she looks up at me. Really looks at me this time.
“How did he die?”
Her eyes are jade green, shifting with the light. Dark gray rims them, flecked with deeper green and a faint hint of brown near the center.
“Suffocation,” I say.
“How did that make you feel?” she asks.
My gaze drifts to her mouth, tracing the shape of her lips as she waits. I have wanted them from the first moment I saw her. Rules are the only thing that ever stopped me.
“Good,” I say.
“Mhm.” She murmurs it and writes the word down, pen scratching softly against the paper.
“What about you, Doctor?” I ask.
She pauses. “What about me?”
“Your relationship with your father,” I say, a smile pulling at one corner of my mouth.
Her posture stiffens. She presses her palms flat against the notebook and looks at me fully now. Her eyes widen, brows drawing together. I struck a nerve. I know we are not here to talk about her. She came for answers, for the mind of the man who shook the nation.
While she searches for reasons to fix me enough to put me on trial, I am undoing her, piece by piece.
“Mr. Mercer,” she says, clearing her throat, “we are not here to discuss my family or me. We are here to understand you, your mind, and to find answers to why you came to murder. The families deserve that.”
I lean back in my chair and stare up at the ceiling. Laughter spills out of me, bouncing off the walls until the room seems smaller.
“Well,” I say, still chuckling. “Doctor,” I lower my head and meet her gaze again. “I know exactly why I killed them.”
She swallows. I watch it slide down her throat, along that elegant neck still dusted with the perfume of sandalwood and vanilla.
“Why?” she asks.
Her voice is thin.
“Because I could.”
She lifts a hand to her neck, suddenly aware of my stare. Her fingers brush the skin lightly, a nervous habit she can’t stop. She shifts in her chair, and the movement tells me more than her silence ever could.
“Do you have urges to kill?” she asks.
I nod, the smirk never leaving my face.
“Do you have urges to kill me?”
Her breathing turns shallow. Her lips part as she waits for my answer.
I laugh again, louder this time. “You think I want to kill you?”
She straightens, forcing control back into her posture. “I think you have urges you feel compelled to satisfy,” she says. Her voice wavers, then steadies. “And that gives you a sense of fulfillment.”
I chuckle. “Oh, I don’t want to kill you, Freckles,” I say, my voice dropping into a low growl. “Mhm.” I chuckle again. “I want to toy with you until you crack. And when you do, I want to suck the pleasure out of you until there’s nothing left but the will of you riding my hard nine-inch cock.”
Her cheeks burn red. She clenches her jaw.
“What’s the matter, Freckles? You’re dripping wet?” I wink at her, a smirk pulling at my mouth.
She tilts her head, unfazed. “No,” she says calmly. “That bean in your pants doesn’t make me wet.”
A laugh breaks out of me. “Yeah, Freckles. Keep telling that to yourself.”
She stands, snapping her notebook shut. Her voice drops as she speaks, barely meant to reach me.
“That will be all for today.”
“Going home to touch yourself?” I ask. “You can do it right here.”
She slams the notebook onto the table so loudly that the sound cracks through the room.
“You narcissistic asshole,” she spits. “You’re the one who gets to dream about even touching someone like me, you idiotic buffoon.”
Her nose wrinkles when she’s angry, skin bunching slightly at the bridge. It does something to me. Any reaction does. I feed on it.
“Mark my words,” she says. “I will be the last thing you ever see and the one thing you’ll never touch, you psychopath.”
The light above us flickers. Once. Twice. Like the room itself is listening. I do nothing but watch her.
She is painfully beautiful. And she is the last trophy I need.
The light cuts out completely. The door buzzes, and the room drops into darkness.
She gasps.
I hear her chair scrape back, slow footsteps retreating from the table. I laugh softly as I force my thumbs, bones snapping free from the cuffs.
The sound of it carries to her as I take a few steps forward.
Before she can blink, I’m at her side, rolling my thumbs back into place.
“Say it again,” I whisper against her ear, my voice buried in her blond hair.
My hand closes around her jaw. I feel no pain as my skin touches hers.
She feels like silk.
I drag her back until the wall stops her, the impact knocking the breath from her lungs. My hand clamps over her mouth as my fingers work to open the buttons of her shirt, slow and deliberate.
“Shh, Doctor,” I murmur, close enough that she feels the words more than hears them. She whimpers beneath my palm. “Make a sound, and I’ll take that pen on the table and open your throat with it.”
Her eyes widened. She nods.
I lift my hand from her mouth and let it trail down her chest, peeling fabric aside.
I free one breast from the bra, feeling the warm skin under my fingers.
With a low chuckle, I bend my head, dragging my tongue from the swell down to her nipple, circling it before grazing it with my teeth. Just enough to make her shudder.
My other hand slides under her skirt.
“No one will ever know,” I say, pressing my body against hers, boxing her in. “Everything’s off. There’s no way out.” I breathe the words into her neck, teeth sinking gently into her skin, breaking every rule I’ve laid out for her.
“Don’t,” she whimpers, trying to push my hand away as it slips higher beneath the skirt.
I catch her wrist and pin it above her head. My knee forces her legs apart, claiming the space between them. My fingers slide under the skirt again, nudging her thong aside.
She’s already wet.
A slow smile curves my mouth.
“Oh, you want me to touch you, Doctor,” I whisper against her ear. “But I won’t give you that satisfaction.”
I laugh softly, cruelly, withdrawing my hand only to tug her skirt back down.
I lift my fingers to her mouth, still slick, brushing them over her lips. My grip closes around her jaw as I press my lips against hers, my tongue forcing its way in.
She gasps against my mouth.
I release her wrist and move that hand to her bare breast, cupping it as I press her harder into the wall. She shoves me with sudden strength, and I stumble back a step, and her palm cracks across my face.
“You disgust me,” she cries. “I can’t wait to see you dead.”
I laugh, the taste of her still on my lips.
She runs for the door, yanking at the handle, then pounding on it, screaming for help. I drop into the chair, watching her unravel, laughter spilling out of me as she beats against the locked exit.
Oh, Doctor. You have no idea how fragile you are.
So polished. So composed. And you shatter so easily. The strongest ones always do. They wear their strength like armor, but underneath, just someone desperate to be wanted.
“Would anyone miss you when I kill you?” I call lazily. “Or would they be relieved you’re gone?”
“Stop!” she screams, fists slamming into the door. “Shut the fuck up.” Then, quieter but sharp with a promise, “You’ll pay for this.”
I smile. “Try me, Freckles. Do your worst.”