Page 77 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

Her eyes widen—in horror, probably.

Good.

“At one point, I let Orton and a few of the other kids out of their rooms, and they worked out some of their own fury on the adults. It was quite the bloody scene.” I turn to the breakfast cart and select a scone, but really, I’m back there, standing over Sara’s lifeless body just hours before I went wild with some berserker force. I had nothing to lose, and all the sadistic, grim-faced schoolmasters who I’d naturally blamed for her death didn’t stand a chance.

Silence. I’m sure she’s been rendered speechless by my little report. Well, sometimes you need to bring out the big guns.

I break the pastry open. “Needless to say, if you repeat any of this to anybody, you’ll get a firsthand demonstration.”

“Did you find a gun or something?” she asks.

“I had a bag of rocks at the end of the rope and a whole lot of fury. A few I killed with torches that I ripped from the walls. A bit of accelerant, and I burned them alive. You never heard such yells.”

I concentrate on my scone. I can feel her vibrating with intensity. I always feel her.

“The head schoolmaster I killed with my bare hands. I ripped his windpipe from his neck while I looked him in the eyes. It takes a good deal of finger strength to grab a man’swindpipe through his throat, but I was seventeen, and I’d done my fair share of finger pushups.” I turn and force a smile. “A horrific and painful way to die, but it’s not an injury you come back from, let’s just say.”

She’s watching me thoughtfully. No revulsion. No fear. She simply crosses her arms. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah. Because if you hadn’t done it, I’d want to go down there and make them answer for it myself.” Her voice goes soft. “For what they did to you.”

Something unwinds in my chest.

Because what the fuck? She... approves? What part of this is she not understanding?

I lower my voice. “Do you know what it feels like to take a man’s life with your bare hands? To feel their blood run over your hands while the light goes out of their eyes?”

“N-no.”

“It feels fucking amazing.”

Edie sharpens her gaze.

It’s the revenge that feels amazing, not the actual killing, but this is no time to split hairs. “I once gouged a man’s eyes out with my thumbs. He was still alive while I did it. He was alive and fighting for his life?—”

“Okay, okay, okay, I get it.”

“Get what?”

“Is this a thing where you’re trying to get me to be disgusted and horrified with you? You want the scorn back, is that it? Your precious scorn?”

“It would be a lot better than maudlin Mother Teresa.”

“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she says. “God forbid anybody gives a hoot about you. Wanna know what I think?”

“Ahoot?”

“I think scorn is your comfort zone. You’re the badass who nobody gets to care about. Case closed.”

“This is what you think?”

“Yes. And you killed all those people, but here you are telling me all the graphic and bloody details because I dared to have some freaking compassion for you. The eyes, the yells. I think it’s a smokescreen you’re putting up so that I can’t see the brokenhearted kid who deserved better.”

I bark out a laugh that I’m not at all feeling. “Okay, then. Well, it’s a good thing I don’t pay you to think, isn’t it? What do I pay you for?”

She frowns.