“Well,” Casper hummed, his eyes focused on the ceiling now and the way the fan knocked dust around every time it did another rotation. I had no room to talk, though. Couldn’t say I’d ever dusted my ceiling fan either. “Ihad to find incriminating pictures the guy’s girlfriend had stashed in her nightstand.Ihad to make an anonymous call to the wife, forward those pictures, and hope that she was as bloodthirsty and ready to pay as he was.Ihad to find one of her closest friends and get the girl to innocently suggest the woman reach out to me for my services.”
He pushed up on the bed and started listing on his fingers now.
“Ihad to then meet up with her, make sure she wasn’t wearing a wire, and discuss the best place and time to do it. Monitor him for a week to get his schedule down to a science—admittedly that was probably the easiest part. The wife knew everything he did, minus the whole fucking someone else on the side. After that,Ihad to get my computer guy to hack into the gym’s security system to make sure no one caught us on the live feed, look up the model number and purchase the replacement knob for the sauna door, procure the uniforms, set up the getaway car, pay off a few employees to call in sick so that the place was short-handed. Drive there, drive back—oh yeah, and I had to actually kill the guy. Then I had to make sure Big DaddyBossman didn’t catch wind of any of this so I wouldn’t have to split the payout that was already cut thin by everyone else I had to pay off. What was it you did again, though?” He flipped his legs on the floor, sat on the edge of the mattress, and peered over at me. Blinking twice before adding, “Right, it was your idea so you want half.”
“Fuck you,” I grumbled under my breath.
“That would be nice.” He rolled back onto the mattress, kicking both legs out and spreading them wide across the crumpled sheets. “As you mighta heard, I did a lot of work today.”
When he started sliding the uniform pants down off his ass and pushing them onto the floor with a socked foot, I grabbed for the knife on my ankle and tossed it across the room. It landed a fraction of an inch above his head, grazing some of his hair along the way.
He glanced up at it, tugged the hilt out of the wall, and threw it back in my direction. The tip of the blade skimmed the uniform top, taking a bite out of my right shoulder, and then embedded itself in the opposite wall.
“You fucking asshole!” I slapped a hand over my arm to stop the bleeding, turned, and stomped into the bathroom. “You cut me!”
“You tried to cut me. I’m just better at it,” he called out over the sound of the running faucet.
I shut the water off and screamed my frustrations. I could hear him snickering to himself as I grabbed the peroxide out of the vanity mirror, poured some of it onto a clean towel, and started blotting at the wound over the shirt. Thankfully, it was just a scratch and it didn’t sting too much. That didn’t make me any less annoyed.
I hadn’t hit him because I hadn’t been trying to. And not because I couldn’t have if I wanted to. And then I was more annoyed when I realized I hadn’t wanted to.
Something was seriously wrong with me.
I glanced up into the mirror and glared at myself for a long minute. Shook my head and stomped back into the bedroom.
Casper was exactly where I had left him. Feet wide, head propped up on an arm, candy bar in his mouth, and remote in his hand.
I yanked the knife out from where I had left it in the wall, narrowed my glare, and chucked it at his thumb as soon as he swiped across one of the buttons to change the channel.
He didn’t flinch. Instead, he plucked the handle up off the bedspread and licked the blade clean. Then he was stalking towards me, the knife raised high over his head, blood dripping down his hand to his wrist, and that same crazy look in his eye he had the last time I’d stabbed him.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
CASPER
She was backing herself into the corner. Like a mouse that needed that damn piece of cheese so bad it didn’t care if it had to risk its tail to get it. Bellatrix wasn’t afraid of getting trapped. She was afraid of enjoying being trapped. Of how much she enjoyed being here with me.
It was the same for every drug the first time you got hooked on it. Mourning the person you thought you were before accepting the person you actually are. The denial was always there. Somewhere in the back of your mind. The refusal to believe you’d fallen that far. But deep down, you knew you had.
It was easier to just not think about it.
I slammed my palms next to her head, leaving a bloody thumbprint behind while keeping my mouth a breath away from hers. Close enough that she could taste the chocolate I’d chewed up and swallowed a few moments ago if she inhaled quickly.
I glanced down at where her chest was heaving, her heart nearly pounding out of her skin. The excited kind of pounding. She didn’t care if I choked or fucked her right now. She just needed to feel something.
I reached over to the left and pulled open the top drawer of the dresser, the one where I kept a decent stack of spare cash. I assumed it would have been gone. It was all still there, which told me she hadn’t bothered to go looking for it.
“You want half the money?” I quirked a brow, the same hand I’d used to open the drawer swinging back around to slowly press down on the top of her head. “Work for it.”
“I already told you I’m not a whore, Casper.” She swatted my arm aside but I could see her eyes flicking towards the drawer. She was mad that she hadn’t thought to look for it.
I swiped up her chin, pressing it between my thumb and index finger. Forcing her to focus on me and not the cash. “No, you’re worse. You’re my girlfriend.” I dropped her chin and took a step back. “Girlfriends are much more expensive than whores.” I grinned at her.
“I’m not your girlfriend either.”
I let my eyes skim over her from head to toe. She cocked her hip and narrowed her glare at me.
“Looks like a girlfriend?—”
