9 | Liam
Liam
Iwait, leaning on my bike for her shift to end, longer than I should, until I finally see her leave the diner. She walks to her car with slow steps, as if she is allowing me to bask in the view of her a little longer. She knows I am still here, but does nothing to show it. Smart girl.
She knows her beauty outshines everything else, and honestly, I like a woman who knows her power—even if that power is beautiful curves and long, curly hair paired with eyes that can magnetize even the most stubborn man trying to avoid romance at all costs.
She is an absolute goddess walking the earth, and I am a fool, obsessed with a practical stranger just because she looks like she stepped out of one of my fantasies.
Her taste from our little encounter in the alley still lingers on my tongue, and her scent is just as vivid in my mind.
I want more of her, but today is not the day for that.
I am already late. I am avoiding checking my phone; luckily, I have no messages or calls from Nate yet—or at least I haven’t felt the vibration of a notification.
I’m taking this as a good sign. No news is good news when dealing with a situation where Mike locates the next victim before the last one has time to rot in the ground.
How long do they actually take before they start rotting?
I have never researched that. Maybe I should.
It seems like information someone like me should know.
Jessica gets into her car and starts the engine.
I don’t move. I observe her car as it pulls onto the main road, waiting a minute or two to give her a head start while she drives toward her house.
I am planning to follow her, but I don’t want her to know I am close behind.
I just need to know she arrived home safe; that’s all.
At least, that’s the lie I’m telling myself.
As if stalking the woman at work wasn’t enough, now I’m following her home. Maybe I need an intervention.
I don’t know what it is, but something about this woman captivates me.
Even though she would be the ideal prey for our little game, I am selfish enough not to share her with the others.
After all, her death would bring me no joy.
Mike has enough women to kill; he doesn’t need the one I actually like joining the list. Selfish bastard.
Why would he find another one so soon? He knows the rules.
We have the damn rules to protect us, but does anyone listen to me?
No. No one listens to Liam—even if I am the only reason they aren’t behind bars, waiting for a lawyer to clean up their mess. Stupid, ungrateful bastards.
Okay, that’s a cruel thought, even for me. I actually love those ungrateful bastards. I just wish they would listen once in a while.
My phone buzzes—because I obviously jinxed myself by thinking no messages was a good thing.
I answer the call while driving, which I usually prefer not to do.
That’s a fast track to getting pulled over by a police car, and I would like to avoid talking to cops if I can help it.
Nate’s voice comes through the earbud, irritated as ever. The man is losing his shit.
“When are you coming home? Mike is getting restless,” he informs me.
No shit. Mike is always losing his shit. Can’t they survive one fucking morning without me? To be fair, it is close to the afternoon now, and half the day has passed with them "surviving" alone, so I should give them some grace. They did well enough.
“What, fucking his ass all morning didn’t help with his attitude?” I joke, but the humor is completely lost on my friend. Actually, I think I managed to make Nathan more irritated than before. I can feel his anger through the damn phone.
He pauses before replying. He’s waiting—either for something more useful to come out of my mouth or for his anger to settle down to a normal level.
Nathan is always a little pissed off, even on regular days.
The man carries so much tension it’s ridiculous.
When he finally speaks, it’s just an order—a classic Nathan response.
“Just come home so we can plan this,” he says, his tone making me feel like a child being scolded rather than a friend being informed of a meeting.
The call drops just as Jessica pulls into her driveway.
Against my instincts, I don’t stop. I continue down the road, switching to the route for the house we’ve been staying in.
I could have followed my woman, broken into her bedroom, and eaten her pussy until she screamed at me to stop.
Instead, I am going back to the house to babysit my crazy cousin and his boyfriend—all because those two idiots don’t understand a simple rule: no more than five victims, and never hunt two nights in a row.
How hard is it? It’s just one rule—with five more on the list—but still, simple words.
We have been doing this for so long; they should know by now.
It isn’t a long drive before the house comes into view.
It’s an old Victorian-style build. The owners were all too happy to rent it out after years of it sitting unoccupied, so they didn't bother screening their new tenants.
We always pick places like that, make sure to pay in cash, and even though we use our real names, we avoid giving out any excess personal information.
The real names are important. They support the lie we tell the world about why we’ve spent ten years traveling across state lines.
When you inherit as much money as we did—plus a company in your name that brings in even more—publicity naturally attaches itself to you.
The only way to keep your privacy is with white lies that hold a kernel of truth.
Nate’s family provided more than enough to sustain us for years after their passing without the need to work, but what truly supports our lifestyle is their son's investment skills. And for the record, we had nothing to do with their deaths. We did not kill this set of parents. Pinky promise. They were already old when they had Nathan and died happily in their beds a few months apart from each other. We loved them as much as they loved us, and we would never hurt them. I feel the need to clarify this because, let’s be honest, we killed every other family member we had. It’s an easy assumption to make.
I will admit, it was nice to see their lives come full circle—watching them grow old, even for the short time we had with them.
Experiencing such a loving family, even for a few years, was a blessing.
I think it softened us a bit. I can truly say that old couple was the only real family Mike and I ever had.
They took us in when no one else would, got us through college, and made sure we were set for life—all because their son fell in love with the hungry, skinny boy my cousin used to be.
It is already getting dark when I arrive at the house, having spent most of the day at the diner.
It’s that time of year when night comes sooner and the daylight lasts just long enough to keep you from getting completely depressed.
You would think, given every choice I’ve made in my life, that night would be my favorite time of day. But it was never the part I liked.
When I enter the house, Nate is on the phone speaking a language I don’t recognize, and I am pretty sure it’s business-related.
He’s in charge of our income for a reason.
Mike is pacing up and down the hallway, and Dog circles around him, tail wagging—something he never does.
My dog only reacts to me, but somehow the animal understands that Mike needs emotional support.
The wagging tail and constant pacing seem to be the only comfort Dog deems appropriate for a stressed man trying to wear a hole in the wooden floor.
Mike looks like he’s about to have a stroke; I can tell just by looking at him that Nate wasn’t overreacting. He is indeed restless.
His shoulders are tense and his hair is wet. I’m not sure if he just got out of the shower or if Nate threw water on him to calm him down, but I wouldn't put it past either of them.
“Mike, you doing okay, buddy?” I ask, not really expecting an answer.
Mike stops and looks at me, tilting his head to the side. A moment passes before he answers. “Yeah. Yeah, fine.”
I’m not sure he even heard the question. I know how he gets. My cousin, much as I adore him, has his demons. It isn't unusual for them to take hold of him until everything he sees turns red.
“Nate?” I call out, hoping for an explanation as to why my cousin is so disoriented, but Nate ignores me, waving a dismissive hand.
“You’re being so helpful right now, dude. Thank you,” I whisper under my breath, low enough that neither of them hears me.
“I found the next prey,” Mike tells me, his tone leaving no room for objection. It’s not a request. It’s not a suggestion. It’s an announcement.
He holds out his phone, showing me a picture of a woman. I pause, staring at the screen, stunned. I’m not even sure what I’m looking at at first, but suddenly, the reason for his strange behavior becomes crystal clear. The woman is the spitting image of his mother.
Even though we once believed my aunt was a perfect, angelic mother, after Mike got rid of my father and the rest of my family met their end in that fire, he confessed how wrong everyone was about her.
She had abused him in more ways than one, letting her husband take pieces of him while punishing Mike for it instead of protecting her child.
Who the hell does that? The woman was a monster in an angel's form.
She created a dark place full of horrors for him, and his mind was locked in that place for years before he found a way to cope: killing. That is how he manages.
Nate once told me that during one of Mike's deranged moments, he confided the truth about his parents' accident. One night, Mike was so fed up with his mother’s ignorance and his stepfather’s abuse that he cut the brakes on their car, causing the crash that took them out.
I had already known that for years before Nathan learned about it, but the fact that Mike trusted Nathan with it made me realize how much Nathan meant to him.
It’s a horrifying thing to know. Yet, Nathan stayed. To think that a ten-year-old boy searched the internet to figure out how to cut car brakes and stage an accident only shows how deeply their abuse broke him.
He was also in the car with his sister. Even though he didn’t care about himself, he tried like hell to shelter the girl by covering her body with his own.
When the car flew off the bridge, everything happened so fast. Regret rushed through his mind like a flood, and he tried to cut the seatbelt holding his sister in place.
He tried so hard to help her escape, but the water was filling the cabin quickly, her belt was jammed, and he was only ten years old.
What could a broken boy like him have even done?
He tried and tried, but eventually, it became a choice between his life or hers—and the young, broken boy chose his own.
One could say that was the exact moment the Mike we know today was born, and they would be right. That decision haunts him to this day.