Page 2 of Sadist

“S-sss—” He cut off, his gaze unfocused.

“Oh, don’t start that, for fuck’s sake,” I groused, giving his cheek a little slap. “Nine what?”

He gave a half-strangled moan, his eyes rolling, as beneath my finger, his pulse skipped.

I frowned, pressing my fingers to the side of his neck.

“Derek, don’t you go dying on me yet.”

He twitched, bloody foam forming at the corner of his lips, and I swore, ripping the blades from his hands and swiftly cutting the ties that bound him to the seat. I yanked him to the floor, putting my ear to his chest, and swore again when I couldn’t hear anything.

Twenty minutesI did CPR on that weak-hearted fuck. I had managed eleven years without my lips touching a man. I think I was darker about breaking my streak onhimthan anything else.

And he still died.

The fucking audacity.

Muttering less than complimentary things to his dearly departed soul, I pulled a can of spray paint out of my bag and quickly sprayed my three-pointed crown signet across his chest before pulling my phone out. I winced as I hit the call button, a low male voice answering after only two rings.

“It’s done?”

“I need a breaker.”

There was a grunt. “Model?”

I crossed the room and swung the painting open, frowning at the disgraced safe.

“Knox Elite. Thumb pad locked down as I was trying to crack it, and it needs a code override.”

There was silence on the end of the line for a second too long before the man spoke again. “How long since it locked?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, just shy of an hour?”

Another beat of silence. “You have roughly five minutes to extract yourself before the authorities arrive.”

“What?” I glanced over my shoulder to the window. “What are you on about? I did it clean. No witnesses.”

“Get your arse out of there and report back to headquarters,” he said.

“I haven’t got the hard copy,” I hissed. “The guy’s dead.”

“Let’s see how the golden child talks her way out of this one, then,” was all he said before the line went dead.

1

OCTAVIA

Ithought I knew what low was.

Apparently, I was fucking wrong.

When I look back at the life choices that got me here, I guess we can attribute this to “fatherless behavior,” which is ironic considering I only spoke to dear old daddy on the phone last night when he informed me of the ten grand he had dropped into my account.

We call that guilt money, folks. Isn’t it strange how money meant to absolve someone of their sins can make you feel like the damned for accepting it?

My parents probably don’t even know that their daughter is currently sitting in a cold basement with a bucket of her own urine next to her, handcuffed to a metal pipe seemingly made from the strongest god-damned metal on the planet. I woke on a foam mattress with a thin pillow and blanket folded neatly next to me, the chain that secured my cuffs to the pole just long enough to reach what I needed. The concrete room was bare except for the two pipes that ran up the wall on this side, the furthest away from the solid-looking door. Me on one pipe…and the prone figure of another woman chained to the other. I triednot to look at the drain in the center of the room…or wonder why it was there.

I scrunched my eyes closed as a spike of pain rolled through my head…the aftereffects of whatever was slipped into my drink still ravaging my body, and I breathed through another wave of nausea. It didn’t work, and I spent the next few minutes retching into my bucket, though there was nothing left in my stomach to surrender anyway.

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