I smile sweetly. “Oh, I haven’t even started yet. Would you mind taking that crown off? Then put your hands here, please.” I pat just the right spots on the table, right over those grooves.
“Palm reading next?” he says with one brow raised. His patience is running out. He came here to get laid, and I’m dragging things out. But he takes the crown from his head and sets it on the edge of the table.
I shake my head. “Palms down.”
He does as I ask, and I can’t help the coy smile that pulls on my lips. I feel the adrenaline surge through my veins. My nostrils flare just slightly. My spine straightens in anticipation. Here comes the best part.
My hands slip beneath the table. My fingers find the hilts of my daggers, cool and perfect in my grip.
And then I move.
The blades pierce flesh with a satisfying resistance before slamming home into wood. His scream rips through the air, sharp and ugly, as the steel pins both of his hands to the table. Blood spurts, two quick splashes of it rising into the air, a spray of it hitting Travis in the cheek, and just a few drops hitting my chin. And then it starts pooling on the oak surface.
Travis thrashes, jerks, but every movement only tears him further open. His struggle knocks his crown off the table, and it clatters on the floor. Instantly, his face goes pale, his skin glistens with sweat, and panic shatters his expression. Pathetic.
“What the hell, you psycho bitch!”
I lean in, savoring the wide whites of his eyes. “Do you know how many women’s reports I read about you?” My voice is low, sharp as glass. “Twenty-two. All ignored. Every. Single. One. And I do not doubt there are more, they just didn’t dare say anything.”
He whimpers, tries to shake his head. “That’s—that’s bullshit?—”
I slam a fist down between us, hard enough to make the table jump. The movement pulls another pained scream from his throat. “You cornered interns. Your accountant. Three paralegals. You groped women in the break room. Bent them over in the supply closet. And then you told them nobody would believe them, didn’t you?”
His mouth opens, closes, like a fish. He’s bleeding all over my table, the red pooling beneath his palms, soaking into the oak.
The disgust in my gut burns hotter. I see every woman’s face in his reflection—the ones who wrote the reports, who cried into the void, who were told their pain wasn’t valid enough to matter.
“The sad thing is, no one did believe them,” I whisper. “But I do. And unlike the system, I don’t brush these things aside.”
I grab the black bag from under the table and whip it through the air to open it up.
His eyes widen. “Wait—wait, I’ll stop—I swear?—”
“Oh, it’s way too late for empty promises, Travis.”
I climb to my feet and circle the table to stand behind him, even as he violently thrashes to get away. My daggers rip deeper into his flesh, cutting bone, spilling blood. “Halloween is a good day to die though, don’t you think? It really adds to the vibe.”
I yank the bag down over his head and cinch it tight. He instantly sucks in a sharp breath to scream, only to pull in all plastic and zero oxygen. His muffled screams fill the room, raw and ugly. He jerks, his hands being shredded as he tries to get free, his body rocking the heavy oak table. My daggers hold him in place.
I pull back, hard, feeling the bag cling to his face as he gulps for air. He bucks, twitches. The sound is sharp, awful, human.
But eventually, it grows weaker. His jerks become less violent. He slows. He finds a second wind for all of six seconds. And then he slows again.
Until finally, silence.
I hold the bag cinched in place for an extra sixty seconds, just to make sure, and then finally let go.
The body slumps forward, arms still pinned like some grotesque puppet bowing its head.
I breathe out, chest heaving. Adrenaline is ripping through my veins in the very best way possible. The disgust in me simmers down, replaced by something sharper. Satisfaction.
“Justice served,” I murmur, yanking my daggers free. His blood pools into the wood, spreading out on its surface like a dark reflection pool.
I wipe the blades on his shirt before pulling the bag free. His face is slack, his mouth still twisted in terror. The kind of face women see in nightmares. The kind of face that’s burned into HR reports that never go anywhere.
The sight should sicken me. Instead, I feel… lighter. Like I exhaled something I’d been holding for too long.
I turn toward the closet where my cleanup supplies are, ready to disappear the evidence, when something prickles at the back of my neck.
