I sometimes wonder what happened to Mrs. Fisher. Although I do recall what she said to me on the playground, her eyes wide and pale face aghast. Because no one had ever spoken to me like that before.

“Cruelty is a disease, Lauraleigh. It will fester inside you like cancer.”

I was confused. Tubby Kyle was the bully. How was I the cruel one?

Mrs. Fisher had been right, though.

I have a sickness inside me, a black rot.

Infectious to anyone other than me, it’s poison.

Over the years, I noticed I was different, abnormal. People were these strange emotional creatures that sucked the energy right out of me. It became more and more draining to try to pretend, to fit in. I took steps to learn how to blend.

As for Kyle, his pus-filled pimpled face did heal with no outer scarring, but the internal damage was deep-rooted, the seed of fear planted. He never fucked with my Barbies again.

So what lessons were learned from that childhood experience?

Don’t bother my mother while she’s at spin class. Or ever, really.

Authority is easily displaced.

Bullies are cowards who respond to strength.

And the biggest lesson of all: I am not like others.

The early morning sun glints off the silver spoon in my cup. I stir the cappuccino foam, the clang of the metal against porcelain a hypnotic summons as I wait for him.

Come on.

As the thought turns obsessive, the glass door of the trendy corner coffee shop opens, and in he saunters. He’s late today. His dirty-blond hair looks finger-fucked. His cool, metallic-blue eyes are red-rimmed and glassy.

“Strongest you got,” he says to the barista.

An all-nighter, it appears. And his latest conquest…?

I reach into my bag and pull out the black notebook. I didn’t see him leave the office with a woman yesterday. His Town Car took him to a place where I wasn’t permitted access, and I watched from across the street as I waited for him, but he never left.

I jot down a quick note about his disheveled appearance. He’s wearing the same gray business suit from the day before, creases in the wrong places. I can almost smell the cheap pussy wafting off him from here.

I close the notebook. Chew on the pen cap. Despite what some may think, I do have a life, one I enjoy, and I had to leave my stalking post around 5:00 a.m. to go home to shower. Get the stalker stench off me before work.

My back teeth grind at the high whir of the espresso machine. He pays and tips the barista, then whisks through the coffee shop door and out into the bustling morning rush.

He never notices me. Why would he? I twist my sleek black hair into a low bun, don thick, black-rimmed glasses, and drape myself with baggy clothes over my work attire.

I’m not his type.

He likes obvious beauty. The kind a man can spot at a glance. Long silky waves of styled hair, cleavage on display, big bright inviting smile. The kind of beauty that invites him to try.

And take.

Not that I’m judging. I actually don’t have an opinion about such things. A woman can wear whatever the fuck she wants and that doesn’t give him the right to take anything.

I tuck the notebook away and shoulder my bag, bussing my untouched cappuccino at the rack above the trashcan before I slip into the stream of business suits and clacking heels and honking horns. The spring morning is chilly despite the sun peeking around the buildings. I follow him three blocks to the fifteen-story building where he has a corner office on the thirteenth floor.

This is where I leave him for the day. I can’t go inside the building, not without potentially being recognized. He may not pay much attention to me, but not every male is as single-minded as he.

I am a Vaughn. Lauraleigh Blakely Vaughn. It’s as pretentious as it sounds. My mother was a Blakely, and she insisted I carry her name in some fashion. And she insisted that having four names was just tacky. The Leigh in Lauraleigh was her consensus to a pseudo middle name.

Ever since that day on the playground, after I shoved a bully’s face in a bed of fire ants, I decided I could make my own choices for who I am, and that included my name. Blakely is what I go by most days (and I’m sure there’s a psychologist out there that would read too much into that; like my mommy acceptance issues), but it’s actually very simple; I just feel it suits me best.

But today, I’m Lucy Whitmore. Lucy has an ID and everything. She enjoys photography as a hobby, a side gig, hence the camera with the giant lens she carries around. She works part-time at a data publishing company until she can get her photography business off the ground. And if anyone ever gets too suspicious, I can make her disappear in a snap.

I remove my glasses and take a seat on the stone bench near a birch tree where I pull out my phone. I open his social media profile and scroll through his latest posts. Nothing from last night, but of course not. He doesn’t have to appear like he had to pull an all-nighter at the firm.

No, Ericson Theodore Daverns doesn’t have to fabricate excuses or apologize for who he is to anyone. Especially not to his meek little wife.

I close the app and place a call to Lenora. She answers on the second ring.

“Where was he?”

I can hear the desperation in her voice, the frantic need to quell the worry, the maddening suspicion. Lenora has already discovered the truth of her husband’s cheating; that’s not why she hired me. I’m not a private investigator, or a divorce attorney.

I’m revenge for hire.

To wit, most of my clients happen to be scorned women.

Oh, men. Since the dawn of time, you never fail at predictability.

I shoot her over an image of Ericson entering The Plaza last night.

“He was at Brewster’s,” I tell her. Brewster is a sleaze of a man who dabbles in NYC’s questionable hobbies. Such as gambling, wagers on underground MMA fights, drugs—lots of drugs—and sex work. He’s not a pimp per se, but if one of the men who lines his pockets with spongy green cash wants a naughty schoolgirl for the night, Brewster provides. And he does so from the penthouse of The Plaza, aptly dubbed the attic.

Brewster is one of Ericson’s top clients. Ericson helps turn his client’s illegal money into legitimate investments. I haven’t been able to prove it yet, but I believe Ericson is skimming money off his client’s accounts.

“He was there again?” Lenora asks. “Oh, I just got the pic. Did you see him with anybody?”

Shouldering my phone, I dig into my bag and produce the notebook. I flip to the tally page. This is how I determine how deserving a subject is of my client’s revenge. I have a system of checks and balances.

It’s called: The Douche Checklist.

Clever, right? I have to amuse myself, because it’s a rare thing when someone else can.

On Ericson’s list, I have: Name (he gets a check mark for that alone). He keeps a separate apartment his wife doesn’t know about. More than one mistress (he never sleeps with the same woman twice, and I have counted five conquests in the past three weeks that I’ve been stalking him). Then last week, as I waited outside his secret apartment building, I tracked down one of the sex workers who—for a hefty fee—told me he doesn’t use protection. Ericson has no concern for transmitting a disease to his wife of over a decade.

This makes him a top-ranking douche.

Which would be enough, but there’s also his deviant nature, the greedy bully inside him that needs to control and destroy. This, of course, is why he goes outside his marriage. To prey on women who won’t report him, women who need the money. And why he associates himself with a man like Brewster—a man with the seediest of ties.

I’ve kept this information from Lenora. Not because it will cause her pain. I don’t want to shield her; I feel no empathy for her suffering. Nor do I have close relationships with clients. The fact is, Lenora is already on edge with her husband. What would she do if she discovered what kind of fiend she really married?