Chapter 10
AZRAEL
The alley has a dreadful stench of wet metal and burnt oil. I can hardly breathe because the smell is so strong. The air is heavy, quiet in the way it only gets when everything alive is holding its breath.
Broken glass glitters under the weak glow of a single streetlamp casting shadows across the brick warehouse. She is here, exactly where I’ve made her wait for over an hour now.
“I hope whatever you were doing was worth losing your life over because that’s what you’re going to lose if you make me wait again,” she says, frustration evident in her voice.
Amused. This is the only way I can describe how I feel.
This little stalker should learn how to behave sooner rather than later.
She still has no clue who she’s dealing with and no clue how many times I’ve been in charge of exploiting useless human beings.
She’s just one of many, not a first, by any means.
“You’re late,” she pushes, but that doesn’t entertain me.
“Just move,” I say as I pass by her like she is nothing more than air.
My indifference must hit her hard because she quickly reacts.
“Don’t turn your back on me.”
This will be way too easy.
“I said—”
“No. You don’t give orders here.” I slam the rusted door open. “You want in? Beg.”
“I’m going in.”
“Wrong.” My voice is nothing more than a whisper in the wind. “Try again.”
“Azrael—”
“Beg.”
“I don’t beg.”
Is she really so stupid to think she has a choice? “You will soon learn how to. One word, and you’re allowed in.”
“Overmydeadfuckingbody. In one word.”
Samantha 2.0. Probably sucks a cock better, but still a Samantha. Why the fuck would I think about her sucking my cock?
I step inside and close the door behind me, making a point to leave her outside. If she leaves, it will only be for the best. I need to make sure there is something inside her I can work with. If a closed door is all that’s needed to stop her, she is not cut out for what I have planned for her.
All it takes is three seconds, and then she storms in after me, smashing the door to the wall. Too fucking predictable.
The warehouse is nothing more than an abandoned place where I sometimes assess my subjects—a skeleton of metal that makes each step echo like a hammer being dropped to the ground.
In the middle of the room, I have already placed what I’ll need: one chair, one mirror, and a camera that is already recording.
“Is this your big move?” She laughs it off. “Empty buildings and cheap furniture?”
I gesture to the chair, and surprisingly, she doesn’t object and almost runs toward it. Excited or dumb, that is the question.
“They always assume it’s about the violence,” I say, walking toward her in the same manner as when I’m lecturing from the podium in the university’s amphitheater. “In their view, psychopaths are believed to be hooked on inflicting pain.”
Her eyes narrow, and for a second, I think she wants to correct me. It would be a shame if all her brain could come up with about feelings is pain.
“That is just the story ‘normal’ people tell to make themselves feel safe.” I continue, “Everyone wants to believe they would be capable, at any given point, of detecting one of us in the middle of a crowd full of people. But the truth? We don’t crave chaos.
We crave patterns, precision, and order.
Systems that only make sense to us. We want full control over everything and everyone. ”
She pops her lips, and while half of me understands she does it because she’s not taking this seriously, the other half has different ideas.
“This is nice for one of your lectures, Professor, but this is not why I’m here.”
I tilt my head, unbothered. “This just proves you understand nothing yet.”
Her jaw clenches, a flash of irritation briefly stiffening her features. “I don’t need your fucking theory. I asked you to fuck with my brain. Not to bore me to death with stupid concepts that would never work on me,” she spits.
“You’ll see how well they work when I make you sit, speak and bark for me, all without even touching you.”
“Controlling me will be the last thing you’ll ever do,” she answers matter-of-factly.
“No?” I gesture to the chair. “Sit.”
“What about the barking?” she replies sarcastically.
No, I’m not in the mood to waste my time.
I turn around, ready to leave her to do whatever the fuck she wants, but after she makes a point in sighing so loud that the entirety of North America heard her, she finally complies to my demand and sits the fuck down.
If making her sit down is so hard, I can only imagine what I will have to endure to destroy her spirit.
“Good girl,” I say, and by the way she looks at me like she could kill me on the spot, I can only assume it sounded way too insulting for her liking. Which seems to be her breaking point because not even one second later, she pushes the chair backward and almost runs toward me. To do what? Hit me?
Apparently only to “insult me” while allowing me to look at her up close in those damn too icy-blue eyes.
“Fuck. You.”
This puts a smile on my lips. “You already did that in your mind when you stalked me,” I say, jabbing a finger into her forehead, punctuating every word as if I’m trying to physically drive the logic into her thick skull.
For the first time all night, I see a hint of a genuine, unmasked hatred in her eyes. She says she doesn’t feel shit, but she does. She probably only has access to stupid emotions and doesn’t feel “happy.” Stupid bitch doesn’t even know what she wants.
Her hatred is like a drug. She would rather victimize herself than admit she just doesn’t have a purpose in life—which is probably what she’s lacking.
But she just got one: to make me happy. The thought of what I could do to her mind, her body, just to make her surrender—is something I could potentially really enjoy.
“Tell me,” I continue as I grab the controller next to the mirror, on the floor, “was it lust? Were you so fucking dumb—so blinded by me—that you didn’t even do proper research?”
Her previous hatred shifts to confusion. I knew she was dumb.
The projector on the opposite side of the room turns to life, lighting the place with the footage from my office.
Her, installing the cameras, and touching everything that is mine as if it belongs to her.
I rarely have a use for checking my security recordings, but after she moved my things around and left her petty little message, I had to.
Week after week, I watched her leave my apartment building and break into my office.
Routines. Victoria has hers just like I have mine.
More often than not, she would just stay there doing absolutely nothing.
Other times, she’d read my books. She never once tried to push it too far.
The simple fact that I was there at a certain point was enough for her to come back, like she was returning to worship at an altar.
If the first video doesn’t take her by surprise, the next one certainly does. The screen shifts to a live video, streaming from the phone she holds in her hand.
She was so caught up with our contract the other day, she forgot to pay attention to…
well, everything else. Five seconds was all I needed to install a backdoor app embedded in her phone’s operating system.
I was prepared for anything her manipulative mind could conjure from the moment she entered my office.
Her gaze is fixed upon the wall, and the cold blue light is mirrored in her eyes. Her body is still, her face a blank mask I know she is trying so hard to maintain. Her thumb, however, runs over the lenses of her phone, darkening the room with each swipe.
After minutes of silence, she finally looks away from the projection. Her face resembles something close to confusion, as if she is seeing something beyond her capacity of understanding. Then she looks back at the wall, and her expression is gone, replaced by the empty shallowness again.
“You were watching me?” she asks, more as a formality as the answer is obvious.
“Are you sure you still want to play? Even a little ember like you, so close to dying, might get burned.”
“But that’s not possible, nobody can do that,” she says, ignoring what I just said.
“Are your eyes not working?”
The irony of the situation is not lost on me.
She stalked me, and then I stalked my stalker.
I just couldn’t help myself. After what she did last week, when she suddenly disappeared without my approval, I wanted to know what the reason was.
And although “kill zone moved” is all she had on her agenda for that Thursday—which does not explain what happened—at least I have more information on her than she does on me.
I press on the remote, allowing the last footage to be displayed: “Little bitch” and “Gabriella”—her only two contacts—with all their information on the screen. Locations and conversations—everything that her very-secure-yet-not-secured-enough phone leaked.
Her breath stumbles. “You hacked my team?”
So that’s who they are? Interesting.
“No. You’re the one who served the information up on a plate for me.”
“What the fuck do you mean by this?” she asks, her loud voice not matching the composure she is trying to embrace.
I laugh. This is getting ridiculous.
“Your brain created fake scenarios that you still don’t understand are not real. You really thought you were untouchable, that I’d do whatever the fuck you want, and just take it without question? Get over yourself, Victoria. All it took was five seconds and your unprepared obsession and I was in.”
Instinctively, I look at her mouth. I want to see those lips shouting out insults, and whatever pathetic little comebacks she has. But apparently the image of her mouth, lips slightly parted, is enough to entertain both my brain and my cock. This is not a good sign.