Page 41 of The Ripper

I couldn’t believe that I had her in my hands and allowed her to escape.

I touched her skin, held her body in my arms, felt her pulse spike against my fingertips and fucking let her go.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

~ I told you to tie her to the bed and you didn’t listen. Reap what you fucking sow.

It was the right thing to do, but when the fuck did I start caring about doing the right thing?

~ She’s rubbing off on you. That shit’s contagious.

As I sat in my car and waited for the lights to turn on in her apartment, I had one constant thought.

Would I be able to keep my promise and become a spectator in her life if she didn’t choose me, or would I go mad and brutally murder any man who came near her?

~ I vote for the latter.

~ I’m taking you to a shrink if you don’t shut the fuck up.

I was quite sure that I wouldn’t be able to keep the promise of watching her marry another man. What the fuck was I thinking when I told her that? Only over my dead, buried or cremated body would she have been someone else’s. In reality, the choice was rather simple; it was either me, or no one, but she was smart enough to know that.

Marry someone else, my ass.

For the first time in years, I left her building before the lights went out, because I knew it in my bones that if I caught even a glimpse of her, I wouldn’t be able to refrain from storming into her apartment, putting her over my shoulder and taking her back to my place by force, or taking her right on her bed, if I were to get too impatient.

See? I was being nice.

I was thinking about someone else for a change, also for the first time.

It felt horrible, not to mention boring, to go against my instincts. Fuck, it felt like a crime against what made me function.

Why did I care so much about her feelings when I could have easily stitched them back together after hurting them?

~ Do you think she’ll be hit by a strong case of Stockholm Syndrome and fall madly in love with you? Wake the fuck up, this isn’t a movie.

I wanted to set myself on fire.

~ Let’s… not.

Everything that happened to me kept me floating in a sea of confusion, because when I was with her, I felt like a different person. I wanted her to like me, to see that I could be kind, and nice, and loving. I didn’t want her to see the ugly monster or the vicious killer.

~ Who are you calling ugly, you simp?

But as soon as I was no longer with her, I was overcome by thoughts of chaos.

I was driving through town with no destination in mind, listening to her current favorite song, when my phone rang and interrupted the melody.

I gritted my teeth, mumbling a curse as I answered it without looking at the caller.

“What?”

I didn’t recognize my tone, I wasn’t my usual calm and collected self, and a certain blonde was to blame for all the shit I was about to hurl at the person on the other end of the line.

“The laundromat is under attack,” my father’s voice sobered me up real quick, like a bucket of ice water.

Now, the laundromat wasn’t actually a laundromat with washing machines and dryers, but a nice big warehouse where Klaus ran his business. From the outside, it looked like any other storage facility, while inside it was complete with an armory, medical, a studio apartment where my brother brought his somewhat strange, completely crazy conquests with questionable tastes, a garage, rooms for the guards, and a huge basement where he incinerated the cadavers, which doubled as a torture chamber for those unlucky few who didn’t get the bullet before the question.

It was just outside the city limits and so remote that you couldn’t just stumble across it, which made me wonder who the fuck found it and why did they attack it.

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