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“Don’t call. Don’t send any more of your people. I have a shovel and a whole lot of land to use. Deep lakes. Rivers. Forests. Several conveniently placed graveyards.” He stops to chuckle, and when I tilt my head, I can see his grin—pure malice.
I hold my breath.
“Victoria can have all the company you feel like sending to their deaths.”
“I... You didn’t.”
My buzzing heart goes still, then restarts, heavy and slow as I realize who the second voice belongs to.
The idiot! He called Pazcuso. What if I had called out in my sleep?
Maybe he just thought this would work best?
I stay still, knees to chest, neck craned.
“I’m sending the pictures. Send me some more of your friends. Go ahead. I can start a collage. Make a trophy wall.”
“You bastard.” The speaker on my phone crackles.
“Accurate. I have many different fathers. None of them are you. I owe you nothing. I have no obligation to you. There’s no little bit of human kindness that’s going to stop me from ripping people apart when you send them to me.”
“You think you can stiff me, Lazarus?” Pazcuso’s voice gathers strength. “You owe me. You owe me your life.”
“Nope. I owe you my deaths. Dozens. How many people was I harvested from? I’ll give you a body back for each one, Pazzy.”
Pazzy. I smirk into my hand. No one would get away with calling him that.
Lazarus has brass balls.
My warm, sleepy body takes note of the way he looks when he smiles like that. Dark and dangerous.
Suddenly delicious when I know it’s just a part.
“You think because you killed one little nobody that I’m afraid of you? Or that you are gonna get away with it?”
The gray features change. Hard. Angry. He paces, catches my eyes peering at him through the doorway as I sit on the edge of the bed, and puts a finger to his lips. “A nobody? I thought you said she was pretty amazing. Golden pussy.”
“Sampled it, huh? Sure you don’t want to dig her up and bring her back to daddy? The body looks pretty fresh. I can fix her for you, Laz. I can make her your perfect little fuck toy.”
You know what’s sexier than seeing Lazarus play the part of the bad guy and sass the slimy jerk who made him?
Seeing the rage on his face, seeing how his chest heaves, and his shoulders work when someone threatens me, or even my corpse.
Oh, I’m a whole bundle of red flags. I’m a red ground sheet that would cover a stadium at this point.
And I’m turned on by the way he snarls into the phone, “If you think I’d let you do to anyone what you did to me, you’re wrong. But someday, Vince... Someday, I might come home. Come home to ‘daddy.’ Know why?”
Pazcuso says nothing, probably because he knows the answer.
“Because if you don’t leave me in peace, then I’ll leave you in pieces.”
Lazarus hangs up and powers off the phone. The call is dead. He looks at me, checks the phone again to make sure it is truly off, then asks, “Do you want a new phone? Anything on this phone that you don’t want to lose?”
“It’s basically a burner. They’ve been burners for the last year,” I murmur.
Lazarus’ booted foot comes down on it, and it shatters into the carpet. “I’m gonna go get a vacuum,” he mutters.
“Wait!” I rush to him, nimbly avoiding the shattered remains of my cell. I leap into his arms and kiss him with all I’m worth.
