By then, these fuckers will all have bullets in their heads, and the children they exploit will be long gone.

Dan and I mingle for the next several hours. The women here are abused, all blitzed out of their minds and accepting of the punishments for doing nothing wrong.

A metal chalice out of the corner of my eye catches my attention. It’s sitting atop a table, an older man drinking from it steadily. Subtly glancing around, I notice a few more. They look exactly like the goblets that were used in the leaked videos.

My heart sinks, but so far, I can’t see any signs that blood is in them.

“Are you looking to be initiated into the club?” Dan asks casually, pulling my attention to him sipping his Scotch and eyeing me over the rim of his glass.

His gaze is probing and studious, but I give him nothing in return. The muscles in my face stay firmly in place as I respond, “Aren’t I already in?”

A smirk crosses Dan’s face, and with the dim lighting and the dancing shadows, it makes him appear sinister. I don’t even blink at the sight.

I’m much fucking scarier.

“Not even close, brother.”

I quirk a brow, sipping at my own whiskey. When I give him an expectant look, he chuckles.

“If you truly want it, you need to have an acquired taste.”

“I have many acquired tastes,” I say, adding a bit of darkness to my tone. Not hard to do when I’m not lying. Their tastes are spilling the blood of the innocent, and mine just happen to be killing everyone who does so.

“Pray tell, what do those tastes entail?” Dan inquires, his tone whimsical and almost amused.

I shrug a shoulder nonchalantly and take a sip of whiskey while pulling my phone out with the other hand. I pull up a picture of Daniella, a girl I saved five years ago.

She’s deep in a safehouse, as she was an orphan with no home to return to when I rescued her. It’s an innocent picture of her dressed in Barbie pajamas. What sells the illusion is the haunted look in her eyes and the bruises marring her skin. The picture was taken after we first rescued her. She was ten at the time, and I made sure to ask her permission before showing this to anyone.

This is the first time I’ve had to befriend pedophiles before I killed them, but I knew that if I was ever going to convince them I was just like them, I’d need to show proof.

And I’ll be damned if I show a random girl off the internet and risk their safety. At least with Daniella, it’s an old picture and I can ensure nothing will ever happen to her.

Handing the phone to him, I say lowly, “My latest toy.”

The words taste like fucking tar on my tongue, but I force them out anyways.

Dan’s brows skyrocket to his forehead, but an evil, happy little smile forms on his face.

“You share?”

I nearly break his hand when he hands me the phone back, his gaze lingering on the picture. Instead, I tuck the phone back in my pocket and bare my teeth.

“I get jealous.”

His head tips back, and a booming laugh echoes across the space. The noise of the room swallows the sound, but it feels like dynamite in my ears.

“Understood, my friend. And when they grow too old?”

I smile salaciously. “Organs are a hit in the black market.”

He grins. “I think you’d be perfect for initiation then. Next one is a week from now. You interested?”

“What's this initiation entail?”

“The expectations will be asked of you when the time comes. But when it’s over, you get lots of that,” he enlightens, nodding towards my tucked away phone. He flashes a feral smile. “Lots of that, in whatever shape, size and gender.”

“And this is safe?”

Dan shrugs a shoulder. “We had a spy, leaking videos, but the Society is confident they’ve found the traitor. And those videos haven’t been seen. They were immediately taken down once they were uploaded.”

False. The particular place they’re uploaded on the dark web, I had a signal put in place. The second that video was posted, Jay or I would immediately get a notification. We had forty-five seconds to download it before it was removed.

That quick.

But it was plenty of time for Z.

Interesting that they believe they caught the mole. I’ve no way to verify that, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

Where there was once a mole, is now a wolf.

I finish off the last of my whiskey in one swallow, relishing in the burn as it travels down my throat. I smile at him once more—a feral smile of my own. I feel the scars on my face crinkle and the demonic feeling swirling in my gut slipping through, glinting in my mismatched eyes. He takes it for what he wants to see it as.

“I’m in.”

Chapter 33

The Manipulator

T he light from the T.V. blares across the dark room as the news reporter’s voice rings out.

“…The murders of the four government officials are still under investigation. The autopsy reports have been released to the public, revealing extreme torture before the men had died.”

A mugshot of a girl is pictured on the screen. She’s a pretty girl, with plain brown hair and brown eyes. The unsettling part is the look in her eyes. A single glance is all it takes to know that she’s clearly unstable.

She was the broken doll I saw eating at the fair.

And she was in Annie’s Playhouse that night. Hiding in the walls and watching every guest that came through. At one point, she looked at me and probably made a decision on whether she was going to kill me or not.

I shudder, knowing how close I could’ve come to death that night.

Snatching up the remote, I click off the T.V., shaking as I throw the remote back on the couch.

The asshole fucked me and then went and murdered a bunch of men with a psychotic chick.

Mark fucking Seinburg is one of the men, along with three other government officials I had met while standing in line for Annie’s Playhouse. He had said he had business to take care of with a psycho chick, and for some reason, him going off to murder people was the last thing I had expected.

Stupid. That’s what he does, Addie. Murder people.

The fear and anxiety are overwhelming. I knew he killed people. Arch's hands showing up on my doorstep was proof of that. His entire family being wiped out…

I knew he was a murderer. He admitted it. But somehow, seeing his heinous crimes broadcasted on live television is eye-opening. He murdered four government politicians.

This isn’t just a boy playing dress-up with a mob boss’s suit and handgun. Arch was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But this… this is big.

Did Mark deserve it? Absolutely. But I was at his house. I was someone on his radar. And now that he’s dead, what if they come for me?

Shit. You really are an idiot, Addie.

I rest my elbows on my knees and slump my head into my hands. My thoughts are spiraling out of control.

Who cares if it happened to be the most mind-blowing sex I’ve ever had in my life? And probably will ever have. The dude is just as crazy as the girl on screen.

He’s killed before, and he’s obviously going to do it again, and what if he tries to take out the goddamn President next? Or someone else with connections to some very unhinged people?

I just don’t think I’m okay with that. I look up at the screen again, a news reporter standing in front of flashing siren lights at Satan's Affair.

I’m just not okay with this. With the fear that some terrifying people are going to come after me because Zade keeps killing off high-profile people. He’s a goddamn serial killer.

I need to end things with him. For good.

It doesn’t matter what he makes me feel. He’s going to put my life in danger, over and over. And how does someone just… be okay with that?