Chapter 3 Kat
KAT
PLAYLIST: TIDES – G VOS
Iwalk down the corridor leading to the service elevator and slip inside. My heart pounds way too fast from what just happened. The way she grasped my hand. What I just felt, the sensation spreading through me, None of it can be. None.
Focus on something else, I tell myself as I press my back into the cold surface of the elevator wall. What did you just overhear?
There are files. Files she needs to get. Files from Jared Sutton’s system. The files that implicate her. I am more than sure that Lilian Anne Knightley isn’t just anyone; she’s a predator herself. A damn hot one, but dangerous. Cold. Calculating.
The elevator door closes, and I breathe in and out as I press the button leading to the service floor. The hotel was a risky, improvised move I made after watching Lilian all day. I need access to her. I need to validate what I found.
I check the phone to see if the spyware I used to exploit her phone is working.
Just a few minutes of close-by presence, and it exploits a phone in such a sinister way that it should be forbidden.
But over the years, I have become very… resourceful, especially when it comes to the digital underworld.
With a brief scan of Lilian’s phone, I glance over the installed apps and the photos.
I stop at a selfie of Lilian kissing a light-brown-haired woman with messy hair in such a lucious way that I can’t take my eyes off it.
“Huh,” I say.
Of all the people, I never would’ve imagined Lilian Anne Knightley to be a girl’s girl. But then I was wrong about her being clean.
Her public image is so straight and perfect—although those are always the ones with the darkest secrets. And the most dangerous ones, because their real selves are hidden behind a mask.
I bite my lip because I love a dangerous woman.
I slip the phone into my pocket and get ready to drop the impersonation of the shy service personnel. Doing so is a routine for me like brushing my teeth. Evading surveillance, removing the optical clues like lenses, glasses, wig, and clothes.
By the time I reach my disguised apartment in the Meatpacking District, I’ve erased every trace of who I was an hour ago.
If anyone were to ask me who I am behind all those roles I step into, I couldn’t tell. My past has made me become a shadow. A shadow with only one purpose: Revenge.
The revenge I’ll never get.
Murderous anger boils up in me.
I needed to kill and torture Sutton.
It was all I ever wanted.
And now?
Now I am left with anger, rage, and an unsatisfied need for revenge.
I need a relief.
Tension relief.
And I don’t care how.
I fall onto my Japanese bed on the floor and grab a vibrator from my nightstand. I slide it over my labia and my clit with rhythmical stroking. I close my eyes.
My mind wanders to Lilian Knightley. Target. Suspect. Fucking hot. Someone I can never have, nor want, because I have rules. Rules I never break, not even bend. But for my fantasy? Oh, I will use her in it, make her do what I want, and then, she’ll be my release, because I could not kill Sutton.
I imagine what it would feel like to have Lilian lick me, tied up and begging for me to let her go.
But I won’t let her go.
A moan leaves my throat as I put more pressure on the vibrator and let more images run through my mind.
I am standing, and Lilian is kneeling in front of me, eyes on the floor until I cage her jaw with my hand to pull her chin up.
Her eyes are filled with tears; she knows what is about to happen, she knows what she has done.
Her icy blue eyes, framed by the blond hair, bore into mine.
She isn’t used to being told what to do and handled against her will, which I enjoy immensely.
I rub the vibrator over my clit and roll my hips against my hand.
She squeals as I push her back, but I don’t give her any time to think or get up. I pull her legs straight before I sit down on her face.
Be a good girl, I tell her in my imagination. Lick me and fuck me with your tongue. Bite, and I’ll snap your head.
I moan louder as my body imagines the sensation it would produce.
I imagine pushing her up and back. Choking her.
That desperate look in her eyes.
Yes? Anything you wish to say?
A wonderful tingling sensation rushes through my core as I roll my hips against the pressure of my hand, before waves of my orgasm roll through me as the Lilian in my imagination gets unconscious.
I pant in blissful relief as it spreads through me. I love getting myself off on movies and images in my mind, especially those that include choking.
I can finally think straight again.
There has yet to come the person who makes me come during real sex, and it might never happen, because I trust no one, never will.
I’m okay with it. I fuck with others solely for the pleasure of getting new ideas to play through in my mind.
My life doesn’t go well with relationships of any kind anyway.
Not that I want one. Other people are annoying.
I still can’t understand how other people have to be in a relationship to be happy. To me, it’s probably the worst thing in the world—having another human around me who has feelings and wants, worst case, to cuddle? Eww.
The only thing I do is fuck. As anonymously as possible, which is usually very unsatisfying. None of the women I have been with has ever made me come; they never stimulated my mind, so I take them into my fantasy to make up the stories of what I really want.
What I want is breath-taking thrill to test the limit of human existence, consuming desire, and devouring submission. None of it have I found in real life, so I am perfectly fine with releasing my needs with my fantasy alone.
The phone I have set up as a clone of Lilian’s phone vibrates, forcing me to get up.
I stare at the display before I listen in to the call Lilian is making, but I tune out the more time passes. All these business people with their boring lives, I can’t listen to the slickness.
I plug the phone in and mirror it onto a larger screen. I scan through everything, but nothing suggests that Sutton’s data was correct. Lilian either has vanished everything, or Sutton made it up to get something from her. After all, we live in an age of AI and Deepfakes.
But why would he? To blackmail her to do what? It makes no sense at all.
Lilian comes from a powerful family; maybe she managed to erase the evidence through influence?
Moreover, I am not getting anywhere with the question of who killed Sutton.
“Damnit!” I curse.
Sutton was mine to kill.
Mine.
And someone got to him before me.
Someone took my revenge from me.
Someone professional.
Or very close, I tell myself in my mind.
My mind wanders to Lilian. Could she have done it? But I watched her, and had her watched and tracked by the DeAngelo’s sisters. If it were her, there would be some digital trail of it. Only there ain’t any.
I have to find another way to validate my findings. Although I am certain they are real. Why should Sutton have fake videos and photos of Lilian? There is no way he managed to fake all of it. But I wouldn’t be me if I were not thorough.
And if I were completely honest, I would admit that I already know what to do. I’ll do what I always do. I become the person who is needed to provide the information.
I know the effect I had on Lilian when I impersonated the room service employee—It’ll be a home run to get close to Lilian through the impersonation until Lilian can’t resist, but trust me.
I walk over to the mirror and look at myself—the lean woman with the brown hair and hazel eyes.
After all this time, after all the people I had to become to get to Sutton, after all the training of becoming who I am, I have no idea if that truly is me or some byproduct I had to become in the meantime.
It also doesn’t matter who I am. Maybe it is for the better that I don’t know who I am. The words of my mentor find their way into my mind, the one who took me in and trained me as the lethal weapon I am now.
“You are meant to be a nobody. Being a shadow is what makes you deadly.”
I am a shadow. I am a killer. I am ridding the world of all the assholes. I repeat my mantra in my head.
I grab some comfort clothes and sit down at the desk to develop the character I need to step into so that Lilian will inevitably let me in.
Lilian has perfect feathers; none of them could ever be ruffled. I saw her delight after I arranged the silverware; she likes organized perfection—needs it.
I write down a few keywords to shape the character I am about to become. I follow a three-quarters rule: three parts of what Lilian likes and feels drawn to, and one quarter of what she dislikes, to make it feel like a challenge for her.
Seducing a person is, in the end, a mathematical equation, and I am all about logic. Everything in the universe, even the chaos, follows a logic, and so do humans. It is about giving them what they want by understanding how they perceive the world, which is why I am as good as I am.
Over the following days, I develop a backstory for the woman I will become.
Where she is from, her desires and failures, her most significant pain points, her weaknesses and strengths.
I teach myself to speak differently, adopt a different accent, and learn the local habits, words, and people of the fake hometown.
When I feel certain enough, I change my appearance. Instead of a wig, I color my hair in a natural orange-red, put in the colored lenses, and get an entire wardrobe that fits the character.
I get all the necessary documents and an official bank account with a payment history that roughly fits my character’s MO. There is nothing you cannot get in the depths of the internet if you have enough money and know your way.
I get an apartment in Dumbo that fits the character and style, in a way my impersonation would: a cheap apartment in a rundown building right by the subway.