Page 31 of Lesson on Depravity

“You and I could have avoided this meeting,” I note with the boxcutter soaked in blood as I hold it over his fearful eyes. “None of this would have happened if you just stayed in your lane.”

His adrenaline is kicking, hands twisting and legs kicking from the restraints. Xavier cries, tears streaming down the side of his eyes. A drop of blood splats on his face, mixing with his flowing tears and leaving a trail of an ombre effect.

“It wasn’t me!” he yells, nose turning a ruddy color. “It’s not me! She told me! She told me it was from the building—the raid, the tip, it was from inside!”

It doesn’t excuse his attempt to put drugs and potentially killing my princess with his reckless behavior. The fact that he’s blaming his wrongdoing on someone else just causes more anger in me.

If I hadn’t caught the words on the street on time, my princess probably wouldn’t be in my bed sleeping. She would be in a cold, lonely morgue after being cut open for an autopsy.

I believe I'm fair to return the fruits of his labor on the man who planted the seed.

Hurting Coco is personally hurting me, and Xavier had done the most taboo thing in my world. He’s new to this game of carnivorous businesses, and he hasn’t learned all the ropes to how to behave through the hierarchy yet.

I’m not in a forgiving mood, and I have never grown up with a sympathetic conscience. It’s what makes me a cold-blooded killer, uncaring, and taking massive risks to go for the root of the problem.

Loose ends are problematic, and trouble follows like a domino effect.

“Who is she?” I question, digging the crude boxcutter into his skin on his chest.

The flesh caves in, ripping under the razor tip, and blood gushes out. His scream echoes through the thick brick walls of this cellar and his rapid struggling leaves a serrated wound.

“J-Jessabelle!” he wheezes out her name, and his eyes are starting to lose focus. “She—she told me her husband’s cop friend found the tip! It’s not my fault!”

Xavier still begs for his life with drool choking through his throat. “Don’t kill me! It’s her fault! She just buys drugs from me, nothing else!”

He’s such a bad liar. Xavier is a pig; words travel fast when he took over his dead brother’s business to make the existing brothel even sleazier and bigger in blooming business.

“She sleeps with me for the drugs, that’s it! I swear! I—” His voice climbs in pitch as I let the razor blade find the unfinished wound and tear a line diagonally to the side of his hip.

I’m not too sick to the point of finding gratification in pained screams. It does nothing to me other than to let me know just how much more they can take before they die of blood loss or die from shock.

The human body can only handle a certain level of adrenaline and shock going through their body for a limited amount of time.

“Don’t let me stop you, continue talking.”

Xavier must have taken that as mercy, calling for him to spill every single detail he knows. I don’t know why he would think I am that merciful to let him walk out of here alive when I just sadistically murdered his men in the same manner of the boxcutter going down his body.

“She was a customer—a damn bored housewife, and she wanted drugs. Her husband had money, and she gave me a lot of drugs. We just have sex, nothing more! I don’t know anything about her!” Xavier catches his breath, fighting the blade that frayed a new slash on his body.

Creating a crisscrossing line, his tolerance to the pain lets him slip into a daze. I backhand his cheek, sending his head lolling to the side and fixing his clear eyes on the ceiling.

“And?” I motion him to continue with a wave of the blade.

His voice cracks, and out comes a broken line of the sentence that triggers a livid sneer from my lips. “She asked me about that girl—with the green eyes, like where she lived, who’s she, just questions that I don’t know answers to!”

My gloved fingers jab into a jagged wound, hooking into the flesh to make him shrill in agony.

“She just—” he stutters, lips paling with blood loss. “Jess… Jessabelle told me she might be the rat!”

I hiss, the red in my eyes doesn’t compare to the blood escaping his wounds as my hand pulls back just a bit to hear the unadulterated shredding of his skin and muscles.

“Anything else?” I ask, but my patience is lacking to have leniency on him.

“Just something about revenge!” Xavier shouts out, screaming into the dull room.

I drop the knife on the ground and attach my other hand on the other crisscrossing slash on his chest. “What revenge?”

If he doesn’t give me a satisfying answer, I will use my bare hands to wrench open his chest cavity and cleave his beating heart out. The threat hangs in the air as my hands stay in position, and Xavier seems to come to accept that he isn’t coming out of this alive.

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