CHAPTER1
Kal
I’ma wolf in sheep’s clothing.
A predator living amongst his prey, acting as if someone’s out to get me, too.
Hoping that the blood between my teeth can be forgotten, the stains of the lives lost at my claws erased. Fighting back against the rigid rules of a society that’s only ever sought my submission.
Crime and violence pump through my veins, the single defining purpose of my life for the last decade—hell, maybe even longer than that. It’s hard to believe my villainy began only when I started being paid to do it.
No, the wolf lives inside me, hiding out during the day and pretending the townspeople don’t know the truth. Pretending they can’t see the ghost of Death himself in my shadow, following me around like a curse I’m powerless against.
In fact, it’s not a curse. Not in my line of work.
It’s a blessing.
The beast doesn’t wither under pressure, doesn’t give in when faced with adversity. His bloodlust is insatiable, his appetite for agony unhinged and unconquerable.
No matter how many times I try to run away, try to deny myself the release that comes from life escaping this earth, it lies there waiting for me to return. To welcome the perverse darkness that calls my body home.
Even now, as I wrench my fingers between the lips of a man who’s done my employer wrong, reveling in the way his jaw pops as it yields to me and shoving the green silicone dildo from his bedside table down his throat, I can feel a piece of my mind trying to reel me in.
But the evil is stronger, its hold deeper.
Magnetic.
Still, as the man writhes on his mattress, naked and bound at the hands and feet, bleeding from where I’ve removed all twenty nails, I realize this isn’t the sickest part of me.
Sure, there’s a deep sensation of satisfaction that washes over me as I slap a strip of packing tape down over the attorney general’s mouth. A brutal punishment, but the mafia hates thieves, and as their fixer, I get to dole out justice as I see fit.
A guttural gurgling begins in the back of the attorney general’s throat, and he brings his bound hands to his mouth in an attempt to free himself, but it’s no use.
Hopping up on the bed beside him, I pull out my phone and open up my security footage app in one hand, pushing down on the sex toy with the other, trapping his fists between my palm and his mouth.
He put up more of a struggle than I’d anticipated, the smug bastard. Most people who steal from or borrow and don’t return payments to the mafia are at least somewhat remorseful.
They typically have the decency to apologize and plead for their lives, even if it never works.
I don’t give a fuck about being merciful to men as vile as me, but it sure makes my job taste sweeter.
As the man at my side goes limp, eyes wide open but unstaring at the popcorn ceiling of the motel room, I watch the girl on my screen as she peels off her bloody, ragged clothes, secure in the comfort of her expansive bathroom, reminding myself that this was the last task I had before I go and see her for myself.
It’s my holiday ritual, climbing to her balcony like Romeo trying to get to Rapunzel, or however that fucking fairy tale goes.
But my infatuation with the girl isn’t the stuff you find in happily-ever-afters; it’s nightmare fuel, horror with a vengeance. The kind of filth you find on the dark web where people go to satiate their most shameful, depraved desires.
My girl puts on a show, shimmying her hips out of the tight jeans she has on, and my cock stiffens at the sight of her creamy thighs.
I can’t stop myself from imagining how it’d feel to bury my head between them, or from wondering if the little whimpers she makes when she tosses around in her sleep sound anything like the moans she’d make soaking my chin with her pleasure.
She’s as untouched and pure as fallen snow—at least, that’s what she needs people to believe. But I see the black and blue splotches coloring her skin, see the gash at her ribs that drips with her fresh blood.
Iknowher, and as she pulls the sports bra over her head, baring the heavy swell of her breasts and that tiny pomegranate tattoo that no one else knows she has, I can almost feel the arousal course through her veins.
The second she steps into the shower, I see it; hot water scalds her skin, washing over sore muscles and cuts hidden to me. A normal person might wince against the pain, maybe grit their teeth, but not her.
Not my little Persephone.