Page 16 of Devil's Riches

I stared up at him, heart hammering. “How many were there?”

He lifted one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug, as if I’d simply asked him to recall what he had for breakfast a few days ago. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“How can you not remember?” I asked, voice quaking.

“Because there were so many,” he replied, rolling his eyes upward. “Are you done asking stupid questions now?”

The shocking insight into the true extent of his crimes left me mute. For him to have forgotten the exact number of victims, he must have killed hundreds. Maybe even thousands.

Greg smiled thinly at my stunned silence. He picked up a small knife from his pile and ran the very tip of it down my right leg, making goosebumps break out over the bare skin. Then he deftly sliced open the ropes there, allowing me to move the leg around again. He repeated the action on the other side, freeing my left leg as well.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said, glancing up at my petrified face. “You aren’t going to die anytime soon.”

“Why?” I managed to choke out.

“Isn’t it obvious? I want to play with you first,” he said. He smiled and let out a soft, dreamy sigh, like he was remembering something pleasant. “Sometimes I had to keep the others locked up for days or weeks before I could slice them up. That was actually one of the best parts—seeing and hearing how scared they were, with no idea what was coming. Just like you right now.”

He brought the knife up to my throat, eyes gleaming with disdain. “I especially enjoyed playing with the women. Do you know why?”

“Because you could force them to fuck you,” I said in a hollow voice.

He smirked. “No, that’s not it. Some of the young men I took were quite attractive, so I could’ve had them too, if that’s what I wanted,” he said. He leaned closer and dragged the tip of the knife down my chest. Beads of blood appeared in its wake. “Sexuality is a spectrum, you know. It doesn’t matter who someone is, where they come from, or what they have between their legs. If I want to fuck them, I’m going to fuck them. But I didn’t want that from any of the people I killed.”

“Then why did you prefer the women more?” I asked. “Because they were weaker? Easier to hurt?”

Greg shook his head, upper lip curling with disgust. “No. I preferred them because they were so fucking pathetic. It was actually funny,” he said. “Most of them thought they could seduce me into letting them go. But I made sure to show them just how much their pussies were worth. You know how much that was, sweetheart?”

“No.”

“Nothing.” He lifted his hand and smacked it down on my bare pussy, making me scream as pain ricocheted through me. “They were as worthless as the skin and bones around them.”

He hit me between the legs again, even harder this time, and I sobbed as hot tears rolled down my face. I thought I’d be comforted by the knowledge that this man wasn’t going to force me into doing anything sexual with him, but I wasn’t, because I knew he was still going to hurt me as much as humanly possible.

“My favorite was a girl named Corinne,” Greg said, briefly closing his eyes as if he were watching the memories playing on a screen inside his head. “I remember everything about her. So beautiful but so stupid. She tried to act like she actually enjoyed everything I did to her. As if that would get me on her side and change my mind about what I wanted from her.”

“What did you want from her?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“You’ll see,” he replied. “As long as you don’t die too quickly when it gets to that stage. Some of the others did. It was so disappointing.”

He left my side and went back over to the bag on the floor. When he returned, he was holding up some sort of vegetable. It was thick and pale yellow.

“Know what this is?” Greg asked, dangling it over my face.

“Ginger,” I said. I could smell it now.

“That’s right. Peeled ginger with a bit of chili powder rubbed on it. I used it on the stupid girls who tried to use their sexuality against me. That showed them their place pretty fucking fast,” he said with another nasty smile. “You wanna know where I put it?”

“I can guess,” I muttered.

“You’re probably thinking I shoved it in their pussies, right?”

I gulped. “Yes.”

“Wrong,” he replied, eyes crinkling around the sides with sick amusement. “Like I said, I wanted them to know how fucking worthless I found their pussies. So these things went in their ass instead. No lube. Wanna know what happened then?”

“What?”

“The ginger made it feel like their insides were burning right up, and they’d scream and squirm all over the place. That actually made their muscles clench, which made the pain worse,” he explained. “It’s actually a very old practice, you know. People used to do it to horses to make them carry their tails higher when they raced.”

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