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His head tips back, and a booming laugh echoes across the space. The noise of the room swallows the sound, but it feels like dynamite in my ears.

“Understood, my friend. And when they grow too old?”

I smile salaciously. “Organs are a hit in the black market.”

He grins. “I think you’d be perfect for initiation then. Next one is a week from now. You interested?”

“What's this initiation entail?”

“The expectations will be asked of you when the time comes. But when it’s over, you get lots of that,” he enlightens, nodding towards my tucked away phone. He flashes a feral smile. “Lots of that, in whatever shape, size and gender.”

“And this is safe?”

Dan shrugs a shoulder. “We had a spy, leaking videos, but the Society is confident they’ve found the traitor. And those videos haven’t been seen. They were immediately taken down once they were uploaded.”

False. The particular place they’re uploaded on the dark web, I had a signal put in place. The second that video was posted, Jay or I would immediately get a notification. We had forty-five seconds to download it before it was removed.

That quick.

But it was plenty of time for Z.

Interesting that they believe they caught the mole. I’ve no way to verify that, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

Where there was once a mole, is now a wolf.

I finish off the last of my whiskey in one swallow, relishing in the burn as it travels down my throat. I smile at him once more—a feral smile of my own. I feel the scars on my face crinkle and the demonic feeling swirling in my gut slipping through, glinting in my mismatched eyes. He takes it for what he wants to see it as.

“I’m in.”

Chapter 33

The Manipulator

T he light from the T.V. blares across the dark room as the news reporter’s voice rings out.

“…The murders of the four government officials are still under investigation. The autopsy reports have been released to the public, revealing extreme torture before the men had died.”

A mugshot of a girl is pictured on the screen. She’s a pretty girl, with plain brown hair and brown eyes. The unsettling part is the look in her eyes. A single glance is all it takes to know that she’s clearly unstable.

She was the broken doll I saw eating at the fair.

And she was in Annie’s Playhouse that night. Hiding in the walls and watching every guest that came through. At one point, she looked at me and probably made a decision on whether she was going to kill me or not.

I shudder, knowing how close I could’ve come to death that night.

Snatching up the remote, I click off the T.V., shaking as I throw the remote back on the couch.

The asshole fucked me and then went and murdered a bunch of men with a psychotic chick.

Mark fucking Seinburg is one of the men, along with three other government officials I had met while standing in line for Annie’s Playhouse. He had said he had business to take care of with a psycho chick, and for some reason, him going off to murder people was the last thing I had expected.

Stupid. That’s what he does, Addie. Murder people.

The fear and anxiety are overwhelming. I knew he killed people. Arch's hands showing up on my doorstep was proof of that. His entire family being wiped out…

I knew he was a murderer. He admitted it. But somehow, seeing his heinous crimes broadcasted on live television is eye-opening. He murdered four government politicians.

This isn’t just a boy playing dress-up with a mob boss’s suit and handgun. Arch was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But this… this is big.