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After shutting down the merch store, I delete the cloud server of all images of me and erase the woman’s hard drive. One quick search of her phone gives me Amethyst’s full name and address. It’s Crowley, and she lives on Parisii Drive, which backs onto the cemetery.

How serendipitous.

Amethyst also raised over fifty thousand dollars to purchase a plot in the Parisii Cemetery and an ostentatious memorial. It’s a life-sized grim reaper with feathery wings and a scythe. It’s apt, considering the woman who runs my unofficial fan club calls me the Angel of Death.

If it’s death she wants, I will give it to her… slowly.

By the time I reach her road, the sun has long set, and streetlights illuminate the townhouses. I park outside number 2 and change out of the uniform and into black pants with a matching sweatshirt and a long leather coat with a hood. Not wanting to reveal my face to her neighbors or possible roommates, I pull on a mask and slip out of the car.

Parisii Drive is a quaint little neighborhood where our rebel group set up our original safe houses. Most of them are rented out to tenants, but we still occasionally use the tunnel we built from number 15 to smuggle items to the cemetery and catacombs .

I walk down the quiet street, expecting to access number 13 through the old woman’s bed-and-breakfast, but when I reach Amethyst’s house, its door is already open.

At the sound of a muffled scream, I quicken my pace and enter, only to find a large man bent over something or someone in the kitchen. It’s Amethyst. She’s lying on the floor beneath his bulk.

Based on all the filthy things she checked off on her sex contract, it’s impossible to tell if they’re playing out a consensual non-consent scene or if she’s genuinely losing a fight.

How many other men has this woman finessed?

She punches at his thicker arms, her mouth opening and closing in a silent scream. When our eyes meet, those pretty features twist with so much anguish that my heart pounds with jealous rage.

Amethyst should be making those faces for me.

It should be my hands around that delicate neck.

It should be me making that ample bosom heave.

“Bitch,” he says, his voice breathy. “I’ve always wanted to see you beneath me, screaming for mercy.”

Again, this could mean anything, but I’m not about to make assumptions. I walk around the pair, extract a knife from the block, and slide it across the tiled floor. If Amethyst is really in danger and was telling the truth about killing her music teacher, she’ll use this opening to save herself.

If this is just a kinky scene, then I’ll kill her lover and force her to watch. I return to the doorway, keeping my gaze on her right hand. As the man reaches between her legs, she reaches for the knife.

Good girl.

Without hesitation, she plunges the blade into his neck. Sensation surges to my cock so quickly that I become lightheaded.

This isn’t her first stabbing.

Most civilians would aim for somewhere less vital if they used the knife at all. I’ve seen situations where the victim held the weapon as a threat, only for the scenario to turn around on them and escalate into their own murder. Amethyst knew exactly what to do with the blade because she’s a killer, like me .

Blood spurts down from the man’s neck, soaking the front of Amethyst’s black bodice. It splatters onto her cleavage and on her pretty face, making my fists clench.

What will she do next? Break down? Call the cops?

The man releases her throat to clutch at his wound, but Amethyst doesn’t scramble away to safety. She rears up and delivers a violent stab to the other side of his neck.

My knees buckle, and sweat breaks out across my skin. The sweatpants I’m wearing become too confining, and I have to grip the wall to stay upright.

I have never, in my twenty-nine years of life, seen anything so erotic.

As she stumbles to her feet, her gaze locks with mine again, making my heart skip. Just as I’m about to reach out to claim my beautiful little killer, her eyes roll to the back of her head and she faints.

“Well done for staying alive, Little Amethyst,” I murmur. “Because I plan on breaking you into tiny pieces.”

The letters she wrote depicted a woman of a delicate disposition who needed coaxing into intimacy. She was broken, vulnerable, and in desperate need of my guidance. Her psychiatrist and parents kept her under their control with a cocktail of financial abuse and drugs. I thought Amethyst was a butterfly that needed my help to emerge from her cocoon.

But she’s more like a black widow spider.

I played a number of video clips on the journey over to Parisii Drive. In addition to leveraging our relationship into a million-dollar book deal and selling doctored photos of me as merchandise, she also monetized her videos.

Some estimates say she made eighty thousand dollars from reading excerpts of my letters. Others say it’s as much as two hundred grand. Either way, she’s just another parasite willing to exploit another for financial gain.

While the corpse cools and my beauty slumbers, I scroll through her online profile. She’s still collecting money for my funeral, even after assuring me she’s already purchased the site and memorial.

There are all manner of items on the wishlist that aren’t for the prison book club. She’s added a new digital camera, professional studio lights, a new computer, and several dark romance hardback books.

“Amethyst Crowley,” I mutter. “You’re a piece of work.”

At her loud gasp, I slip my phone back into my coat pocket and stand in the doorway to watch. She scrambles to her hands and knees and cries at the sight of the corpse. Blood spills across the black tiles, with a few splash marks on the low cupboards. She glances around at the mess and sobs.

I note that she’s more concerned about the clean-up than about the corpse. More importantly, why hasn’t she reacted to the sight of me standing in her kitchen doorway?

Scrambling to her feet, she rushes over to where she left her phone charging on the kitchen table. She calls a number over and over, her whimpers becoming more frantic.

Her boyfriend?

She once told me she hadn’t had a relationship since being abused by her music teacher, because hallucinations of him kept popping up every time she tried to get intimate with another man. Back then, I offered her my most heartfelt support. It didn’t even occur to me that she was using our connection for online fame.

“Mom?” she cries and puts the call on speaker.

“Amethyst, what is it?” The woman on the other end of the conversation already sounds exhausted.

“I need your help.” Amethyst pauses, her breath quickening, but her mother remains silent. After several uncomfortable heartbeats, she continues. “A man came to the house. He’s one of the trolls who’s been threatening me online?—”

“What happened?” the mother snaps.

“He pushed his way in…” She takes a noisy, panicked breath. “And he said he was here to put me in my place.”

“Amethyst, where is he?”

She gulps. “On the kitchen floor. Mom, he had his hands around my throat. He was choking me. I didn’t have any choice?—”

“No!” her mother shrieks. “Don’t tell me. I can’t do this anymore.”

“What?” Amethyst whispers .

I cock my head, mentally asking the same.

“Listen. You’re not a little girl anymore. You’re no longer a victim,” the woman says, her words venomous and sharp. “You can’t attack men and expect the legal system to give you a pass.”

Her face falls. “Even in self-defense?”

“At this rate, you’ll go to jail for murder and so will I for being an accessory.”

My jaw drops. Who else did Amethyst kill besides her music teacher?

“Is he really dead?” the mother asks.

“No.” Amethyst clears her throat. “I just knocked him unconscious.”

“Thank God for that. One more call like this, and I’ll have you committed.”

“Mom?”

My brow pulls together.

“Mom?” Her voice breaks.

It looks like her mother just hung up. I knew Amethyst’s parents were controlling, but this level of callousness reminds me too much of my past.

Everything they do adds up to nefarious manipulation, from dragging her out of college to stay in a house they purchased on the other side of town, to an allowance too small for a woman of her age to thrive. Add to the mix prescription medication that renders her unable to function, and you have a cocktail of abuse.

Knowing that she may have killed before puts her parents’ behavior into perspective. What if this is the alternative to sending her to an institution?

Amethyst’s features harden and she turns her attention away from her phone. With the precision of an experienced killer, she unbuttons the corpse’s pants. I step forward, wanting to pull her away from the man’s cock, but I force my feet to still.

Curiosity rages through my veins. What kind of woman is she really, and what will she do next?

She takes off his shoes and slips the pants off his legs, only to wrap them around his neck and tie into a tourniquet.

After rinsing her hands in the sink, she opens the back door, returns to the dead man, and drags him into the dark.