"I gave it to a journalist at the Tribune who'd been trying to get the church to comment for months. The story ran on a Sunday. Webor was arrested the following Tuesday. The church settled with seven families out of court."
Yevgeny is quiet for a moment. Then he says, "That's not a kill."
"No. Some of them don't need to die. Some of them need to be destroyed publicly, so every person who protected them has toanswer for it too. Killing Webor would have let the church off the hook. Exposing him burned the whole thing down."
He looks at me with something in his eyes I haven't seen from anyone before in my life. Admiration.
"And the ones you did kill?"
"Deserved it." I say it without hesitation. Without doubt. "The ones I killed were the ones the system was never going to touch. The ones who'd keep doing it for the rest of their lives because nobody was going to stop them. So, I stopped them."
He kisses me and I can feel him hardening beneath me again, already.
"Tell me how," he murmurs against my lips.
A jolt of excitement courses through me. I want to be disgusted at myself, but I can’t. I did what was right and somehow I ended up with the one person in the world who isn’t disgusted by my actions or fearful of them. He sees my power and he likes it.
"With a knife."
He groans, pulling my hips until I’m lying on my stomach, then he climbs over me. “Tell me more,” he whispers against my ear as he presses his cock between my ass cheeks, then against my entrance.
"I stabbed them..." he pushes inside in one brutal thrust that has me gritting my teeth. “I slit one’s throat but found out just how messy that is.”
The soreness stretches into something that burns in the best possible way.
"My wife," he groans into my mouth. "My hunter. My perfect, dangerous queen."
“I waited until I knew they were dead—”
He picks up his pace, thrusting into me, reaching an entirely new part of me in this position. “Then I wiped the knife clean whatever they were wearing and left.” My words come out punctuated by his ravaging thrusts now as his cock thumps against that spot inside me that makes my body quiver. Within seconds, my pussy is milking his cock again, trying to pull him deeper as I scream into the pillows and press my ass against him.
“Yes,” he grunts. “You made the world a better place,” he is panting now, chasing his orgasm. “I’m going to empty my balls in your tight pussy again, claim you again, mark you again. Then tonight we’ll hunt together and you can show me exactly how powerful you are.”
His voice fractures, and his words turn into to “ah, ah, ah, ah” as he comes undone, emptying himself inside me again.
Yevgeny
She's different when she's getting ready.
I've seen Stefania composed. I've seen her stripped bare and trembling beneath me. I've seen the mask and what lives behind it. But this is something else. This is the version of her that existed before I ever knew her name, and watching it emerge is like watching a blade being drawn from its sheath.
She moves through the bedroom with quiet efficiency. Dark jeans. A fitted black jacket with deep pockets. Her hair pinned flat under a cap. Soft-soled boots that don't make a sound on the hardwood. Every piece chosen for function. Nothing decorative. Nothing that catches light.
She catches me watching and pauses.
"What?" she asks, hesitant and hyperaware.
"Nothing." I lean against the doorframe. "Just making sure I remember this."
Her mouth twitches and her eyes flash.
We spent the day at the kitchen table with the newspaper open between us and my laptop running searches. Stefania read the article three times. Then she started asking questions. The bus stop location. The time of the attack. The victim's description of her attacker. Height, build, approximate age, the baseball cap he wore, the gray sedan a witness saw idling two blocks away. Weacquired camera footage from some establishments along the street and broke our way into the traffic camera archives.
A partial plate from a traffic camera cross-referenced with registrations in a six-mile radius gave us eleven possibles. Stefania eliminated eight in under an hour based on age, build, and proximity to the attack location. Of the remaining three, two were in prison and one had a prior for indecent exposure that was pled down to a misdemeanor. He never made it to the sex offender registry.
His name is Kyle-John Jones. Thirty-nine. Lives alone in a ground-floor apartment fourteen blocks from the bus stop. Works night shifts at a packaging warehouse three days a week. Tonight is not one of those nights.
"Ready?" she asks.
