Page 82 of Take Me Darkly

“Is that when you bought this place?”

I let out a low, dark sound in my throat. “If only it were that simple. I spent months planning. I moved cash through untraceable channels, buying silence, securing leverage, ensuring nothing could ever be traced back to me. I played it with the cold, calculating precision Vincent had taught me.”

Serena waited, her ocean-blue eyes wide and never leaving my face as she hung on my every word.

“The building was a decaying ruin when I finally walked back inside,” I said, my voice flattening as the memory took hold, recalling what it was like to walk through this place years later. The rooms had been smaller compared to my memories, but they were still just as gray—and just as mean. “Jerry had let it rot. The women I remembered were gone, either scattered or dead. A few remained simply because the world outside was meaner than the devil they knew. When I walked in, Jerry didn’t recognize me. He thought I was just another wealthy john looking to buy an hour with one of his girls.”

“Did you tell him who you were?” Serena whispered.

“I did. I’ll never forget the slow, sickening recognition that crept into his eyes.” My jaw locked. “He laughed, flicking his filthy fingers at my tailored suit, mocking the man I’d become. But beneath the bravado, he was sweating. It wasn’t long until he walked away to fetch his works. I followed him, and he joked that maybe I could tie him off for old times’ sake. Then, just as I predicted, he started fixing himself a shot right there in front of me, as if to prove nothing had changed.”

“It had to be hard seeing all of that again,” she murmured.

I nodded as the memory rose up, cold and complete. When I spoke again, my voice sounded hollow. It was as if I were on the outside watching myself tell the story.

“What Jerry didn’t know was that this fix would be different. I went down to the cold brick behind the boiler. The packet of lethal fentanyl I’d stashed the night my mother died was still there, untouched. I swapped his supply with the poison that killed her.” I paused, steeling myself for what I was about to admit. Taking a deep breath, I gave it to her straight. “I had switched the drugs, Serena. I knew it would be a lethal dose. Then I sat across from him while he stuck the needle into his arm...and I watched him die.”

Serena didn’t flinch. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, rapid hitches, but her gaze held mine with fierce, unwavering strength.

The dim, filthy room smells of scorched metal, sweat, and stagnant water. Jerry sits on the edge of the stained mattress, tying the thick rubber hose around his bicep. His yellowed eyes flash with cruel arrogance as he taps the syringe, driving the needle deep into a collapsed vein.

“Still the same pathetic street rat under that expensive wool,” he sneers, depressing the plunger.

I don’t move. I sit in the heavy armchair across from him, my hands resting calmly on the worn leather armrests, watching the clear poison flood his bloodstream.

Ten seconds pass. Then twenty.

The arrogant smirk on his face falters. His breath catches—a sudden, sharp gasp as his lungs lock up. The syringe slips from his numb fingers, clattering onto the floorboards. His eyes widen, blowing out into massive, terrifying black pupils as the realization hits him. He claws at his own throat, his chest convulsing, fighting for an oxygen molecule that will never come.

He looks at me, drowning in his own skin, silently begging.

I lean forward, letting the warm lamplight illuminate the cold, absolute void in my eyes. I don’t move a muscle to help him. I simply watch the light extinguish in his eyes, feeling a dark, intoxicating surge of absolute justice as his body goes limp and hits the floor.

I brought myself back to the present, the absolute detachment of that moment echoing in my voice.

“He understood what was happening near the end. I expected to feel remorse, panic, or horror. But I felt nothing. Just a cold, profound peace.”

I exhaled, feeling as if I’d just been freed from a massive burden.

Serena said nothing at first, then she took my hand, pressing her mouth hard to the center of my palm. She closed her eyes and held it there for a long while. Seconds turned into minutes that felt like hours. Just as I was about to ask her what she was thinking, she angled her head up to meet my gaze. Her blue eyes were burning with an intensity that nearly brought me to my knees.

“Justice doesn’t always come the way it’s supposed to. You did what you had to do,” she said, as if that settled the matter.

There was no judgment in her tone. No horror. I’d killed a man, yet she looked at the murderer sitting in front of her and chose to stay.

Something thick and foreign welled in my throat, and I forced myself to swallow it down.

Don’t you dare crack now.

I cleared my throat and went on, because there was still more.

“Zeke was waiting in the alley. He knew my intent before I even voiced it. We carried Jerry’s body down into the ancient catacombs beneath this building—a dark maze of stone vaults where I used to hide from his fists as a boy. We sealed him inside an old stone sarcophagus while I cleared the house. That was the night I found Myla again, half-dead in a rear stairwell.”

“You saved her,” Serena said quietly.

The memory of what Myla had looked like caused an ache in my chest. I scrubbed a hand down my face.

“I got her a doctor that night, then helped her get clean in the weeks that followed. I made her go back to school. As I turned out, sober Myla had excellent organizational skills and a strong business head, so I hired her. But the truth is, everything I’ve done for her has been me trying to make up for that night in the alley when I let her walk away.”