Shaking my head, I pull my phone out to re-check. I haven’t heard a thing from them. They haven’t even reacted to the string of texts I’ve sent asking if they’re okay.
It’s never good when the twins go radio silent. I can only begin to imagine the shit they’re getting themselves in. Probably wasted. On a bender of some sort, up to their necks in uni pussy.
I hope it eases their pain for now.
“Nah. They haven’t responded to my messages,” I say honestly, glancing back up at Lily in time to see her expression fall even more. “They’ll be alright, Lil. They’re probably blowing off some steam, and once they have it out of their systems, they’ll reach out.”
She nods and curls in on herself while I start flicking through the channels again until I find a movie I know she likes.
Mr and Mrs Smith.
The rest of our Monday is quiet. Lily falls asleep in the armchair, and I fight the urge to start playing with her whileshe’s unconscious. She isn’t in the right frame of mind for me to take advantage of her like that, so instead, I go to my room to collect my sketchbook and charcoal, and spend the afternoon sketching my sleeping beauty.
CHAPTER 29
LILY
Feeling like I have a hangover, without actually having a hangover, just doesn’t seem fair. Where are all the drunken memories to cringe over in the sober light? Where are all the patchy memories of laughter and falling over and thinking you can sing?
They certainly aren’t here.
All I’m left with is this ache in my chest that won’t go away.
The only time it didn’t ache as much was when Asher was near, especially when I was in his arms.
We didn’t talk much yesterday. The emotional exhaustion left me numb at times, and then too emotional to speak.
I was so scared I was going to give in and tell Asher everything. About my family in Australia. About the Crimson Angel. About my stalkers. About how awful my marriage really was to Alexander. About how I killed Asher’s dad.
The need to open myself up and tell Asher everything was so overwhelming that I retreated inside myself, and Asher allowed it, giving me the space to try to deal with the shit show that went down over Easter.
Asher slept with me again last night. There was no sex. Just a loving caress that allowed my body to relax and fall into sleep. I even think I slept all night, which is why this stupid hangover feeling really isn’t fair.
As if I don’t feel crappy enough, let’s just throw an emotional hangover my way, too.
The chaos of the weekend has me so distracted that I don’t notice the envelope lying face down when I first step through the back door of the salon on Tuesday morning. It’s not until I step on it, and nearly slip, that I notice the damn thing.
The sight of it doesn’t even scare me. Just pisses me off.
I don’t need this shit. I have more important things to worry about.
Sighing, I pick up the offending envelope and close the door, turning the lights on in the salon and put my bag down on my desk in the tiny backroom.
“What have you got for me today?” I ask the envelope, tearing it open to reveal a single photo.
Holding it up, I take in the scene.
This one was one of my more creative kills quite a while ago. I’d strung the man up. Tony, I think his name was. He liked to use his appendage to steal the virginity of girls so young they wouldn’t have even understood what was happening. I actually kept him alive for seven hours during his torture before I turned it into the brutal carnage captured in the picture.
I’m standing in front of Tony, who is strung up on a concrete wall, his arms and legs spread wide. In one of my gloved hands, I’m holding my knife. In the other, the floppy remains of his dick. The whole scene is painted red in his blood, some of it caught in a frozen waterfall in this image as it pisses out of where his pin dick used to be.
It was a very satisfying moment, I must say.
Tony’s expression says it all. There’s physical pain in it, but the emotional pain of seeing his dick severed from his body takes the cake.
Something that’s not caught in this photo but was almost just as satisfying was how he howled in grief when I slapped my knife through his dick on the bench before using a meat tenderiser to flatten the flesh into something that resembled a burger patty.
Some of my best work.
