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I smiled at him grimly. “Commit the crime, be ready to do the time. She lied to the police and lied to her parents. What happens to her hardly concerns me anymore.”
The look on his face was resigned. “So you have no more feelings for the girl you claimed you wanted to marry someday. Just like that,” he said grimly, shaking his head. “You can turn your feelings off just like turning off a switch?”
He was upset, so I opened the door to my refrigerated soul and let an ice-cold smile leak out, the kind of smile I’d never shown him before. “Yes. Just like that.”
He scrubbed his face with his hand. My father, the strongest, most confident man I’d ever met, didn’t know what to say or do. “Do you want to ask how your dog is doing?”
I flipped a page, pretending to read. “Not unless you plan to give him back to me.”
“You know why we can’t.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
He stood there, anger settling into the lines of his face. “From now on, I think it’s best if you’re homeschooled.”
I didn’t even bother to look up from my book. “Yes, we wouldn’t want me to go on a killing spree in the lunchroom and embarrass you now, would we?”
He turned and stalked out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him without a word.
From then on, there were thrice-weekly, utterly pointless visits with a psychiatrist. Bodyguards followed me everywhere. I wasn’t even allowed to be alone with my own siblings. I didn’t bother protesting until I turned seventeen and got sick of it. Then I started ditching them on a regular basis, just because I could.
My brothers and sisters looked at me with pity and worry. Emilie was still close to me. We shared a special bond that was unbreakable. She was furious at Camille. Hated her. Made her life hell at school, no matter how much my parents punished her for it. Emilie’s torture worked brilliantly. Camille dropped out of school when she was sixteen, and her family returned to the United States. I heard that her father died of a heart attack only months later.
My father finally got sick of me disappearing all the time and threatened to send me away to military school right before I turned eighteen. That was when I ran away for good.
Even after I got back in touch with my parents, things never went back to normal. As I traveled around the world, my parents sent people to spy on me and report back to them. I got very good at hiding and evading. I frequently traveled under forged passports, just because I was so angry with my parents for trying to watch over me like a naughty child.
And I made an enormous amount of money with my company.
I never had a normal relationship with a woman. I lost my virginity to a whore.
Using a fake name, I created a chain of very discreet, very exclusive BDSM clubs called Dark Desires, and I find that some of the female employees tolerate my extreme requests. I pay them extra to let me whip them until they bleed, to hurt them until they scream in genuine pain. I feel nothing when I do it except a brief temporary release of pressure. They’re just flesh puppets with conveniently placed orifices.
The women want my money, but they’re scared of me, and I like that. I think of Camille every time I come, and it fills me with such hatred that I have to fight very hard not to kill the women I’m fucking.
I’m afraid someday I’ll lose that fight.
I imagine myself on such a day, standing over the broken body of a dead hooker, and I feel nothing at all. No guilt, no pleasure.
Just dark emptiness.
I got away with murder once, could I do it again?
No.
My parents bailed me out of that mess with the offer of sending me to that hospital and a promise to clean up the mess I made in the cellar, saving my ass by washing away the evidence and discarding the murder weapon unknowingly.
Someone is talking through the thick fuzz that wraps around my brain.
My stomach roils, and I open my eyes. Someone has pushed the button on my bed, and I’m being raised to a sitting position. I blink hard and rub my eyes.
I’m awake again, back in the hospital room.
A man frowns down at me impatiently. There’s something so incredibly familiar about him. A psychic shockwave rolls through me as I realize what it is.
I’m looking at my own face.
CHAPTER5
