Page 93 of Three for a Girl

“The unknown is always daunting.”

“Murder.” Chad shook his head. His stomach contracted, and he pushed his coffee away. “I’m contemplating murder.”

“You’ll be a bystander, unless you want to get involved.”

Chad screwed his face up at the eagerness in Romeo’s voice, and scraped his chair along the floor, intent on leaving.

“Sorry.” Romeo blurted. “I’m sorry.”

“Even as a bystander, I’ll be allowing it. I’ll be your accomplice.”

Romeo’s lips twitched. Chad was sure he wanted to smile, he wanted to beam, but he controlled himself for Chad’s sake. He knew the delicate tightrope they were walking—no longer thick rope, but wire, sharp wire that was just as likely to split them in two than lead them to the other side.

Chad’s heart pounded, battering him on the idea, but as it relaxed and contracted frantically inside him, he looked at who was responsible for it still beating.

The monster was his savior.

Chad took a deep breath, finally ready to speak his thought aloud.

“If you were to do this … they can’t be innocent people. They can’t be good people.”

“There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

“What?”

“It’s Shakespeare.”

“Regardless of what he thought, there are good people. They help and save and care and I don’t believe they deserve to die.”

“You don’t owe them anything.”

“I do owe good people.”

“Like who?”

“People like Zac. He believed me. He had my back.”

Romeo shifted his jaw side to side. “One person.”

“And Ally, she’s been great. All the doctors and nurses that helped me after Marc … even my therapists are good people, trying their best to help me.”

“Everyone, no matter the horrific or incredible things they do, deserve an equal chance of death and an equal chance of life—”

“Not in my eyes. Some people live off the suffering of others, they exploit and poison, and hurt in the cruelest of ways. I don’t value their lives as much as kind, honest people. They are the vermin that I pledged myself to catch, to keep away from decent people.”

“The monster in me had no bias—”

“The monster’s going to behave.”

Romeo straightened. His lips popped open, but he didn’t speak. Chad glared at him, into him, findingthatswirl of darkness. He didn’t break eye contact, and despite his throat throbbing in warning, he craned his neck over the table, not backing down.

“I might be thinking about letting you out of the cage, but you’ll be on a leash.”

Romeo didn’t speak, he’d froze, and before Chad lost his courage, he laid it all out.

“Your countdown failed. You didn’t keep the monster under control. It picked and gnawed, and growled away in your head and now it’s my turn to tame it. My game, and the number one rule of my game is I decide who dies. I decide who you can kill. You get your hit and I get mine. Onlybadpeople.”

It was all out, he’d said it. His heart galloped in his chest, making him breathless, but he tried to look calm. He didn’t move his gaze from Romeo and managed to sip his coffee despite his churning stomach. The picture of calm in the face of a monster.

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