Page 112 of Sardonic Burn

“Lucas, tell Lyla and Niko to attack in ten.”

“What?” Noelle’s voice rings in my ears. “I need more time.”

“I’m not going to have us killed, or worse, discovered. You have ten minutes.”

She cusses me under her breath but eventually agrees. I don’t hear much from her or Lucas. I’m peeking through thecrowded room, and it seems as if the break is nearing its end. I glance at my wristwatch, and time is passing by painfully slowly.

“Oh my goodness.” Noelle’s shocked voice fills my ears.

“What?”

“It’s… the real Madam Giselle.”

“Get out of there, now.”

“No, no,” she corrects. “She’s dead. As in, she’s laying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. And it wasn’t that recent. It reeks.”

“Is she wearing her veil?”

“Yes,” she confirms. “But the body started decomposing already, so I doubt that I’ll recognize the face. So that’s the reason she’s been MIA lately.”

“But why is the body there?” I ask. “It’s almost as if they wanted you to find it.”

Immediately, everything clicks.

“Noelle, get the fuck out of there.”

There’s a reason why all of these women, alongside the murdered ones, resemble Noelle. There’s a reason why people were whispering and all but pointing their fingers at Noelle. It’s because everyone here, except the two of us, knew that the real Giselle is long dead.

Now I know for certain.

The Silencer is none other than Noelle’s precious Dylan.

She knows it, too.

It all makes perfect sense. There’s a reason I suspected him, but I did hope, for Noelle’s sake, that it was all a biased speculation. It turns out it’s so much more than either of us originally thought.

His obsession with Noelle runs deep. He kidnapped and sold women that are nothing short of Noelle’s carbon copy. They were all either in university or had respectable, good jobs.

He was trying to find a replacement for her.

And it’s fucking sick.

I want nothing more than to twist his neck, to carve him open and watch him bleed out. However, I need to contain myself and lock the anger away for a little while longer. First, I need to find out why the fuck he did all of this.

Because my Noelle needs some sort of closure.

Somehow, I have a feeling that the closure will end up with Dylan just being a sick, twisted, disturbing human being. He’s a pathetic excuse of a human being, and I’ll have fun delivering him to Noelle, ready to be tortured.

My girl needs an outlet for all the anger, and what better than the man who caused it all?

“Noelle?”

She doesn’t respond, and even my bones feel the breeze.

She doesn’t respond because the earpiece got disconnected.

TWENTY-NINE

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