Page 117 of Damsel in Disguise

Only then do I pull her sideways and lower her carefully to the ground. She’s about to fall on the ground, but I hold her steady at the last second.

“Rafayla,” I tightly hug her bloodied body, smearing blood on my brand-new Prada.

I don’t register her wincing—too busy crying.

“The only reason I’m letting you live,” I speak through tears, breaking away just enough to meet her eyes, “is because if it weren’t for you, they would’ve kept playing their sick little game until I broke.”

I tilt my head slightly, watching the terror settle deeper into her bones. My watery eyes meet her dead, traumatized ones.

“And because someone has to remember what happens when they try again, right?” I try to give her a soft smile.

I untie her wrists and toss a cloak over her whipped skin. The fabric swallows her shaking form.

“Please be careful and don’t let others mess with me. I can expect this from my bestie,” my voice comes out too soft. “Cuz you see, I’m so sensitive to being heartbroken,” I place my hand on my chest and blink dramatically.

“The exit’s there,” I point to a small door leading into a dark corridor stretching toward the woods.

“Open your mouth, and you’ll learn that what I did to my besties was just the starter,” the warning comes with an unsettling warmth.

Then I gently push her forward, careful not to hurt her beaten skin—toward the dark, toward her future, toward whatever version of hell she’ll walk into with what’s left of herself.

The occasional lapping of water from the insatiable piranhas is the only sound echoing through the now lifeless room.

Conveniently, the girls have already been declared missing, presumed dead for days. Their funeral is tomorrow.

I told Asher I’d prefer to prepare fish myself for their grieving families.

And the fish just so happens to be the piranha that ate their daughters off the face of the planet.

I should probably thank him for securing this massive pool and three hundred piranhas for me to feed and burish myself here at the dungeon of Nico Trivosky, the heir of the Russian Bratva who happened to be too close to Asher.

It’s been a week since I kidnapped my besties from the bar where they went for partying after the prank.

It didn’t take much effort to guess where they’d go—they only ever used to invite me along because of my last name.

Now I understand it was never friendship. It was for access that they made friends with me. To get free entry to every luxurious location in the city, they decided to play with me.

So, after I finished bawling my eyes out in my room, I followed them. And there they were—Paradiso Del’Inferno, also founded by Nico Trivosky.

The place they only got into still being underaged was because I’m a Keinston and my brother is a hotshot there.

Being a Keinston did me a huge favor once again. It wasn’t difficult to tip the bartender to spike their drinks, and voilà—they’ve been tied and trapped in the little den underneath the bar ever since.

Two days later, I dumped their bloodied clothes in a public trash bin, making their families believe they’d been brutally butchered—which, now, two of them finally are.

Suddenly, I feel a presence behind me. I don’t flinch. I already know who it is, even though I didn’t hear him coming in.

“I knew you wouldn’t do something out of the goodness of your heart,” Asher says, not entirely amused.

He’s hinting at how I cried over the ‘loss’ of my friends and asked him to get me the fish for their funeral meal.

I sob, “Learned from the best,” but say it through a wide smile.

“That’s a lot of work for something you pretended didn’t matter at all,” he says after a beat of silence, his gaze lingering a second too long on the pool.

Then, almost casually, he says. “Mind telling me what made you do all this?”

“I prefer to keep my business to myself,” I answer flatly.