Page 66 of Morally Corrupt

"Babe…" I say, trying to let her know she doesn't need to continue.

"She stopped him before he finished. Instead, she told him to ejaculate on me. It will be fun, she said. And he did. He came all over me. Of course, I didn't know what that meant, but it still felt wrong. I felt gross."

My own eyes feel damp as I listen to her talk. I want nothing more than to embrace her and make her forget everything.

"Someone called my name in the house, and they somehow stopped. I don't know whether they were going to do anything more or not… But I knew I couldn't allow it to go on. I tried going to my father, but he ignored me. I just knew that if no one would help me, I had to take things into my own hands. I put rat poison in her food. She died almost instantaneously. My father had to finally man up to do something, so he just made her disappear, I think. That's when Drew came into my life. And partly the reason why I needed a bodyguard."

"B… I don't even know what to say." I take her hand and entwine our fingers. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that. If anyone's guilty of anything, it's your father."

She finally looks at me. "I'm a monster, Theo. I've always known that. But now I'm dragging you down." She averts her eyes, almost as if ashamed.

"B, don't you dare say that! It's not your fault. None of it."

"How can you say that when I've gotten us trapped like this? My father… he owns us."

"Don't worry, we'll figure something out." I put my hand across her shoulders and tug her head under my chin.

"We're a team, remember?"

"Even if one half is a monster?" She repeats the word monster as if that's all she is.

"Even then."

"I wish it were that simple, Theo," she whispers. "We just got thrown into the middle of a battle that neither of us wants any part of."

"We'll get through this. I promise."

"What about your integrity, Theo?"

"There are things that are more important than that…"

24

BIANCA

I've finally admitted to Theo a truth about myself. At least this is a truth he can live with.

It's weird though, I hadn't thought about Jenna, my former nanny, even once in quite a few years.

Over time, I've grown increasingly frustrated that I'd chosen poison to dispatch her. She should have suffered far worse for what she'd done. The regrets have piled up for years, always thinking of how I could have tortured her and made her pay. It's also probably why a lot of my assignments during those years had been child molesters. I've been able to choose some of my targets based on those specific criteria. Every person I've killed during that time has been a stand-in for Jenna. They haven't gotten a quick death, but a long, drawn-out one.

For the first time ever, I prefer blades to guns for their ability to inflict consistent damage and pain.

The most extended bout of torture lasted eighty days. Eighty days in which I made sure that the predator rued the day he first looked upon a child. Eighty days in which I removed all semblance of humanity from him, stripped him of his skin in small stripes, and turned it into a canvas on which I'd carved his sins. Eighty days that he'd survived on IVs and emergency interventions because why should he die faster?

Vlad had put a stop to my overboard activities when I'd spent hours trying to resuscitate the scum just so I could hurt him more.

I was a monster, but I made no excuses.

Theo, though? He's kept my demons at bay.

Being with him has somehow freed me of Jenna's ghost. And now, it's just something that had happened to me. It's in the past.

After telling him the circumstances of Jenna's death, he takes me into his arms and tries to comfort me.

Again, strange.

I haven't said this to him so that he'll comfort me. I want him to know I'm not entirely a savage. I don't just kill indiscriminately.

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