Page 89 of Terror Tuesday

As soon as they’re gone, I drop down and rush toward Olivia.

Glancing up at the top of the buildings, I don’t see anyone. The cloaked man has vanished. As usual.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she pants, her whole body trembling.

I grab her upper arms and rub them to soothe her. “You did fine. We just… We’ll have to try something else.”

“You mean…all this fornothing? He gets away with it one more night?”

The pain behind her mask is palpable. And it’s my own. I fuckinghatethat she’s hurting. “We’ll get him another time.”

She stands, her knife shimmering at her side.

“No, we won’t.”

Then, she takes off toward the back parking lot.

twenty-four

He’s following close behindas I jump into my Mercedes E-Class. Fortunately, it’s black. Rain scatters like glitter across the windshield. Thunder growls behind us like a warning. Vanq hesitates on the curb. That split second of uncertainty only fuels the fire in my chest.

“Get in the car!” I yell, cracking the window just enough for my voice to slice through.

He slides into the passenger seat just as I slam on the gas.

“Where the fuck are we going?”

“The marina,” I bite out. “It’s where he takes his ‘special girls.’”

Silence thickens between us. My hands grip the wheel like I want to snap it in half.

“It was on his boat?”

That question breaks something loose in my chest. Breath on my neck. Pain as he plunged inside repeatedly. Slapping at his face and begging, crying,please, no. His hand over my mouth. The rhythmic horror of his weight slamming into me.

“The first time,” I say through gritted teeth.

Despite all his black clothes, I sense Vanq tense up underneath and growl, “Firsttime…”

I never wrote about the others. Not in my journal or anywhere. If I didn’t put them into words, maybe they didn’t count. I could pretend it only happened once.

I could survive one time.

It was a mistake I even made it there as a sixteen-year-old girl. A politician party with everyone I’d want to impress for my future. Dad was away and Mom was at home with everyone else.

“Tell me,” he says. “Tell me the details. I want to hear them.” Vanq has gone completely still. I thought he’d already read what happened in my diary. But my brain won’t shake loose the memories despite the night drive flashing through the windshield.

As I drive faster toward our goal, I mutter the words aloud. Mainly to myself, like Vanq can hear the soliloquy in my head.

“Ryan was my escort for the evening. It would kill him to know what happened while he was distracted. Theymusthave persuaded him to stay upstairs. He was only eighteen. Didn’t know.”

Wasn’t his fault.

It was mine?

“I knew something was off, but went downstairs to the bedroom with Reggie anyway after he asked me to help him with something. I’d been given champagne. Perhaps too much. Then…” I swallow.

Muttering the phrases like they’re ingrained in nerve endings somewhere deep in my brain, I speak. “Perfect servant of Caliphylla…She’s obedient. Silent. If I wanted to get ahead… Future President of Northview. It sounded terrifying then. Not at all like I had dreamed of.”