Page 63

“Clean this up,” I tell Afon.

My lieutenant nods.

The man starts screaming before I even reach the stairs.

I don’t look back.

20

LUKAS

// INCOMING_MMS — PRIVATE DEVICE [L. LAZAREV]

// Thu 20-Nov-2025 14:47:03 EST

// Sender: +1 (718) ¦¦¦-¦¦48 [RAE EVERETT]

MEDIA_TYPE: image/jpeg

FILE_SIZE: 3.2 MB

RESOLUTION: 3024 x 4032

My shoes leave red prints on the concrete as I climb. I pull out my phone to see if I’ve missed anything. After swiping through the usual avalanche of texts and calls and a few angry emails from the jilted Natasha, something stops my scrolling.

It’s another text. This is the one I’ve been waiting for.

I pause on the landing. It feels wrong to open it here. My fingertips are tacky with blood, as are the soles of my boots. The rust-and-piss stench of the basement sticks to me.

Even if I were to shower, there’s no scrubbing away what the things I’ve seen and done down here have down to my soul. I’m a man blackened by sin. Too many years of doing the wrongthings, the violent things, have stained me in a way that can never be erased.

To open the message here and now would be to drag Rae into this mess. Fuck, she’s exactly the opposite of this place. She’s small and fearful, unblemished. She’s plain white cotton panties and a blush that spreads from her cheeks to her collarbone—and maybe lower.

It’d be a greater sin than any I’ve done before to open her text here.

I do it anyway.

It’s a photo. My heart and my cock throb in unison as the pinwheel revolves until finally, it loads. And…

Fucking hell.

She’s wearing the red dress, the one I chose for her. The garnet fabric drips down the soft swell of her breasts. Her hair is loose and unkempt around her face. Her face is guarded, almost defiant.

She looks like she wants to kill me.

She looks like she wants me to devour her.

I sag against the stairwell wall. The concrete is cold and damp against my shoulder. I can still hear muffled sounds from below, screams and thunks, but nothing has ever felt less important.

I zoom in on her face. Those brown eyes. That stubborn set of her jaw. She’s trying so hard to look unaffected. Like this is nothing.

But I can see the flush on her cheeks, and I see right through her facade.

Shefeltsomething when she put that dress on. Shefeltsomething when she hit send.

That’s exactly what I wanted.

I look down at my hands. There’s blood under my fingernails, dried brown streaks across my knuckles, and a splatter on my cuff I didn’t notice until now.