Page 61 of Sadist

Pieces of him.

The only part of him that was whole was his head and torso, a look of absolute terror and agony etched into his face, thoughhis mouth was stretched open with something stuffed into it as he lay in a puddle of his own blood and body parts.

My eyes widened as I zoomed in and realized it was his own testicles…cut off and shoved deep into his throat.

But it wasn’t his mangled corpse that had fear draining the blood from my face.

Nor was it the word etched into his chest, crimson against his pale chest.

RAPIST

It was what was underneath it.

A green three-pointed crown that had just put a target on Theo’s back for sealing the fate of The Triarchy.

She had murdered him to ensure my safety and doomed herself in the process.

“Theo,” I breathed. “What have you done?”

In that moment, her words over the past few days made sense.

She couldn’t let him take the Chair, but there was no real way of stopping him. She had been so adamant that I took a flight at the same time as the funeral. I was never meant to see this. Not until I was safely where she wanted me, because his death just created a ripple that would lead to the exposure of The Triarchy.

And that crown was her apology to Erryn. Making it known who was to blame.

Erryn was going to kill her.

I was never going to see Theo again.

22

THEO

The contents of my bag were laid out on the motel bed as I organized them neatly back in, re-checking the small array of items. This was it. This was everything I was walking out of my life with, leaving The Triarchy in flames behind me.

It had come down to a choice between Erryn and Octavia. It had been no choice at all in my mind, even though there was a bone-deep ache in my chest.

William would have gained the Chair. I would have been removed for the hand I had in Octavia’s abduction, and if I had survived that, I would have been helpless to stop the inevitable. One slip, and Octavia would have been exposed. And William would have sent a veritable army to terminate her, lest she expose him.

I would have lost her either way, and gambling with her life was a risk I couldn’t take. So, I did the one thing I could do.

William thought he was untouchable at that funeral. His safeguards against The Triarchy held their leash tightly. His face had been splashed across the media as a grieving father, bereft of his only daughter and heir.

I had made him scream until he shredded his own vocal cords, and when I had grown tired of his wailing, I had cut off all he held most dear and shoved it deep into his throat, only his testicles protruding from his vile mouth, and then carried on until his heart gave out from the agony I inflicted on him.

I had started with fifty-two slices in the most delicate parts of his anatomy. One for every nail in the chest he had kept Octavia in, and I had made sure he had survived fifty-two minutes of the torture. I wish I had fifty-two fucking days to slowly skin him alive, but I worked with what I had.

I had my laptop open to the flight tracker. Octavia’s plane had been in the air for nine hours. I wouldn’t relax until I knew she was there and out of the airport, but I needed to get moving. Erryn would have already put a global termination order out for me, and I would need to stay ahead of them all if I had a hope of getting out of this.

Grabbing the small burner phone I had picked up from a gas station, I punched in the numbers to Octavia’s. I just…wanted her to hear it from me. I hated that she was going to learn what I had done through a screen. She deserved to hear it from my own lips, and god knew if I was going to make it out of London. I had a flight booked from Manchester in two days, but I needed to survive that long first.

I hit call and immediately froze.

It didn’t go straight to voicemail as I had anticipated.

It rang.

There was a click as the call was answered, my eyes going to the small image of the plane on my laptop screen. The plane Octavia was meant to fucking be on, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

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