Page 88 of Savage Daddies

“Ah, so you’ve been onto me?” Tension tightens Felix’s jaw, poking the right side of his chin out more than normal. “I don’t know why Paul didn’t just hand it over, he had more money than he ever needed. Trouble is, he’s a stubborn guy unfazed by any lump sum of money, so Warren and I had to take matters into our own hands.”

“Killing him was the only way?”

“Killingisthe only way, period.” His voice cuts through the room. “It’s bullshit, all the working-hard talk I boasted about in interviews. I tricked a nation into thinking that knuckling down and passing your exams with flying colors will make you successful, but it doesn’t. Truth is, everybody’s passing their SATs with distinctions in today’s world. Nowadays, even top scholars struggle to get into Harvard. You have to be better than smart. You have to gamble, and take risks, and dip beneath the law to make yourself enough cash. Ninety-five percent of people in society don’t have it in them to kill, but I did. I was so fucking angry at the world. At my foster parents, at my peers and the teachers in school who turned a blind eye to the bullying. The world wasn’t fair and I wanted justice. I wanted to know the feeling of power, and feel the gun vibrations ripple through my veins. If I wanted to murder, I thought I might as well make some money out of it. Do you wanna know what all those deaths bought me?”

I stare, waiting for his response.

“My dream. A five bedroom, five bathroom detached house in Spanish Hills that sold for nine point eight million. It kickstarted everything.”

I stare into Felix’s brown, mismatched eyes, and I see myself.

We’re one and the same.

Zoe’s too good for me. Simply too far out of my league for anything to happen between us. After the sex, all my dick wants to do is plunge straight back inside of her and chase another orgasm, but one day that’s gonna reach an inevitable end.

Maybe she wants this to work, and maybe she wants all three of us.

But the truth is, I’m only gonna bring her down.

Day by day, my rotten energy will transfer into her soul and ruin hers too.

How is that fair?

She deserves better.

Sex is transactional. Energies are shared. Yes, she might pour light into me, but my presence in her life will take hers away. Sticking around is too dangerous.

Fate blew Felix to me for a reason. I’m a killer, a bad person, and it’s about time I start surrounding myself with people who share the same heartless mindset.

I rake an unsteady hand through my hair. Not much fazes me. Holding somebody at gunpoint doesn’t shake my core, and watching their rotting flesh decay out in the desert afterward doesn’t either. The only thing thatdoesis Felix, and his tempting words.

“Where is your bathroom?”

20

WRANGLER

Footsteps pound upstairs,so I curve myself into an even tighter ball and hope they disappear. All three of us piled into Zoe’s walk-in closet the second the front door sprung open downstairs. We’ve now been in here for an hour.

Bullwhip could be dead.

My phone light illuminates the inside of the closet, exposing Zoe’s worried face.

“It’s gonna be okay.” I run a hand up her back.

“But you don’t know that.” She snaps around. “He’s got Bullwhip. He could bedead.”

I push past the weighty feeling of dread and pray she’s wrong.

“He knows you’re here. He knows that we?—”

The door bursts open, and all three of us hold our breaths.

God, since when did we become such pussies?

I kick open the closet door and prepare to duel Felix. Instead, relief swims through me.

“Bullwhip?” I snap. “Where the fuck have you?—?”

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