Page 29 of The Hand that Frays

On cue, Lyla scoffs. “Every predator known in any right has some childhood trauma. Yourself included, not that your drive is sexual.”

“The long-term effects on the body and psyche from Munchausen by proxy are vast and different case by case, but there is a mental health link to the trauma the child suffers. Why do you ask? That was very pointed.” Lyla turns around in her seat.

“I was following Carl. While I was lurking across the street, I heard a scream. Unthinking, I bounded over the fence and around the back of the house. Carl was fucking Anne over a table on the back porch, but a young girl was watching. She was lurking at the house’s edge, whispering little things she wanted her father to do to her mother.” I swallow.

I’m a fucking serial killer, and what I saw intrigued and scared the fucking shit out of me. Well, it disturbed me more than it scared me, but still.

“She was, what?” Lyla prods.

“She was giving them directions as they fucked. Obviously from afar, but it was just… disturbing.”

Lyla’s eyes go wide, her lip curling in disgust.

“Her ownparents?”

I nod. “She called him father. Do you think it was Ada?”

“Something is wrong with this family, and this case doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Me either.”

What I came to do was to end the woman who ruined her children, but what I’m finding out the longer that I’m here is that the poor woman looks to be the victim in this case.

Of what, I’m uncertain.

“What the hell do we do?” Lyla asks.

“Dig into more records,” I say. “Find out if Ada is their biological daughter and try to find a photo of her. I’m going to ramp up surveillance on them.”

“We should just kill the entire lot of them and then enjoy our honeymoon,” Lyla mutters, turning back to her many screens.

I smirk, loving that she’s goading me with her sassy mouth, even if it’s unknowingly.

I hunch over her back, lips skimming her ear. “Are you not having fun, stupid wife?”

Her fingers stop short over her keys where they’d been typing. “Of course, it’s just…”

My hand comes down between her breasts, smoothing along the plains of her tight shirt as I slip it under the waistband of her leggings.

“It’s just, what?” I coax, fingers spreading her pussy lips before rubbing over her clit.

She exhales with a whimper. “It’s just this family is fifty shades of fucked-up, and I’d rather be laid up with you inside me all day long while we order room service.”

I chuckle against her neck as she elongates it to give me space to play. “Is that right, love?”

It’s something I never call her, but I love to be called. She moans, her bottom inching forward on the chair and her legs falling open like a door with a broken latch on a breezy day.

My fingers slip inside her lithe body, her cunt gripping around me in little flutters as I crook them upward against her inner walls.

“Yes,” she breathes.

“We’re going to sort this out. We’re going to end whatever bullshit is going on in that family, and then we’re going to fuck in the blood of our kill.”

“I thought you said…” she chokes on another moan as I increase the pace of my fingers inside her.

“I know what I said, stupid girl. I don’t need fucking reminding. But what is the Butcher without his bloodthirsty girl beside him?”

Her reminder that I told her this job was mine was an oversight on my part. As much as I wanted to remind her who the fuck I was when I started down this rabbit hole, she reminded me of who I’d become before I could even begin.

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