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I’m too close to lose. Time to fight.
Lucky I’m armed.
Grabbing the rock from my pocket, I throw it with all my strength at Luca. He barely has time to react, and my aim is good. The rock smashes into his shoulder, and Luca lurches back. I bound forward and boulder into him, shoulder first, sending us both hurtling into the concrete of the patio.
Luca flips over onto his back below me, but I hook one thigh over his waist and straddle him as he turns. I pull the knife out of my boot—one of his fancy Japanese knives, which I stole from his kitchen after he stole my penknife.
Before he can throw me off, I stab straight down. Luca catches my wrist. He’s silent as death, his face set and earnest. But his eyes are wide, surprised more than afraid.
He wrenches my arm down, pulling so hard I feel the tug on my arm socket. I keep my fingers tight around the smooth hilt of the knife. Luca rises up quickly, wrapping both arms around my waist to throw me to the ground, his body pinning mine, his torso tilted away from the knife still clenched in my grasp.
He’s too distracted by the knife to worry about myotherhand.
Almost as if that was the plan.
He doesn’t even notice my other arm until he feels the prick of a needle. He freezes and looks down at his thigh, where I’m emptying his own syringe into him.
“Fuckingpoison,” he hisses at me.
“You should hide your sedatives better.” I yank the empty syringe free and toss it aside. “Now get the fuck off me.”
“You’ll regret this.”
“I’ll savour the memory of this moment for the rest of my life,” I tell him with a smile.
And then I raise my other arm and hit him on the side of the face with the butt of his knife, for no other reason than to add insult to injury. A birthday present from myself to myself.
28
Devil's Flower
Willow
Dragging Luca’s unconscious bodyinto the house and onto a chair is no easy feat, but it’s worth the extra effort.
Just like I stole his own sedatives to use against him, I use his handcuffs to bind his arms back. He’s not going to be happy when he wakes up, so for good measure, I also tie his legs to the chair’s. This way, if he tries to move, all he’ll do is fall with the chair.
When I’m done, I go to the kitchen to make a sandwich and pour myself a massive glass of wine, for no other reason than I deserve it.
While Luca is out, I try to get into his phone; it’s only fair I should return the favour, after all. Like me, he has neither facial recognition nor ID print.
He might be cautious, but I’m better prepared. I don’t even need to waste time trying to crack his password like I tried doing with the mag lock to his office. I just use a GrayKey.
When I’m in, I sit back and rifle through the contents of Luca’s phone. I’m disappointed but not surprised to find it a wasteland of information and personality. His camera roll is all but empty, his texts are nothing more than short and boring exchanges with his employees and parents. His conversations with friends are all erased, and frankly, I’m suspecting he might not have any friends to begin with.
I knew those people on his serial killer board were too good-looking to be real.
Luca’s contact list is a bit more interesting: long and full of heavy hitters. Richard Thornton’s name doesn’t appear. Probably because Richard Thornton is a disgraced leech, and Luca seems to generally despise poverty in any form.
Even though I find no useful information on Luca’s phone, I do find his invitation to the very same garden party I’ve been planning to sneak into in the spring. So I save a copy of his invitation, and then I change my contact name on his phone toMummyand set his phone wallpaper to a selfie of me blowing a kiss. I unplug my GrayKey and return to the living room with Luca’s phone in my pocket.
He’s late to wake up. My research told me he would be out of it for an hour, but he’s been out of it for a couple of hours now. Outside, the sun is slowly setting, and snow is beginning to spin down from the clouds in hard little flurries.
When Luca finally moves, I stand over and lightly tap his cheek. His grey eyes are out of focus and glittery, like he’s emerging from a dream, and his lips move slowly, as if he’s trying to whisper something.
“Nice nap, Luca?”
Since he was kind enough to give me water last night, I put my glass against his lips and pour a trickle of wine into his mouth. He swallows some with a wince, the rest dribbling down his chin like blood.
