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Every last one of them.
“Kayla?” Elsie calls from the other side of the speaker. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah.” I shake my head and pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’ve gotta get some sleep. I’ll text my mom.”
“Before you go, I wanted to talk to you about having a bodyguard. I know you dismissed it last time, but?—”
I groan, throwing my head back against the seat. “Not this again.”
“Please? It’ll help me not worry. With this killer on the loose and someone trafficking again, I don’t like you out there withoutprotection. Between you going to college in the city and then driving an hour home, I want you to be safe.”
“I’m safe. I swear.”
I don’t want to feel like I’m caged again.
“Just think about it, okay? Michael insists, and so do I. Jade and I have one, and we can still do whatever we want. It’s not prison, Kayla.”
Then why does it feel like it?
I don’t want someone following me around, keeping tabs on me and what I do.
He’s going to report to Michael and tell him about the bars I go to. Tell him about the other stuff… I can’t let anyone find out.
“I’ll think about it,” I lie right through my teeth. “Get some rest. Love you.”
“Love—”
But I drop the call before she can say any more. I know she loves me too. But I can’t be a prisoner again.
ADRIEL
“What the hell are you doing?!” Casius roars, standing on the plastic that covers the span of one large room in my basement.
His hands are free. The drunken fog no longer coats his vision. There’s nothing stopping him from attempting to overtake me and run. I like a good chase.
I’m glad I get to do this while he’s conscious.
Unspooling the garrote, I clutch it in both hands as I take slow, menacing steps. He moves back, his eyes wide as he takes in my movement, the wire that will soon trap his throat.
But it won’t kill him. No, it will spill enough blood to make himwish for death. And once it comes, it’ll be in the form of flames.
He will know true suffering, and he will deserve it.
“You’re insane,” he whispers. “You need help. You…you can’t do this.”
He trips against the chair behind him and clutches the back of it with both hands, as though a measly chair will save him. He lifts it in the air and throws it at me with a roar, but I merely smile and shove it away.
“It’s always the insane ones who think everyone else is crazy.” Dry laughter escapes my lungs, while his eyes only grow with fear. So much of it, I rejoice in it.
It’s what his victims felt. The way he didn’t care when they did. I don’t care either. There is this detached feeling I can’t explain in words, but it helps not to have it. Makes it much easier to stomach.
As he tries to rush around me, I grab his hair and throw him on the floor, his body beneath mine. Before he can do a thing, the wire cuts into his throat, blood beading around it. I push it further into his skin, sinking it with gradual power, hard enough for him to know this is it.
His hands fight me, but it’s too late. When his movements slow, I drag him up with me and bring him to the far end of the room where an electric furnace waits.
By all appearances, it looks like a regular wall, a painting of sunrise hiding the opening. And even then, when the artwork is removed, it’s as though it’s a white wall. Nothing there at all. But with the press of a button on my keychain, a rectangular section of it opens to reveal Casius’s new home.
He groans while I hold him up with the wire still cutting into him.
