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DIYA

“I don’t normally fuck a man just to find out his best friend’s dirty little secrets,” I said, looking down at my recent victim. “But you know… desperate times.”

“You won’t get away with this, Diya,” Tobias growled, glaring at me like he wanted to inject me with a lethal cocktail of cancer drugs. That was his MO.

Doctor Tobias Dawson, one of the top pediatric oncologists at St. Anthony’s hospital, and a fucking murderer. Behind his charismatic smile and white coat, he was pure evil. And evil men needed to be buried.

“Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” I sang, slamming his head against the metal table, making him howl.

“Let me go.” He thrashed and cursed, struggling against the ropes, desperate to get away, though he knew he never would.

“You’re going nowhere, Toby. Just stay still and stop squirming like a fucking worm,” Layne—my partner in crime, and my foster sister—grunted, slamming the hilt of her knife against his head.

“You think you’ll live when Dex finds out?” Toby growled. “He’ll hunt you to the ends of the universe, and put you both down, you filthy bitches.”

“But he’ll never find out. I’ll make sure of it,” I said, studying Toby’s pale, bloodless face, savoring the taste of his plight. He looked utterly helpless, just like the children he had once killed.

“We-we are friends.”

I smiled at his attempt to make me feel sympathy, but I had zero fucks to give. Not for him.

“Friends?” I scoffed. “We’re not friends, Toby. Didn’t you tell Dex that I’m a gold-digging slut, and I only wanted him for his money? Guess what I wanted from him?”

Declan ‘Dex’ Hart was Tobias’s best friend and a fellow doctor at St. Anthony’s, and my… lover?

“Me?” Toby asked. “You wanted me?”

“Bingo. There you go. Foolishness has never been your sin.” I smiled, pulling out vials filled with poisonous flowers in pretty shades.

I love beautiful things.

His eyes widened, fear battling with rage.

“What? You prefer cancer drugs. I prefer poisons,” I said with a shrug.

“Why are you do-doing this?” he stuttered as Layne ran her knife down his throat.

“You know why, Toby. You killed children. CHILDREN,” Layne said, pushing her knife slightly into his chest. “They trusted you.”

“And I helped them. I liberated them from pain. They deserved to go before all they knew was pain,” he said, voice fervent.

“You are not a god,” I said.

“God’s a monster, Diya. I’m not a monster.” And he believed it with his whole heart.

“Ok, babe, this has stopped being interesting. Can I cut out his heart now?” Layne asked with a huff.

“No,” I said, opening the glass vial filled with oleander. Pink, red, and white. They were too beautiful to be lethal, too gorgeous to mean death.

“Ok, do your thang, but mine is more interesting,” Layne said as I fed the flowers to Toby. He jerked up and then went still, his last breath coming out in a painful gasp.

“Goodbye, Toby.”

Three days after Toby’s death, someone knocked on my apartment door.

“Doctor Sharma, I’m Detective Knight from NYPD. We need to ask you a few questions about Doctor Tobias Dawson’s death,” he said, flashing his badge, his right hand on his gun.

That day, I became a suspect.

Getting caught would be ultimately final, but becoming a suspect, being under the constant scrutiny of law enforcement, feeling the noose tightening around you—that was a true nightmare for a serial killer.

Of course, he didn’t find any evidence of my involvement and had to let me go the next day, but he never truly let go.

He was there, always there, waiting for me to slip, to make a mistake.

And so I ran.

That was four fucking months ago.

That was the last time I killed. The last time I felt free, alive.

The last time I felt like myself.