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Ducking beneath my desk, I check for my router, but it’s gone.
“Shit.”
The cable company set up my internet connection, and my troubleshooting skills don’t extend beyond turning the router off and back on again.
Is Xero trying to replicate his conditions on death row? Rising off my seat, I leave in search of the spare handset I left in my nightstand.
I enter my room, looking for signs that it’s been hit by a malevolent ghost, but everything is just as I left it. Sunlight streams through the windows, illuminating my black sheets and the collar and chain still attached to the bed.
Heart pounding, I approach the nightstand and open the drawer. The phone I left there is still intact, so I connect it to the charger.
But when I search for the SIM card, it’s gone.
“Fuck you, Xero,” I mutter.
There’s no reply, no rebuke or retribution, because Xero’s powers are at their weakest during the day. He’s waiting for nightfall, when he can strike at me from the shadows. And he’s locked me up, so I can’t get help or holy water.
Anger wells up in my chest, burning through the mounting dread. I square my shoulders, curl my fists, and storm into the bathroom. I can’t let him control my life.
If he’s planning something humiliating for me tonight, then I’ll be ready for him. But first, I need a fucking bath.
FORTY-THREE
Alderney State Penitentiary,
Dear Amethyst,
Thank you for supplying the extra sheets. The one with your lip print will stay on my pillow while I grind my cock against the other you soaked with your juices. Fucking pieces of paper you’ve touched is the closest this sinner will know of heaven.
That officer still watches me masturbate each morning. After finishing with me, she crawls into another prisoner’s cell so he can fuck her throat. She then takes him for his morning exercise before sliding into another prisoner’s room. The man in the cell next to mine says they have sex. By then, I’m already too engrossed in calisthenics to care.
No, I didn’t carry out any assignments at the academy. The focus was mainly on preparing the students to qualify for a place at the firm. Do not disclose its name to anyone, but it’s called the Moirai.
Merely mentioning it in public will risk becoming a person of interest. It’s the largest firm of assassins in the country, boasting clients at the highest levels of society.
In answer to your question, the academy made me happybecauseit was the first place since I was removed from my home where I felt a sense of belonging.
I thrived there compared to the facility, where I was content but stifled from spending so much time underground. At that age, I also appreciated the presence of girls. They were capable, strong, and happy, compared to the ones from earlier.
In my final year at the academy, the housekeeper’s eldest daughter joined. Months later, the other arrived, distressed. Without her sister around to keep her company, my father’s youngest son became her tormentor.
The next time I saw my father, I asked why he allowed his sons to bully me and the housekeeper’s daughter. That’s when he said he’d institutionalized his son and added that the girls were my half-sisters and I had to take care of them.
I’m ashamed to admit to being so shocked by the revelation that I forgot to press him for answers. Based on my sister’s account of what happened to her at home, my brother wasn’t completely brain damaged.
Old resentments started to resurface. They festered until a week before our graduation run, when an instructor casually mentioned the word Lolita. Remembering it from the facility, I asked what it meant. He told me to look it up in the library, and I did.
I only read a small portion of the Vladimir Nabokov book, and something inside me clicked into place.
The girls from my former facility were sent to men like the filthy, middle-aged protagonist. That’s why they returned withdrawn and traumatized. They weren’t weak, but had been abused.
I was eighteen, surrounded by fourteen-year-old recruits, knowing that my father sent out girls even younger than them into the hands and beds of monsters.
That’s when I knew he would die.
Fan questions:
Unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to meet the death row prisoners you mentioned. Every day, I speak to the gentlemen who delivers the mail. Once a week, I exchange words with the inmate who runs the library cart. I’m still being punishedfor an unfortunate incident with an officer during a strip search, which means I’m confined to my cell for twenty-three and a half hours each day.
