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I go to the basement level, strip off and burn my clothes in the incinerator, and then get in the shower. I only ever use this shower after a kill. This time burning evidence and the shower feel physically necessary, more than just a ritual to quiet the what if hamster in my brain. Some of Van Alen’s blood splattered on my clothes and face and into my hair. I blinked in shock against the warm blood when it hit me.
I wasn’t prepared for this kill to be so bloody. I need other layers of planning for that. I scrub myself in the shower and my brain starts chanting:
Forgive me father for I have sinned… as I rehearse what I’ll say to Father Rossi in the confession booth. He knows who I am. He’s known me since I was a child. He knows the Stryker reputation. So even though I don’t tell him every gory detail… he knows.
This is all part of the ritual. All part of the order that keeps me from becoming completely unglued. But I feel the edges fraying. I feel angry, unsettled. This doesn’t feel like it normally feels. Why weren’t they all fucking blanks? Why?
“FUCK!”
I had a plan. I had a schedule. I had a routine. And now I’m home far earlier than I’d planned, scrubbing my skin raw in the shower, trying to put it all back together again into something resembling order.
When the water starts to run cold, I get out, dry off, then go into the locked chamber. I put on a new set of clothes and shoes and scan the room, looking for something out of place, but everything looks normal. Could someone else have gotten in here?
Anything can be hacked, but no one with those kinds of skills has access to my house. I have too many cameras, too many guards, too many people who have been loyal to this family since my grandfather was still alive.
I push on one of the stones in the far corner of the room, and another door to a smaller room opens. I boot up the computer and look at the footage from the hidden cameras in the secret room.
I know I’m crazy, okay? I understand this is crazy and irrational. No one got into that room, and having a second secret room inside the first one and a hidden security set-up inside my second secret room to try to catch someone breaking into the first secret room that requires either an expert level hacker or my finger print and retinal scan… I get it. I am crazy. Let’s just close the book on that and move on.
The cameras reveal nothing. Like I knew they wouldn’t. And while there is some small chance that someone has been downstairs and seen the locked room, there is exactly zero chance they know I have hidden cameras inside the secret room and a second hidden room.
Other people, normal people, don’t have insane thoughts like this.
I return to the main room and draw a red X through Van Alen’s photo and a line through his name on the list. But I still feel unsettled.
I called a cleaner on the way home to go back over the kill site with a fine-toothed comb to make sure I didn’t miss anything. When there’s a lot of blood I almost always call one of Brian’s cleaners.
It’s almost one in the morning by the time I get to my room. I still feel so chaotic. I will not call Brian. The last thing I need is a lecture about how I was sloppy. I was not sloppy. I don’t know how a live round got into that gun, but I wasn’t sloppy. And hearing Brian go on and on about it for an hour isn’t going to make me feel better. Besides, if this is one of the nights he actually can sleep all the way through, and I wake him up, I might end up on his hit list.
I’d like to think Mina would stop him, but who’s to say? She’s almost as sociopathic as he is.
When I get to the master bedroom on the second floor, I lock the door and check the surveillance for Maddie’s house. I don’t expect there to be anything interesting to see this late at night. I’m about to check the earlier footage, but then I see movement—a small movement that isn’t just her shifting position in her sleep. I enlarge the viewing screen. Is she doing what I think she’s doing? Holy shit. She is.
I pull out my cell phone and type a message to her. It’s about time.
I’m not sure at first if she’s going to look at her phone. She’s trying to ignore it. But finally she loses that fight.
When she sees my message she looks around the room as though she thinks I’m literally standing there in some corner shrouded in darkness. She doesn’t reply. She’s still trying to focus on her own pleasure, pleasure she was trying to sneak and take without me. I want to punish her for this.
I text her again. Pull the blanket back. Show me your pussy. I want to watch you come.
She looks more annoyed this time, yet still scandalized by my suggestion. But she’s thinking about it. I can see the war going on inside her.
Give me this one thing, Maddie. Just this one thing to put my night back in order.
My fingers fly over the keys as I rush to send her another message. It would please me, and that will make your life easier. I’ll see it all anyway soon enough. Show me and win some of my favor.
If she knew how crazy I was, she’d rush to comply. She’d be too scared not to. Now I’m wondering if she’ll actually be safe with me. What if I have another night like tonight and just snap? What if I hurt her beyond repair? What if I kill her? What if I spent all this time planning and fixating and obsessing and moving all the chess pieces on my board to get her exactly where I wanted her only to end up losing control and killing her in the end?
Which thing would bring more order to my life? Maddie alive, or dead? That’s a question I need to keep far from my mind, but it’s too late, I already thought it. It’s already squirreling around in there.
She seems to be wavering, like she might actually do this, like she might actually obey my order. I send another message. Maddie, show me and come. Now.
I know I sound frantic and insane. If only she knew the actual thoughts I’m battling right now. If she only knew how close to losing my entire mind I am. And for what? One kill that went wrong?
Maybe Brian was right. Maybe I’m not cut out for this line of work. Maybe I feel too many things. Maybe I get too frantic. Maybe I need far too much order for this to ever end well, either with my kill list, or with Maddie. To say nothing of the actual business. I’m lucky the organization practically runs without my involvement most of the time.
I make a few big shows, and flex my power every few months and most problems resolve themselves. I’ve got underbosses who manage most of it. I’m just the one who sits back and counts the money. I’ve only had to directly kill three people for the actual business—so they knew I wasn’t just some stupid punk kid they could easily overthrow. In the first year there was more danger to me from within my organization than from outside it. Brian had warned me and prepared me for that. As much as I hate to admit it, without him, I might not still be here because there were definitely those who wanted me deposed.