Page 15 of Infamous

No houses. No witnesses. Only the sea and me.

She didn’t understand what the quiet really was.

It was me. Waiting. Listening. Ready to close the lid on her night.

Below deck,the air was still and wrong — too white, too polished. Roses already wilting in crystal. Leather seats untouched. Money everywhere, meaning nothing.

The cabin door clicked shut behind us.

She smiled like this was another game she could win. She didn’t see the shift — how I stopped mirroring her, how the warmth drained out of me.

When her laughter died, I moved.

One step. One breath.

It was fast. Violent. Final.

Her eyes went wide. Hands clawed. Air turned thin. The struggle lasted seconds — maybe less. Then the fight drained out of her, limbs twitching before the stillness settled in.

The only sound left was the engine’s hum beneath our feet.

I held her there for a moment longer than I should have. Not out of mercy — out of memory. The weight of her body reminded me of Billie’s. The way she’d gone still too. The same silence, the same betrayal in the air.

When it was over, I stepped back. Her head fell sideways, mouth slack, lipstick smeared across her cheek. A woman who thought she was untouchable, now nothing more than cooling flesh on silk sheets.

The room stank of perfume and death. It was a nauseating mix.

I walked to the small bathroom, hands shaking. The mirror caught me mid-step — sweat in my hair, blue contacts still in, eyes that weren’t mine staring back. A stranger in my skin.

The faucet hissed. Water hit my skin, cold and relentless. Iscrubbed until it burned, until the sting felt cleaner than the silence.

Justice. Not the kind the world handed out with trials and verdicts. That kind failed Billie. This was the justice I’d promised her — the vow I whispered over her broken body:They’ll pay. Every last one of them will pay.

Two down.

One to go.

The thought didn’t bring relief. It just sat in my skull, heavy and endless.

When the final one fell, I wondered if there’d be anything left of me worth saving.

10

LUCIAN: THE THIRD VICTIM

The third and final act of my mission had been the hardest.

I’d thought the killing would be the challenge. It wasn’t. The hard part was her - the one who never stayed where she was supposed to be. Every time I closed the distance, something shifted. Buses left early. Classes were rescheduled. Doors locked seconds before I reached them. Fate - or whatever passed for it - kept dragging her out of my reach.

She wasn’t like the others. Stacy and Rita had begged to be found. This one moved like she’d been warned. Quiet. Careful. Absent from the noise of the city. She didn’t post. She didn’t drink. She didn’t draw attention. She folded inward and lived small, and that made her harder to see. Harder to touch.

But I had work to finish. Three girls. Two already gone. The last one wasn’t going to slip away forever.

It took weeks before I found the pattern. Every afternoon, she went to the same coffee shop - small, dim, forgettable. She sat in the same seat, ordered the same drink, held the cup like it was keeping her alive. That was where I moved in. Not with violence, but with patience.

I took the stool beside her and ordered black coffee. I didn’t speak. I let her get used to my presence, a quiet shape at her side. A face that didn’t demand to be remembered.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t move away. Eventually, she accepted it, much like the same way people accept background noise. That’s when she started to let me in. Not into her life, but into her silence.