Page 242 of The Monster and the Masochist

Cass gripped my jaw and turned my head to face her, as I was helplessly staring at Samwell again.

His ugly face was twisted up and stained with tears. He was screaming into the tape over his mouth, but it was so muffled I suspected Cass had stuffed his mouth full of something too.

He couldn’t talk.

She’d stolen his voice.

He had no way to whisper those fucked up words to me anymore.

Her monster had already killed him in my head… but… she was…

She was offering me a chance to kill him in real life, too?

“If you don’t want to do it, or if you can’t, that’s fine, sweet girl. I can do it for you. But whether it’s you or me, that man is dying tonight. You just let me know what you want to do.”

“I… I… Uhm…”

Fuck. Why couldn’t I make words!?

“Someone needs to explain what the fuck is going on before I lose it,” Ryan snapped suddenly. “We have a fucking showing in the morning, and you have a goddamned torture victim hanging by a noose in my basement! This is madness!”

“He hurt Theo,” Cal growled, and finally, I was able to tear my eyes away from the teetering man whimpering before me.

I glanced at Ryan, who looked to me to confirm.

I still couldn’t speak. My mind was stuck on the fact that Cass was giving me the opportunity to kill my rapist.

Did I want that?

Ryan glanced back at our mangled ex-principal, and I watched as he finally took a moment to actually read the word that’d been brutally carved into his chest.

His brow furrowed, then his gaze darted back to meet mine, and I saw it as he started to put two and two together.

“You were in trouble with him a lot… You were always in his office…”

I swallowed and nodded.

“Yeah.”

Ryan glanced back one last time at the gagged and bleeding man, and I watched his eyes darken.

I’d only seen that look on his face once before. It was the look he’d given Damien moments before he shot the man in the head.

“It wasn’t just Theo,” Cass said. “He’s been grooming and sexually assaulting young queer girls for years. He tells them he’s curing them while he assaults them,” Cass explained. I frowned, glancing at her.

She was so calm right now. Her voice was even, and she was looking at Samwell like he was worth less than dirt in her eyes.

She wasn’t angry, and the violent look she often got in her eyes when her monster was near was nowhere to be found.

This was almost scarier.

Like she didn’t think the man was worthy of her rage, but she would kill him anyway with a smile on her face and a song in her heart.

Jesus. What a fucking woman.

Unlike Cass, Ryan looked angry. Cal did too. His pupils had blown, and I could tell he was teetering dangerously close to the edge.

Cal had some… less than legal habits when it came to people like the reverend. Habits he’d sworn off for good once he was free of Damien.