Chapter 11
It’s next Tuesday.
I adjust the hem of my black silk skirt.
It sits higher on my thighs than anything I’d usually wear.
Valerio’s attractive, but for me, that’s a biological fact, not an emotional one.
I’m not doing this because I’m attracted to him—it’s because I want to see if a psychopath’s nervous system will acknowledge the curve of a woman’s leg, or if he’s as dead inside as he pretends to be.
My means have never been ethical.
The black sedan he sent is waiting. It’s been outside my office since morning.
We drive deep into the industrial district. The car stops in front of an old, crumbling warehouse. I get out, the wind whipping my long brown hair across my face.
Inside, Valerio is standing by a lone wooden chair in the center of the floor. He’s wearing a fresh pair of black gloves. He looks at my legs, his gaze lingering for a heartbeat longer than necessary. Other than that, I get absolutely no reaction. Not even dilated pupils or a slight lean toward me.
“You're late,” he says.
“You didn't give me a time. You gave me a day.”
“Sit.” He gestures to the chair.
“No.”
He walks closer until the silk of my blouse brushes the wool of his suit. The aura he carries is suffocating—a heavy, dark shroud that wants to pull me under.
“Sit,” he hisses.
I sit. The wood is hard against my spine.
Valerio snaps his fingers.
From the shadows, four of his men emerge. They’re dragging five people—men, ragged and gagged, their eyes wide with terror. They’re strapped to the far wall with heavy industrial zip ties.
Valerio walks to a table and picks up a handgun, checking the mag.
What the fuck is happening?
“I thought the office was too clinical, Charlotte,” he says, turning back to me. He’s calm. Terrifyingly calm. “Therapy should be practical. Tangible.”
He stands next to me, the gun hanging at his side. “Five men. Five lives. You have questions you want to ask me. You want to dig into the cellar. You want to find the ‘why’ behind the ‘what.’”
He raises the gun, aiming it at the man on the far left. “For every answer I give you, I’m going to put a bullet in one of them. Choose your questions wisely, Doc. Make sure they’re worth a life.”
My hands sweat so much I have to wipe them on my skirt. This is a trap. He wants to see if I’ll stop him or if I’ll keep digging. Too bad for him—nothing in this world could stop me from digging into the darkness I enjoy analyzing so much, not even my screaming conscience.
“You’re testing my stomach, Valerio,” I say.
“First question. Make it count.”
I should get up and walk out. But my mind is already racing, discarding the useless questions. I want the core. I want the rot.
“Lucian says you’re making ‘art’ out of the hits,” I mutter. “He thinks you’re losing control. Is it that, or are you trying to communicate something to them that you can’t say out loud?”
Valerio’s finger tightens.
Thwip.
The man on the wall jerks, his head snapping back. A spray of blood hits the side of my face. Fuck. A gasp escapes me when I realize the bastard wasn’t bluffing. The answer better be worth this, because my stomach tightens and I have to swallow down bile.
“It’s not for them,” Valerio grumbles. He doesn’t even look at the body. “It’s for me. I’m looking for the piece I’m missing. I haven’t found it yet.”
He moves to the second man. The guy looks at me with pleading eyes, and I look away so it doesn’t dig into me.
“Next,” Valerio prompts.
I’m plagued with a sick, intrusive need to know more. Why am I still here?
“The gloves,” I start. My skirt rides up as I shift in my seat, and Valerio’s gaze zeroes in for a second before his eyes flick away.
“The aversion to touch. You kill with such intimacy, but you won’t let a living hand graze your skin.
Is it because you’re afraid you’ll feel nothing, or because you’re afraid you’ll feel everything? ”
Thwip.
The second man slumps. More red on the concrete. The smell of copper is thick now, cloying in the back of my throat.
“I don’t touch them because they’re loud,” he whispers. “Everyone is so goddamn loud. Their needs, their fears, their pathetic little lives. When I touch them, I hear it all. The only time the world is quiet is when they stop breathing.”
He raises the gun, aiming it at the third man over his shoulder without even looking.
“Three left, Charlotte. You want to know about the cellar? You want to know what she did to me.”
“I want to know if you hate her because she broke you, or because she made you exactly like your father,” I dare to ask.
The leather of his glove strains against his knuckles.
Thwip.
The third man’s life ends.
I’m covered in blood now.
“She didn’t break me,” he says. “I’m the one who decided I liked the dark.”
He looks at the last two men, both of them weeping.
I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
“Two more, Doc. Or are you full?”
“I’m never full, Valerio.”
I stand. My legs are weak, but I force them to hold me. I walk toward him, stepping over the pooling blood on the floor. His energy is the darkest thing I’ve ever seen, and I want to drown in it.
“Why did you invite me here? Why do you want me to see this?”
“Because,” he rasps, wiping the smeared blood of the men he just killed from my cheek, “I want to see how you’ll react when I finally show you what’s at the bottom of the cellar.”
He drops the gun. It clatters on the concrete. He turns and walks back into the darkness where he belongs, leaving the last two men alive, shaking on the wall.
My brain tries to categorize the last twenty minutes, trying to slot them into a reality that makes sense, but the data won’t fit. I reach out, gripping the back of the wooden chair to keep from collapsing onto the gore-slicked floor.
The two men left on the wall make a sound—a whine of pure terror.
It snaps me out of the trance.
I move toward them. I don’t look at the three who are still. I can’t. If I look at their faces, the reality of what I’ve done will crush me. Yes, Valerio’s hands were on the gun, but I was the one who pulled the trigger.
“Don’t move,” I whisper to one of the men still alive. His eyes are rolled back in his head, his body shaking so hard the rusted ring in the wall rattles.
I reach for the Glock on my thigh to use the serrated edge of the tactical knife I keep in the holster’s side pocket. My hands are trembling so badly I almost drop it. I saw through the zip ties, the plastic snapping with a sharp clack.
The man falls to his knees, sobbing into his gag.
I move to the second man to cut him loose. He doesn’t even wait for me to finish before he’s scrambling toward the exit, crawling on all fours.
I’m alone with the dead.
I grab my trench coat from the crate where I left it, buttoning it all the way to my chin and turning the collar up to mask the smear on my jaw.
I push through the heavy side door and stumble into the night. The rain has started again—it feels like heaven against my heated skin.
The sedan is waiting exactly where it dropped me off. The driver doesn’t say a word as I climb into the back. He doesn’t ask why I’m shivering or why I smell like a slaughterhouse.
Valerio Morelli is a monster. He is the darkest thing I have ever touched.
I can’t wait for Tuesday.