Reo clicked his pen. “Two minutes.”
Okay. Think.
I let my gaze study Rin the way I would a photograph I had to write truth about. Nails clean, cuticles oiled to a gentle sheen, masculine but manicured hands. The mouth—no smoker’s stain, no tea-darkness, teeth polished, the kind of hygiene that meant wealth or vanity or both.
When he breathed, his shoulders barely moved: deep belly control. A dancer’s economy or a fighter’s. Or a prince’s.
Yeah. He’s royalty. Damn. Third in line? That’s damned close to be hanging with us in this room. I have so many questions! Or. . .maybe he isn’t third in line. Perhaps. . .he’s like tenth in line and that is the lie, but then that would mean. . .the other stuff is true. Ick!
Still, I went back to the first two statements.
My mouth went dry.
A human heart for dinner once a month. A bag over a woman’s head in bed.
Both were insane in their own ways, and I couldn’t even decide which one made my skin crawl the most.
On one hand—eating a heart?
That was horror-movie grotesque.
Where was he getting the hearts?
Did he eat them with something? Rice? Noodles? More human organs?
Yuck!
Was he keeping the human heart in a freezer next to bags of edamame?
On the other hand. . .the bag over the woman’s head.
It was quieter madness. The kind that slipped under your door while you were sleeping. Not messy blood and bone, but psychologically fucked up.
Why would he do that?
Did he keep the bag over her face so he couldn’t look in her eyes?
And if yes. . .what the fuck had happened to him in his childhood?
Sounded like lots of abuse that may have ventured on sexual.
Shame.
Odd erotic torture dealing with purity and degradation.
Yikes.
The more I thought about it, the more twisted it became.
One was barbaric.
The other was deliriously psychologically clinical.
One screamed ritual sacrifice.
The other whispered psychotic fetish in the dark.
And the worst part?
