Chapter 17 #3
Cassidy hovers over his backside, “Funny how much you seem to like forcing objects inside people. It only seems fair to let you experience it as well.”
She plucks one of the poker chips between her fingers and rams it into his rectum.
His body bucks and his head hits the table as he wails from the pain and unexpected intrusion.
A sinister smile spreads across her face right before she drives two more chips into his ass, escalating the torment.
Her expression turns manic as she laughs, “What’s the fucking username or I’ll do a stack at a time.”
He grates out, “PrettyLittleDolls00.”
An icy shiver snakes through me.
I know that username, not from the streams but from the dark web.
Months ago, while tracing trafficking forums and hidden payment routes, I discovered it hidden inside encrypted boards tied to missing persons cases.
PrettyLittleDolls00. It’s a buyer account with outrageous funds and demands.
The kind other users avoid speaking about.
Cassidy picks up on the shift in my expression.
“What?”
I watch him without blinking.
“Where did you interact with that account?”
The trafficker starts quaking.
“I never spoke directly to them! Everything was anonymous and requests came through moderators sometimes”
“What kind of requests?”
He stalls.
That’s all Cassidy needs, she drives another chip in his asshole, deeper this time and as her gloved hand moves away, I see the blood coating it.
He yelps and shrinks back, anguish spreading through his features.
“What kind?” She repeats the question.
His voice breaks, “Specific appearances. Younger-looking girls. Costumes. Fear.”
The room drops into a heavy, unnatural quiet that hangs over everyone like a warning.
Cassidy’s hands clamp onto the edge of the poker table, the pressure turning her knuckles white.
I feel a dense sickness remembering the things attached to that username online.
Photos, rumors, whispers across encrypted forums, girls disappearing and bodies never found.
Every time the username has surfaced, threads they were part of end up completely gone shortly after.
As if some powerful being was scrubbing everything clean.
Monsterinyourcloset868 starts openly crying.
“I swear I never met them and I only streamed what they paid for!”
Cassidy charges in front of him and snatches his jaw.
“You sold women to other monsters.”
“I didn’t fucking touch them!”
“You profited from it.”
I rise slowly from the chair, staring down at him while the realization sinks in.
PrettyLittleDolls00 isn’t just some random buyer.
It’s someone profoundly engrained in this world.
And judging by the fear in the trafficker’s eyes, someone even men like him are afraid of.
The storm intensifies outside.
Monsterinyourcloset868 sobs harder.
“I gave you the name,” he chokes out in despair. “Please, I told you everything!”
Cassidy stares at him, jaw tightening.
Her knuckles are still white against the wood.
I know that look.
She’s somewhere dangerous mentally right now.
Not out of control but worse.
The kind of calm that comes right before irreversible violence.
I make my way around the table, eyes never leaving the trafficker.
“How did PrettyLittleDolls00 contact you?”
“I already told you, through moderators!”
I slam my hand down on the table hard enough he flinches back.
“Who were the moderators?”
“I DON’T KNOW THEIR NAMES!”
Cassidy picks up another chip from the table.
His breathing is coming out abnormally due to the broken nose, “They used voice-changers sometimes,” he blurts out. “Encrypted chats. Dead drops. Crypto transfers.”
“Locations?” I inquire.
“I never handled fucking pickups!”
Cassidy paces around him with the unnerving patience of someone in no rush to end this.
The trafficker’s icy glare jerks wildly around the room, trying to follow her as she circles him.
“You’re lying,” she insists.
“No!”
“You expect me to believe a man streaming girls and holding them in cages doesn’t know where they are going?”
“I HAVE NO IDEA!”
Cassidy snaps the gloves off and seizes her knife. She sinks it right in front of his head and then in one swoop removes it.
He shrieks.
I look around, and everything starts moving like time has thickened around us. The room feels detached from reality now. Blood streaks across the floor. Rain pours through the shattered window. Bodies lie motionless, still warm enough to be steaming in the cold air.
Then there’s Cassidy standing behind the trafficker with a knife in her hand, looking less like a survivor and more like vengeance in human form.
He detects it too because his expression changes into soul-deep dread. Not the kind that thinks he is going to die, but the kind that wonders how.
“Reaper.” My voice stays low, regulated.
She turns her focus onto me.
Blood plasters her jaw and throat.
Beneath the fury twisting through her expression, there’s still something achingly human left standing in the wreckage.
Not softness or innocence. Someone hanging on by splinters while the brutality threatens to swallow the rest of her whole.
I edge nearer with measured steps, careful not to push too hard against whatever fragile restraint she has left.
“He’s scared of someone,” I tell Cassidy. “More scared than he is of us.”
The trafficker shakes his head rapidly.
“No no no!”
“Who?” Cassidy asks, her voice edged with cold curiosity.
His breathing turns ragged again.
“I can’t, I can’t, I FUCKING CAN’T!”
Cassidy tilts her head somewhat.
“Why?”
His voice drops to scarcely a whisper.
“Because people evaporate when they talk about them.”
Rainwater drops repeatedly from the ceiling into a growing puddle near the kitchen.
I consider his words and toss them around in my head with what I do know before I ask,
“PrettyLittleDolls00 isn’t one person, is it?”
His eyes inflate.
There it is, his reaction.
Cassidy sees it too.
The puzzle pieces connect for both of us at the same time.
Not a buyer, not one monster but an organization, a network, a name people hide behind.