I can finally think straight again.
There has yet to come the person who makes me come during real sex, and it might never happen, because I trust no one, never will. I’m okay with it. I fuck with others solely for the pleasure of getting new ideas to play through in my mind. My life doesn’t go well with relationships of any kind anyway. Not that I want one. Other people are annoying.
I still can’t understand how other people have to be in a relationship to be happy. To me, it’s probably the worst thing in the world—having another human around me who has feelings and wants, worst case, to cuddle? Eww.
The only thing I do is fuck. As anonymously as possible, whichis usually very unsatisfying. None of the women I have been with has ever made me come; they never stimulated my mind, so I take them into my fantasy to make up the stories of what I really want.
What I want is breath-taking thrill to test the limit of human existence, consuming desire, and devouring submission. None of it have I found in real life, so I am perfectly fine with releasing my needs with my fantasy alone.
The phone I have set up as a clone of Lilian’s phone vibrates, forcing me to get up.
I stare at the display before I listen in to the call Lilian is making, but I tune out the more time passes. All these business people with their boring lives, I can’t listen to the slickness.
I plug the phone in and mirror it onto a larger screen. I scan through everything, but nothing suggests that Sutton’s data was correct. Lilian either has vanished everything, or Sutton made it up to get something from her. After all, we live in an age of AI and Deepfakes.
But why would he? To blackmail her to do what? It makes no sense at all.
Lilian comes from a powerful family; maybe she managed to erase the evidence through influence?
Moreover, I am not getting anywhere with the question of who killed Sutton.
“Damnit!” I curse.
Sutton was mine to kill.
Mine.
And someone got to him before me.
Someone took my revenge from me.
Someone professional.
Or very close,I tell myself in my mind.
My mind wanders to Lilian. Could she have done it? But I watched her, and had her watched and tracked by the DeAngelo’s sisters. If it were her, there would be some digital trail of it. Only there ain’t any.
I have to find another way to validate my findings. Although I am certain they are real. Why should Sutton have fake videos and photos of Lilian? There is no way he managed to fake all of it. But I wouldn’t be me if I were not thorough.
And if I were completely honest, I would admit that I alreadyknow what to do. I’ll do what I always do. I become the person who is needed to provide the information.
I know the effect I had on Lilian when I impersonated the room service employee—It’ll be a home run to get close to Lilian through the impersonation until Lilian can’t resist, but trust me.
I walk over to the mirror and look at myself—the lean woman with the brown hair and hazel eyes. After all this time, after all the people I had to become to get to Sutton, after all the training of becoming who I am, I have no idea if that truly is me or some byproduct I had to become in the meantime.
It also doesn’t matter who I am. Maybe it is for the better that I don’t know who I am. The words of my mentor find their way into my mind, the one who took me in and trained me as the lethal weapon I am now.
“You are meant to be a nobody. Being a shadow is what makes you deadly.”
I am a shadow. I am a killer. I am ridding the world of all the assholes.I repeat my mantra in my head.
I grab some comfort clothes and sit down at the desk to develop the character I need to step into so that Lilian will inevitably let me in.
Lilian has perfect feathers; none of them could ever be ruffled. I saw her delight after I arranged the silverware; she likes organized perfection—needs it.
I write down a few keywords to shape the character I am about to become. I follow a three-quarters rule: three parts of what Lilian likes and feels drawn to, and one quarter of what she dislikes, to make it feel like a challenge for her.
Seducing a person is, in the end, a mathematical equation, and I am all about logic. Everything in the universe, even the chaos, follows a logic, and so do humans. It is about giving them what they want by understanding how they perceive the world, which is why I am as good as I am.
