Page 16

DELILAH

D ay one of having a job has been a success. Apart from the driver I’ve managed to pick up like a bad smell who doesn’t seem to fuck off. Jeremy doesn’t understand the ways of his employers, and that a laugh is condescending. Instead, he sticks to my side as we walk up the stairs.

“You weren’t expecting an immediate start, were you?” he asks, pointedly looking at my shoes.

The backs of my ankles are raw from standing in these stilts all day, but I wasn’t going to give Heidi the satisfaction of leaving. As much as it was supposed to be my interview, she ended up trying hard to audition for the role of my new stepmother.

I don’t respond to him, since I need him to leave so I can find out what my father is doing.

The sex club, X, doesn’t belong to him, but Heidi has never worked for him so she shouldn’t have the emblem on her wrist. The cursive three belongs to his little boys’ club of professional ass lickers, and she wasn’t wearing the perfume he always gifts his mistresses.

Old men have engrained habits that refuse to die, much like Harkin Leroux himself, the cockroach.

Jeremy is like a shadow as I enter my apartment, and he finally shuts the fuck up as he looks around my living space. There’s nothing personal in my life, so he can continue staring. I flick the lights on to give him an unobstructed view as I walk to the kitchen at the side of the open living room.

A shadow catches my eye at the side of the room.

My bedroom door is ajar, but I’m certain that I can see the silhouette of a man standing beside the window.

The long black outline cast on the floor could only be formed by the streetlights.

I turn to hide my satisfied smile because Kane is losing.

He’s hiding like a little bitch, and now he’s been caught.

I knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away. Somehow, he’s morphed into Asher, and just like his brother, he has to have control of everything. That’s how he managed to play the role successfully. He knew every mannerism that his brother had and adopted them.

Turning to Jeremy, I use my sweetest voice to ask, “Would you like something to drink?”

Antagonizing a deranged stalker who has admitted that he wants to kill me probably isn’t the sanest thing to do. But I know Kane, and I know he will never hurt me. He’ll prove it to me, and then I’ll shove that fact down his throat until he chokes on it.

The other uninvited guest in my home walks towards me and blocks the view of my bedroom door. “I’ll be working the rest of the night, so as long as it’s not going to intoxicate me.”

I take the time to look at him now that he has a use.

He’s not unattractive, and he has symmetrical features.

The professional hairstyle makes him look older.

His eyes aren’t the pale green I want to see.

But I force myself to move and fill up a glass with water.

Jeremy gets closer as I turn, and the edges of the shadow angle out of the open door.

It’s getting fainter and smaller. My freak of a stalker is playing my game, and the best part is that he doesn’t even realize it.

His shadow remains in my periphery as I lay my hand on Jeremy’s shoulder and kick off my heels. “That feels so much better.” I look up at him and bat my lashes like Mother taught me.

All men are the fucking same. They think everyone wants them and they fit reality into their warped desires.

It’s no different now as Jeremy places his hand on my waist as though I need him to steady me when I’m flat on my feet.

I may have played into it by flirting with him when I was working between the private rooms of X, but that was because I was bored and he’s too self-absorbed to notice that it abruptly stopped as soon as we left.

Stroking up my side, he leans into me, and my eyes dip to the patch of floor directly outside of my bedroom door.

Kane doesn’t move, and his shadow is deathly still.

Fuck it, Jeremy is visually satisfying enough.

He’ll definitely be mentally satisfying with the knowledge that Kane is six feet away, watching us.

I curl my hand around Jeremy’s nape. His fingers tighten on my hip, each digit digging in as he roughly pulls me into his chest and slowly moves his lips over mine.

He blindly sets the glass down, and my eyes close on instinct at the feeling of his soft lips.

There’s no rushed movements or his tongue poking into my mouth like he’s jousting.

There’s also no excitement other than knowing that Kane is here.

Jeremy stiffens and his fingers turn bruising. If he was a dog, his ears would be up. He grinds into me as he tilts his head to the side. I don’t want him to spoil my fun, so I grab his belt to lead him as far away from my bedroom door as I can.

He leans back and his lips are forcefully separated from mine by a thin metallic line cutting us apart.

I look up to see Kane’s balaclava-covered face staring down at me over the top of Jeremy’s head.

His jaw is tense, stretching the material taut, and his lips are set in a thin line.

But his eyes are alive as he tightens the fishing wire around his fists.

It cuts through his latex gloves as Jeremy attempts to push his arms up to create a gap and drops his chin down to his chest.

For some fucked up reason, I don’t move.

I don’t walk away or scream. Instead, I calmly cross my arms over my chest and watch him. If his hate for me is rooted in death, then he can hate himself too. I may have killed Asher, but that was different, a point of pride.

Kane doesn’t look away from me as he forces the thin wire to Jeremy’s neck. There’s no fear on Jeremy’s face as he kicks back though, not even when Kane locks his fists together at his nape and twists. A red line appears around the sharp wire and little red pearls bead over the edge.

There’s something artistic about the method he’s choosing to kill a man who has done nothing to him. My Kane would have been upset, but he would have swallowed his hurt and kept it to himself. He would never have shown an emotion like jealousy, but he is now. So, I officially fucking win.

The front of Jeremy’s throat parts to allow the sharp wire through from his weight slumping forward.

I move in time as he stumbles again and his knees slam into the hard floor.

Kane’s hands are bloody, staining the collar of Jeremy’s white shirt.

But he doesn’t stop. He increases the pressure and slowly, purposefully, pulls his fists over each other until the wire is fully embedded into Jeremy’s neck.

More blood leaks out of the corner of his fists, but he doesn’t look away from me. We’re in a fucked up game of chicken. I straighten my spine as I say, “Take the mask off.” His jaw pulses. I smile as I slowly add, “Asher.”

If he wanted me to believe that he died, I’ll happily play along now that I know how twisted he is.

The black, form fitting t-shirt sculpts to his muscles as he abruptly crosses his arms. Jeremy gurgles, with the wire cutting through his flesh.

The only thing keeping him upright is Kane’s hold on the wire.

I step back from the trajectory of his body eventually slumping, and my hip knocks into the counter, causing a metallic clink against the glass on the draining board.

Kane drags Jeremy’s gurgling body backwards as though he’s nothing. He slumps on the floor, the wire caught around his throat, and red flowing under him.

The boy I loved doesn’t exist as Kane takes a menacing step towards me.

He never wore all black when he was permitted to dress himself.

Even if he had to wear a dark hoodie, he would have a white t-shirt underneath as his own way of saying fuck you to Asher.

Now, he’s a void. The knit balaclava doesn’t sit comfortably around his jaw as he clenches his teeth and takes a deep breath, but his eyes are uncovered for once.

His booted foot hits the growing pool of blood as I steel my spine. Something cold brushes the back of my forearm as I discreetly step to the side to hide the knife behind me. I can’t see a syringe in his hand, but it was the same last time. I’m not letting him drug me again.

The person in front of me is barely human.

He’s like a wild animal advancing towards me.

Holding the edge of the counter in one hand, I curl my fingers around the knife as I slowly walk with the edge pressed against my lower back.

Red footprints show him following me, and I’m forced to look away from him as the knife hits the glass Jeremy set down.

It topples over the edge and shatters beside the dead body.

The water mixes with the crimson, spreading the puddle further, faster.

“Do you know what you are?” I ask.

He pauses, his eyes hardening and fists clenching, but he doesn’t answer. The drip of his bloody palms adds to the mess, and I hold my breath in an attempt to calm my heart.

“You’re a weak, pathetic little boy, Asher.”

I don’t have enough time to run from him as he snatches my throat.

My feet are scraped through the blood as his wet palm slides around my neck.

Catching myself with my hand on his chest, I quickly pull the knife in front of me and press the sharp tip to his side.

Kane looks down, first at my hand, then to the knife.

His eyes flicker back to my hand as though that poses a bigger threat than the literal kitchen knife denting his t-shirt.

He’s more muscular than when he was impersonating his brother. I hate myself for noticing it. My breathing shallows the longer he stares down at me, and his voice rumbles beneath my palm as he dares, “Do it, koukla mou.”

“Get out of my house, and take your new victim with you, or I will,” I counter.

I stumble back as he pushes his weight forward, trapping me between the counter and his hard body.

The knife slips, but I correct my hand and bring it up in front of my chest. Before I can press it to his face, he grabs hold of my wrist and bends my hand back so the flat of the blade is resting against my cheek.

His movements are calm, almost peaceful, as he leans over me. The thick knit of his mask brushes my nose as he darkly whispers, “You are my only victim.”

Why does it sound like he’s laying claim to my soul?

He taps the cool steel edge of the knife on my jaw, whispering the same phrase he used to. “Knock.” Another tap. “Knock.” Another tap. “Ask who’s there, koukla mou.”

Strengthening my voice, I meet his eyes. “I don’t need to when I know everything about you, Asher.”

His eyes darken, the pale green violently swirling into the browns as he reaches behind his back, challenging me. “Say it again.”

“Ash—”

Something metallic is pressed against my temple. The rectangular edge of a muzzle and the circular exit is going to be stamped into my bone from how hard Kane digs the gun into my skin.

“Again,” he grits, and the click of the safety being removed vibrates through my skull.

There’s something wrong with me because I laugh. It starts off slow, but I can’t stop it from getting louder.

“Do it. I’ve never been afraid of you, Asher .” His jaw tics at the incorrect name and it bolsters me. “No one ever will be, because all you are is a pathetic little reflection of a person who will never fucking exist.”

For a brief moment, I see the boy who cared about everyone and never allowed me to put him before myself. The boy who loved so wholeheartedly that I hid him to keep that love safe, to stop anyone having the opportunity to taint it.

But he blinks and it shatters, becoming no more than an illusion built from my memories.