“Remember her?” I held it where he could see. “Purchased six months ago. “They aren’t at either of your properties, so where are they?”"
He made sounds behind the gag. Denial or confession, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care. I was struggling to remain calm, impatient for his death, the folder of photos a heavy burden in my quest for vengeance.
“We will find her,” Rowan said assuredly. “Myvolchokis very patient when she is properly motivated.”
That’s generous. Patience wasnotmy virtue; it was Rowan’s. But rage could substitute for patience when properly channeled.
I straddled Edward’s lap, feeling him try to shrink away. Impossible with how Rowan had tied him. Every movement just drove the ropes deeper.
“You’re going to tell us everything,” I whispered, my lips close to his ear. “Every girl. Every client. Every supplier. And then, when you’ve confessed it all, when you’ve given us names and locations and account numbers. . .” I licked his earlobe. “I’m going to enjoy watching you get dismembered piece by piece.”
Behind me, Rowan made a sound of approval.
I climbed off Edward’s lap, my body humming with adrenaline and arousal as I turned my heated gaze to Rowan. His slight nod said he was ready. My subtle smile said I was grateful.
“You see, Edward,” I began, pulling the only remaining wooden chair in the room from the wall over to him, “Your story doesn’t begin with us abducting you. It doesn’t begin with those ropes, or this room, or the moment you had to realize that your money means nothing to me or to this place.”
Rowan moved behind me, and I leaned back into his strength, drawing power from his presence.
“Your story begins with mine,” I continued. “With a nine-year-old girl who disappeared. A girl whose family searched for years, never knowingif she was alive or dead. But that girl grew up,” I said, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper, “So you killed her. . . And when she came back, when she found herself again with all those dark and gristly memories intact, do you know what she did then, Edward?” I knew he could see the madness and purpose in my eyes as I whispered, “That girl decided that some sins transcend death, especially here in the Second Circle, where impossible things breathe in the shadows.
“So, we’re going to tell you a story,” I said, settling back in my chair with Rowan’s hands resting on my shoulders. “A story about two people who shouldn’t exist, hunting a man who shouldn’t be allowed to live. A story about what happens when the universe makes a clerical error and gives survivors a second chance.”
I smiled and Edward flinched as my voice took on the cadence of a bedtime story. “How every choice you made led you here. How every girl you bought, every life you destroyed, every scream you ignored wove the taut rope that now holds you in that chair.”
Rowan’s thumbs pressed into the knots of tension in my shoulders, and I had to suppress a moan. His reminder that even here, even now, he could make my body sing.
“But most importantly,” I said, “We’re going to tell you what comes next. After your confession. After the names. After you’ve given us everything we need to find every girl you’ve touched in this life.”
I reached out and stroked his face gently, feeling him try to jerk away.
“We’re going to tell you exactly how you die, Edward. And then we’re going to make it happen.”
The stone walls of the Second Circle seemed to lean in, listening. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the candlelight, things that weren’t quite human stirred with interest.
“Shall we begin?” I asked.
“Once upon a time,” I began, my voice sweet as honey, “there was a little girl who trusted the wrong person. But don’t worry, Edward. This story has a happy ending.”
I smiled wider, showing all my teeth.
“For me, at least.”
Chapter 1
Violet
The barbell piercings were heavier in my palm than I expected, cold and full of promise. Atlanta's city life bustled outside the tattoo parlor's frosted windows. The cushioned cherry-red chair I sat in was sticky against my skin, and voices carried through the curtains that separated me and the tattoo artist.
“Take your top off, and I’ll mark where they'll go,” he said. He’d introduced himself as Adam, which I thought was a rather common name for someone with so much body art and piercings.
Not that I minded. I enjoyed my fair share of bad boys growing up. But despite his tough appearance, Adam did not give off a malicious vibe. Especially with how his rainbow mohawk caught the parlor’s fluorescent light like an oil slick.
“Sure thing,” I said as I pulled off my oversized light sweater without hesitation, braless underneath. The cold air from the AC hit my skin, raising goosebumps across flesh that still didn’t feel like mine. It’s been slightly over two weeks since I’d woken up twenty years old again, and filled to bursting with an additional twenty-four years' worth of memories of another life crammed into my skull where I had been bought when I was only nine. Everything before then matched my current life. Nine years of happiness with a family who loved me before the tragedy.
I spent the first few nights sobbing—an appropriate response in my opinion, though a therapist might disagree. Then I distracted myself, getting ready for college life, pretending I was okay. It wasn’t until I watched with morbid fascination the doors of my adolescent homequietly close behind me that the truth slowly began to harden in my mind like cement.
Both of my lives were real.
