No fucking air.
I can’t breathe.
Tragen’s already pushed a gun onto the table, and a second envelope. I don’t have to open that envelope to know it contains the same exact fucking contract.
I guess Tragen knows me so well he knew exactly what I’d do. He knew I’d rip up that first contract, and then accept the second one.
I’m fully aware I’m playing into his hands as I grab the gun and sling it under my belt. Then I pocket the envelope.
“Let me out,” I hiss. “I’ve accepted your contract. I’m going to kill Piper Day.”
33
Quill
Present Day
Turns out, it’s fucking hard to find a snake.
I guess that’s what they’re good at. Hiding under rocks and in dark crevasses, waiting for their prey.
I’ve been wrong this whole time. I’m not the monster.Sheis.
She’s not the helpless deer, her heart beating fast against my chest, her body imprisoned in my arms.
She owns me, and she can do exactly what she wants with me.
And I guess what she wants to do is destroy me.
I spent the rest of the night hunting for her. My first stop was my apartment, just in case the duct tape had kept her there, but I already knew before I opened the door to my bedroom that she’d slithered out of those bonds, exactly like the fucking snake she is.
Then I searched her family home. Went back to the Astley hotel, even though I knew that was a dead end. Walked around Devil Tower and in the streets surrounding it, because surely, she can’t have just abandoned her hunt for answers.
But I guess she has. Maybe she never gave a shit about her parents either. Maybe she’s incapable of love.
Maybe that’s why she always seemed to understand me. Because she’s secretly just as coldblooded and monstrous as I am.
The difference is that Ididlove her.
No, love is too soft a word for the way it feels like every cell in her body is wrapped around every one of my cells. How thehell can you ever move on from someone who has changed your DNA?
I’m going to fucking kill her, and then I’m going to string up Liam and Dane and flay them alive. I’ll leave them to bleed out slowly, riddled with stab wounds, chunks of flesh missing from their bodies, their tongues cut out so they can’t beg for mercy. But I’ll leave their eyeballs intact so they can see me die when I turn the gun on myself.
Cold horror will be their fate. Not because of my death. I have no illusion they’d even give a shit. But because they will know, then, just how long and hopeless the rest of their miserable lives will be.
Their physical suffering beyond anything imaginable, while understanding their fate will be to die, not of their wounds, but of slow starvation.
But first, the insect.
Goddamnit, the frustration of not knowing where she is is killing me. The only thing I’m running on right now is fury, so freezing cold it burns me.
I’ve exhausted every avenue by the time I return home. After my sleepless night, I’m relieved to see that Liam and Dane aren’t at my apartment. I don’t think I could refrain from killing them on the spot if I ran into them now, and they deserve so much worse.
Then I hear a soft thud in my bedroom. Even if I weren’t boiling with rage right now, my soldier training would make me razor-focused. I grab my gun, cocking it in front of me, then kick open the door.
The last person I ever imagined seeing is standing in front of me.
“What. The. Fuck?” I growl, my gun pointed straight at the guy I’ve inexplicably let live.
