“You’re no help.”
Things devolve into phone sex, which, I guess, does help a bit, but once I’m off the phone with him, it’s just me in this room.
Suffocating.
I’ll be choking on an island. Alone. That’s how it’ll feel. Knowing I can’t leave. Knowing that the iron gate keeps me in. The bleach in this place hangs thick in the hallways, always scorching my insides, and every scuff of boots on marble jolts my nervous system. My lungs can’t get a full breath.
Did my father do this? And if he did, did he know that a restriction would feel confining? Or would that just be a happy coincidence for him?
24
TATE
“Do you know what it’s doing?” Uncle Jasper said. Its body was still, feet burrowed into the seeping wound, the paper-thin wings opened and closed a few times.
“Drinking,” I said, realizing it as I said it. “I didn’t know they drank blood.”
“And turtle tears. They’ll sip from mud puddles and human sweat—though that’s usually just the males.”
What does he mean? What’s he really trying to say? He always had a cryptic fucking message buried in nonsense.
“Savage, bloodthirsty,” he said, never taking his eyes from the unusual creature. “Stunning.”
“Isn’t it just doing what it needs to survive?”
A useless arm tried to shift, jostling the butterfly. There was a moan. The arm stilled again, the butterfly returned to its macabre feast.
“There’s nectar aplenty on every square inch of this field. It chose this man’s blood.”
“It’s a butterfly. It didn’t choose anything. It’s driven by instinct.”
“Butterflies remember being caterpillars. They turn to fucking goo in the chrysalis, and yet when they emerge, they remember smells they learned when they were caterpillars.”
Ah. The whole a-monster-is-a-monster speech with a new and grotesque twist. How dare he ruin butterflies for me. I yanked my knife from the man’s leg. He cried out, but that was all he had the energy for. Wrenching my arm back, I drove the knife through his eye, ending his pointless life.
“If you wanted me to finish him off, all you had to do was say so.”
He smiled, gaze brightening in a way I didn’t see often. His eyes slid to the butterfly—yes, that fucking stupid creature was still there—and back to me. He seemed to be taking in the scene, the side-by-side vision. The world’s prettiest insect gorging on a warm corpse. A quick glance down, and I saw what he saw of me: a wide spray pattern of blood across my white shirt, the stained blade still in my hand.
Messy. Ruthless.
Vicious.
March
Unlike my hockey team, I don’t believe in signs and superstitions. I am the sign and superstition. But when I woke up to a video of Ryan stroking his beautiful dick to completion just for me? Even I was willing to call that the signof a good fucking day. Everything’s in motion. On track. And my personal favorite, ahead of schedule.
Maybe I could convince James to retire early and take over for him now.
It’s all green lights on my drive to the board meeting, and I even turn up the music, ignoring the static crackling from the broken speakers of my shitty car. I still won’t be able to drive the Lambo to work once I’m commissioner. Maybe it’s time to turn her in, get something more appropriate for a family man. I doubt Ryan and I will raise kids; that would be a bad idea, but we’re … well, we’re family now.
The meeting goes better than expected. I give a mini presentation on my findings from the safety audits I mostly had Ethan do. James reiterates his plans to retire and puts forth the verbal recommendation that I take his place. The cherry on top is Henry’s disgusted sneer. Guess I won’t be getting his vote, but even still, I give this meeting a ten out of ten. Would attend again.
People file out of the boardroom, and I plan on my usual chit-chat with James before I head back to Shadowridge, but Henry approaches me.
“I wonder if you’ll have a word with me, VanCourt?”
I’m a predator. The frightened shivers I’ve seen from others don’t happen for me. Instead, it’s more of an intuitive tingle. A warning. It spreads like cold rain over my skin, letting me know it’s about to be a kill-or-be-killed situation.
