Page 59 of Cruel Riches

Sascha: Ok. Sorry, can’t chat for long. I’m being goaded into doing shots, haha. Talk soon! Love you xoxo

I texted Ruby and Laurel next, but they hadn’t given my new number to anyone either, so I still had absolutely no idea how the unknown sender had obtained it.

I took a deep breath and finally tapped out a reply to the threatening message. Who is this?

The message errored and wouldn’t send. I looked up the error code online and found that the number that messaged me wasn’t actually a real number. There were websites and apps that could be used to anonymize texts so that the receiver couldn’t reply or find out who sent it, and whoever messaged me had used one of them.

“Shit,” I muttered, pulling my blankets all the way up to my chin as if they could somehow protect me from the world. I didn’t feel any safer, though. My heart was still racing like mad, and my legs and arms were peppered with goosebumps.

I got out of bed a moment later to double-check that my door was locked. When I was sure I was safe, I climbed back into bed and tried my best to push away the intrusive thoughts about the threatening text. At some point, I finally fell asleep, lulled by the chirpy sounds of the Netflix comedy playing on my laptop.

As usual, my sleep was plagued with terrible nightmares. In the worst one, I opened a wooden door to a small cell and saw a girl quivering on the concrete floor.

“Please,” she said, cowering away from me as I pulled out a large hunting knife. “Please don’t hurt me!”

Ardent heat rushed through me as I brandished the knife above her head. “I have to.”

“Why?” she asked in a piteous whisper.

“Because I’m the real one,” I shouted. “It’s me. Always has been.”

Then there were horrible screams as I brought the knife down again and again, spattering blood all over the walls.

I awoke with a start, gasping as a cramp wrenched my guts. I felt nauseated from the awful dream, and my thighs were sticky.

With a groan, I pushed my blankets back. My period had arrived at some point in the middle of the night.

It had always been very heavy for me, and nothing I’d ever tried could fix that—not the pill, implant, or any other contraceptive method. As a result, I practically bled an ocean’s worth of blood every month. I even had to take supplements sometimes to make up for all the iron I lost.

Usually I was prepared for the bleeding, but it had come a day early this month, so I’d gone to bed without a pad. Now my pajama bottoms, legs, and sheets were covered in patches and smears of blood. I must’ve rolled around a lot in my sleep.

I must’ve reached down and touched my thighs in my sleep as well, because there was dried blood caked under the fingernails of my right hand, and there were a few bloody handprints on the pale gray sheets.

With a sigh, I got up and trudged toward the bathroom. Irritation flashed in my mind as I noticed some dirt on the carpet. I must’ve brought it in on my shoes without noticing yesterday.

“Yay,” I muttered. “Even more cleaning for me.”

As if the bloodstained sheets and pajamas weren’t enough already.

I took a long, hot shower to ease the cramps and scrub away all the blood from my skin and nails. When I was done, I wrapped a robe around myself and went back out to my bedroom to gather up the dirty sheets.

Someone started pounding on my door a few seconds later.

Frowning, I glanced at the clock. It was only half past seven in the morning. Who the hell would want to see me this early?

I went over to the door and opened it a crack. Laurel and Ruby stood there with pale, drawn faces.

“Hey. What’s wrong?” I asked, opening the door wider.

“He’s back,” Ruby choked out. “It’s happening again.”

“Who’s back? What’s happening?”

“They found two girls hanging in the quad. All sliced up,” Laurel said quietly.

“He’s back,” Ruby repeated, eyes wide. “The Butcher is back.”

---