He didn’t want to get involved? Fine. I didn’t want his brakes to work while he took the drive to last year’s Christmas party. I’d watched the weather reports religiously and got just lucky enough that last December was a wet one. A little sleet, a little ice, a slick road, and plenty of trees to cushion his car when the brakes failed and he lost control.
People called it a tragedy. People sent thoughts and prayers to his family.
People forgot all about him by January.
Same with my next target because Grant Ellison? That fucker was gone by New Year’s.
From all I learned researching my targets, Grant had been the sort of man who thought everything was a joke until it wasn’t. A man who believed the world owed him it all. He drank like he was invincible. He laughed like he’d never be held accountable for anything he did.
So the world let him drink.
You ask me, the world let him go too far, and then I just helped him along that New Year’s Eve.
Alcohol poisoning, they said. A party that got out of hand. Another accident dressed in celebration.
Fitting.
The first two were easy. By then, I think the others might have suspected something. I wasn’t as careful as I usually am—a need to finish Noelle’s list as close to the holidays as I could had me taking risks—and it was harder to get to them.
Harder, but not impossible.
Under the guise of another white man with dark hair and a blandly handsome face come to interview at Evergreen & Co., I made my way to Dean Rourke’s office. I left him hanging there, and when HR called me a week later, offering me his position, I left them hanging, too. Or, rather, Benjamin Braxton did since that was the name on the fake CV I uploaded to get the interview.
I wish I had more time with Marcus Willis. From Noelle’s journal, his betrayal was the one that hurt the most. He let her believe that he was going to help her after the others hurt her, and instead of doing that, he blackmailed her into going to her knees for him.
I didn’t care what happened after that. Just the fact that he thought he could ordermyStarling to suck him off? I’d snuck into the corporate retreat where he was staying with some of the others from her old branding firm and caught him alone. For him, he got exactly what he deserved when he had an ‘incident’ in theconvention center’s gym that left him trapped in a machine, unable to escape as the weights beared down on him… but not before I nearly twisted his cock off, torturing him as I made sure he knew that he had this coming all because of Noelle.
I… lost my temper. I admit it. And maybe that’s why Charles Dutton disappeared for a couple of months. Almost as though the hotshot VP knew death was breathing down his neck, he vanished—but he couldn’t hide from me for long. I found him in November, almost a year to the day I started my hunt, and though I could’ve eliminated him then, I waited.
I wanted to make him sweat a little. And then, I wanted him to die right before he could ever have the chance to take advantage and destroy another young woman in his employ.
After all, Charles was the one Noelle hated the most. He was the one who treated her like she had no choice. The one who grabbed her first, climbed on top of her first, then handed her off to the others like she wasn’t a person to treasure, but just a body to use and break.
So, yeah. Charles didn’t deserve an easy ending. If anything, he deserved poetic justice.
A holiday party. A festive drink. A quiet room where no one could save him. It was the same setting he’d once used to make Noelle’s life as she knew it fall apart, and it was where I forced him to swallow the poisoned cranberry Schnappsat gunpoint.
Despite what the news articles claimed, it was no accident, and I relished watching him choke before I slipped out into the Evergreen & Co. party, leaving before anyone knew he was gone.
That was a handful of days ago. I’ve finally fulfilled her wish list, and now I’m here, with Noelle somewhere below me, probably still dwelling on the way I opened my mouth and her words fell out.
The way I see it, playing a murderous Santa for this woman started as a kindness; or, rather, a gift of vengeance since I don’t know how to be kind. I’m a problem solver. Noelle needed a solution, and I gave her one.
But nothing in this world is free. She has her revenge. I’ve crossed off every name on her list, and it’s time for her to show her gratitude.
It’s time I finally let her understand that, since that day in the coffeehouse, she’s belonged to me.
And I can’t wait to open my present.
I know Noelle. Better than she’d ever have any idea at this point, and beneath the guarded yet welcoming exterior, there’s a curiosity that I’ve purposely piqued. Add that to how the weather’s on my side, and there’s no way she can escape me just yet… I’m looking forward to a very merry Christmas once I drop the act and show her who I really am.
Trust me. I’m going to make sure of it.
FIVE
SUSPICIONS
NOELLE
