Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Rue
Islip out of Hugo’s half of the duplex before sunrise, leaving him asleep on the couch with a tiny frown on his lips.
It’s harder than it should be. But I have videos to watch.
I start the coffee and settle at the kitchen table with my laptop. The first two videos are pretty much what I was braced for: grainy images of the two of us, shot in low light from a static, too-low angle. Awful but survivable.
The third video sends me racing for the bathroom, where I vomit up the coffee I just drank.
Once my stomach’s empty, I wipe off my mouth, sit back down at the table, and watch it again.
My then-boyfriend is sitting on the edge of the bed, and I’m kneeling between his thighs, enthusiastically blowing him. But when he whispers sweet-hot things to me—how sexy I am, how good I’m making him feel—he looks into the camera hidden on our dresser and rolls his eyes.
When I take him deep enough to choke, he fakes a yawn.
When he shifts so my skin grafts are angled toward the camera, he cringes at getting serviced by someone with a visible defect.
I don’t need to watch the fourth and fifth videos to see more of him staging my humiliation. I’ve got a murder to plan.