Page 54 of The Boss' Pet

He stands up, smirking, a brow lifted in a way that indicates he finds my near immediate deduction at least somewhat impressive.

“You made yourself known to us the same way you made yourself known to Trent. Don’t forget, pet. We own the internet. We own social media platforms. We see and hear anything and everything you do. Social media programs are essentially smorgasbords for people like us. I wanted a new pet. I searched according to certain parameters around things like appearance, temperament, intellect, and you came up.”

“You Googled me?”

“Oh no,” he laughs. “There are much better search engines capable of acquiring much deeper data. They’re essentially menus of citizens, and one can pick from among them according to desire and need.”

“Sounds creepy,” I say. It’s an understatement. My skin is absolutely fucking crawling. Marcus and his ilk truly do think of other humans as little more than farm animals. We’re out there to be selected and used.

“So you were toying with me. Making me think I was going to make a difference.”

“Yes. Don’t look so sad, pet. You’re finally beginning to understand that you have been chosen.”

I haven’t been chosen. I’ve been selected, stalked, and abducted. Marcus let me think he was my prey, but there was never a moment in any of our interactions that he wasn’t completely and totally in control.

“It all felt like a game up until this moment, didn’t it?” He purrs the question, caressing my scalp with his fingertips, then sliding his hand down to cup my chin and force me to look into his eyes. “It’s not a game, Charlie. You really belong to me, and you always will.”

“But…”

“There’s nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. There’s no law to protect you. I can assure you, the list of crimes you have committed in the effort to betray me is more than enough to put you behind bars. Trent told me about so many of them. I was impressed, if I am to be honest. You were closer than I thought. You knew more than I realized. If I had not found you first, you might very well have one day brought me down.”

Marcus

“You’re insane.”

She whispers the words, her lower lip quivering as her eyes fill with tears.

“Yes. But you already knew that.”

She is mine. In every way. I quite literally own her at this point. And that means the intimacy between us is going to be as pure as it can be. This is tyranny, possession, ownership. This is what the world now considers to be wrong, but I know better.

“Everybody is here to witness this, not merely because your humiliation is so delicious, pet, but because this is the day you become truly owned.”

She wanted to see me put behind bars. She wanted so badly to do the right thing that she was going against her own desires to do so. I know for a fact that she is very content in my possession. I see it in her eyes, I feel it in her body.

Charlie is a little idealist, but this world has no room for idealists. It is cruel to them, destroying them a little at a time until there is either nothing left, or a jaded skeptic. I am going to keep her pure by not pretending to be anything other than the monster she knows me to be. Her goodness will be heightened by my evil.

What we do tonight will be truly diabolical. I no longer need to wear any semblance of the mask. She has already begun to pry at the corners. She has glimpsed beneath. Now she will see it all.

“Why?”

“You really are a little journalist at heart, aren’t you?” I chuckle. “Asking all the big questions. I don’t think it would help for me to tell you the answers outright, Charlie. I think you’ll enjoy the process of discovering them on your own a great deal more. You know, you didn’t have to betray me. You could have put aside all those silly Libraryleaks notions and simply become my pet. That would have been my preference.”

“I thought you murdered someone, and I thought I was doing the world a favor.”

“Don’t bother ever trying to do the world a favor,” I say. “It won’t appreciate it. The world is a whore who likes it when she is beaten.”

“Christ,” she breathes. “Who the hell hurt you?”

“What do you mean, pet?”

“You are so twisted. You wanted to be hurt so badly, you found someone who would betray you, then lured them into betraying you, just so you could feel betrayed. I’ve never even heard of that kink before, but it is extra sick.”

It is my turn to be taken aback. Charlie is a smart girl and a quick thinker. She put the pieces of the puzzle together inordinately swiftly. I had assumed it would never occur to her that she had been selected precisely because she probably would turn against me. But here we are. It is hard to expose someone else without also exposing yourself.

“Is that why you were so into Adaline? Because you knew she’d turn on you? Are you so afraid of intimacy you have to reduce a woman to an animal and then prod her into doing something you will inevitably call betrayal?”

“Ouch,” a voice from the crowd whispers.

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