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Shots suddenly resound inside the room as Rague sinks four bullets inside my donor’s torso. Then he yanks the throwing knife out of the fucker’s eye and starts stabbing the top of his head, creating an even bigger mess. The sound is gag inducing, but I’m blasé about the highest level of gruesome.

“It’s like he’s trying to make a jack-o’-lantern following a Michael Myers tutorial,” I hear Lori whisper.

Nobody says anything else until Rague is done. He needs to vent his inner monster’s fury and although the thought of poking at it comes back, I decide against it. I have stuff to do.

“I think he’s eternally-returned-to-dust dead, amen and all that holy stuff, KKJ,” Lori hazards. I guess Super Model is a better nickname than King Kong Junior.

But fuck, I just came here to have some alone time with my donor. To clear my head and have some fun, not attend one of my family’s annoying shows.

“Is that my throwing knife?” I hear Gabe asking stiffly, his expression flat and blank as he taps away on his phone.

“Fuck off, Gabriz!” Rague finally speaks, addressing Gabe, Bez, and Lori.

“Another ship name?” Michael groans.

“Fine!” Lori grabs Gabe’s forearm. “Gabriz is leaving the third circle of hell, the one for crazy psychos!”

“I’m a sociopath!” Fucking loathe when they lump me together with psychos.

“Whatever. Like there’s a difference at the moment,” Bez taunts me.

I hear a small laugh, and it’s like a switch turning on inside my head.

I grab Rague’s bloody hand still wrapped around Leslie and spin us toward the glass wall, lifting the gun and pulling the trigger five times, muzzle pointed right at Bez.

Lori screams, while Raph grabs Michael and moves his body behind him. Bez/Gabe remains still, cool as a cucumber. Not a twitch. They know the glass is bullet proof; they were here when Rague changed it two months ago—Raph as well, don’t know why he’s shielding his husband.

“You bloody, shitty arsehole!” Lori yells at me, his watery eyes fixed on the bullets stuck in the glass. He then frantically pats Gabe’s body before climbing him like a tree and wrapping himself around him.

He should know by now about my spontaneous outbursts. I do dream of hurting every single one of my bros, but I’ve never actually done it.

“I’m. A fucking. Sociopath,” I snap as I lower the gun and glare at all of them.

Then I move toward the door that leads to the bathroom. Need a fucking shower. Rague can dispose of the bodies since he enjoys acid’s effectiveness so fucking much.

My Hummer is gliding smoothly through the snowy streets of Chicago, a marvel of design and engineering.

Warm air blows out of the vents drying the damp ends of my dreads.

My black duster coat is lying on the leather passenger seat, hiding Leslie underneath.

I had to change my dirty clothes, and now I’m wearing kickass ankle boots, black jeans, and a burgundy cable knit—blood is less visible on dark colors.

And with Sari’s stalker lurking around, I never know when I’ll need to shed some.

Five more minutes and I’ll be at my lake house in Winnetka, a suburban area of Chicago. I have just enough time.

“Serena, show me Sari’s position.”

“Sure thing, Uri,” she replies straight away.

A map with a red dot appears on the dash screen.

Sari is having a top-rated gastronomic experience with Michael, Raph, and Sandy—their PA—in my upscale bistro downtown.

I usually go along for their monthly office dinner, but I need to check on the work Rague’s men did at the house. It needs to be ready by tomorrow night.

“Serena, access the cameras in the bistro,” I order.

I’m the owner, no need for Serena to hack into them. She finds their table straight away—the best in the place.

“Zoom on Sari.”

And there he is. His new red-rimmed glasses should make him look like a nerd, but instead turn him into a tsunami of innocence and dirty thoughts.

His long, elegant fingers with neatly filed, milky-white nails wrap gracefully around the glass stem.

His relaxed smile gleams under the restaurant fluorescent lights.

After a moment, he leaves the table, moving toward the toilets.

He’s wearing a pair of soft-looking velvet pants that envelop his legs like a second skin.

Those plump cheeks are begging for my hands’ attention with each step he takes.

The thought of them jiggling under my eyes with every hard, punishing thrust of my hips as I ruin his hole makes me want to turn my fucking car around and go to him.

“Fuck!” I rub my hand over my mouth, not sure what to do with myself.

One long look at him, and I’m on fire. I start biting the barbell in my tongue impatiently.

I’m hotly aware of the way my sweater rubs against my nipples, the pinch of the metal hoop in my eyebrow, the sweat covering the ink along my chest, and the urge to pull Sari onto my lap to punish him for displaying his uncontainable beauty for other men’s leery looks.

I need to move up my plan. That reminds me. “Call Clover.”

“Did you do it?” I ask as soon as he picks up.

“Learn proper etiquette before calling someone on the phone.” Why is he whispering?

I wouldn’t have given him the job, but Clover is the only one who could get inside Sari’s building without detection. He’s a thief we use when we need some extra help with the donors. We pay him abundantly for his facilitation. But, as the rest of humanity, he is annoying as fuck.

“Just answer the fucking question!”

“I didn’t want to let them go. They were so cute!”

Really? Maybe I should have turned to the triplets; they seem to like animals as well as unleashing chaos.

“Clover.”

“Wait a second. I’m upside down and sweating like a horse here,” he pants.

“Like a pig, sweating like a pig.”

“It makes no sense. Pigs don’t sweat. Horse on the other hand,” he whisper-yells. Then I hear a thud, a curse, and the abrupt beeping sound of an alarm going off.

“You’re on a job,” I state, unimpressed as I halt the Hummer in front of my house gates.

“No, I’m just…passing time between jobs,” he replies, out of breath.

I type in the security code. “What are you stealing?” I ask, as I go through the retinal scanner before the gates open. This conversation is also me passing time.

“I didn’t steal anything. I just studied…closely a couple of paintings and a few sculptures.”

“Where?” I wait for the garage door to open, staring out over the magnolia trees, the path beyond, and the lake past that.

“The Art Institute. Those Water Lilies… Didn’t know paint strokes could feel so rough under the fingertips.”

I’m not surprised he could enter and walk around a place in Chicago with the most advanced security system in the world.

Rami bumped into Clover when working on a case, they were both somewhere they shouldn’t have been, so they mutually decided to ignore each other.

Rami was impressed by Clover’s Lupin the III thieving skills, so he decided to hire him for the next case. Five years have passed since then.

“Anyway the job is done,” he lets me know. I keep hearing clanking noises through the line. What the fuck is he doing? “I don’t question my clients when given a job…”

I could be charming, smooth-talking, and likable with disingenuous intentions. Sociopathic individuals are better at influencing others, at manipulating them. We probably invented it. Nevertheless, today has been a fucking long day, and it’s not over yet.

“So don’t,” I forcibly state, grabbing the phone from the dash.

He huffs, but doesn’t say more about it. “I kept one of the rodents.”

“Why?” I exit my car and stop near it, while opening the bank app on my phone.

“As a pet,” he replies.

I’ve never understood the need to own a pet.

I see it more as a burden than a companion.

The need to feed it, clean up after it, even cuddle it.

Sari got one last month. Dare, one of the triplets, took him to their pet shelter, and when he came back, he had adopted a hairless guinea pig.

The animal is all pink with a large black spot on his tailless butt and white, frizzy hair only on its muzzle, feet, and legs.

He named him Albert E., since he thinks there’s a resemblance with the German theoretical physicist. I only see a squishy, ugly, biting thing, who’s screaming to be squeezed to death—like a stress ball.

“Need to give him a name, any suggestions?”

“No. I transferred the money with a little extra. Not a word to Rami.”

“Why not? Oh crap, gotta go!” He ends the call, and I pocket my phone and walk out of the garage and into the house.

The front wall is all made of glass to enjoy the quiet courtyard.

A wooden bench, a small table, and the old pomegranate tree standing in the middle, with its twisted bark and long branches covered in snow.

I have a penthouse in a newly constructed high-rise, and a condo in downtown Chicago, but that tree is one of the main reasons I decided to buy this lake house last year.

I turn left and stride down the corridor, passing the living room and the kitchen to stop at the lab’s threshold.

It smells like fresh paint and chemicals.

Tomorrow morning, all the equipment and tools I ordered will arrive.

I move next door. The soundproofing in the room is almost done, by tomorrow afternoon everything will be ready.

In the meantime, I need to fucking find my moccasins before Raph forces me to kill him. What should I take from him next? One of the blood paintings inside his penthouse? His Ducati? His teeth?