Page 88 of Cruel Pleasures

Archer’s not going to hurt me. He didn’t bring me down here to terrorize me.

He brought me down here to illustrate how he feels.

“Do you know what I’ve done for you, minx?” he asks, grabbing the first apron off the wall hook to put on. The second apron he holds out. “I have to wonder what you’d say if you knew Timothee wasn’t the first time.”

My brows jump. “The first time you…”

“For you,” he says. “You’ve come close to real danger and you don’t even know it. You go out to bars and meet strange men and you think it’ll all turn out fine. Do you what a mess I made making him suffer? I showed up just in time to pull him off you.”

“Kaden from the Oasis?”

“That wasn’t Kaden, minx. That was Klein Fairchild. A pissed off, spoiled, good-for-nothing scumbag who was seeking revenge against Kaden and your friend. But since neither were around, he settled for the next best thing. You.”

I don’t bother hiding my shock. I lean back against the stone wall and rest my hands on my knees. “That whole night was strange. I barely remember it.”

“Because he drugged you. Then took you up to your room.”

“You killed him?” I say weakly.

“Chopped him into pieces. Decapitated that egg head of his. Then dumped him in the water. Timothee here will soon meet the same fate. We’ll use one of the secret passages out of the house and take him to my family’s saltwater boat. It’ll be a great opportunity for some fresh air. Which brings me to the apron. Put yours on, minx.” He walks it over to me and then slips it over my head. “You’re my assistant. It’s time you get your hands a little messy.”

“What? If you think I’m…” My throat aches at the thought. My insides have frozen, so shocked and disturbed they can’t function.

“Come here. I promise it’s not as bad as it seems.”

Archer’s fingers thread between mine as he peels me away from the wall.

“Archer, there’s no way. You can’t seriously expect me to help you.”

“That’s exactly what I expect. It’s easy once you get the hang of it. Just think of Timothee as one giant slab of meat, and you’re the butcher. We start by taking off his clothes.”

I’m left to gape beside him as Archer begins stripping off Timothee’s clothes, piece by piece. His shoes drop to the ground only to be kicked away. His shirt is ripped off. His pants and underwear tossed into the trashcan.

My stomach roils as a metallic whiff of blood hits me and it dawns on me what the bleach stench in the room is covering up.

“Some prefer to be more precise with their work, but I’ve always been a lot more free range,” Archer says casually, picking up the hacksaw from earlier. “It’s no fun if everything has to be exact. But make no mistake, blood gets everywhere. That’s what the apron and gloves are for. I usually start with the limbs. Does the arm sound good to you?”

“Archer, you’re fucking crazy!” I blurt out in disbelief.

He chuckles. “Maybe. But no crazier than Timothee was. He worked for the Hostess. He was willing to do anything for her… including hurt you. Why are you upset for him?”

I can’t provide an answer to his question that isn’t generic. I can’t think of a single reason why I should care about what’s about to happen to Timothee’s corpse when he had been seconds away from beating me to death with a book.

He’d punched me and knocked me down to the ground like I was nothing.

I fall into a stunned silence as Archer takes the hacksaw to his left arm. My eyes wide and a sick roil in my belly, I simply stand by and watch as it happens.

Blood gushes out. His flesh slices open. His insides appear slick and sinewy. The bone a transfixing bright white.

“See? That easy. Came right off,” Archer says. He holds up the severed arm, blood trickling down its length. “We’ll cut this down further later. Want to try one?”

My mortified silence and wide-eyed stare answers him. I’ve gone cold, inside and out.

He sighs and returns to his project. “If it makes you feel any better, my first kill wasn’t a cake walk either. It happened during my time in boarding school.”

I swallow against the nausea and croak out, “You were a kid?”

“Fourteen. Kaden was there. Ryu too. Klein and Nolan and another boy named Tristan. A fight broke out like so often does with boys that age. Tristan and I didn’t see eye to eye,” he muses. “It was quickly broken up by the instructors. Of course that didn’t stop us. We agreed to meet up again later that night at the cliff in the woods. It was supposed to be a fistfight.