Page 83 of Scorching Sienna

“Good people or bad people?” I knew this question would come up. Answering it was not as simple as black and white.

“Depends which side you are looking at it from.” That is the only way I can explain it.

“All people are both good and bad in my experience.”

“Anyone?” She is asking this question in the hopes of somehow making what I do less morally wrong for her. But it won't help.Murder is murder.

“No women and children.” It is the only rule I have. The only time I had ever thought of breaking that rule was with Julia and Tortured Tits, Alessandro's cousin. The bitch who deigned to look my girl up and down at the fight club.

“The people that come toSin, they are killers, too?”

“Yes.”

“You are a stalker?”

“I follow people for money. But with you, yes.”

“Why?”

“The first time I saw you, you validated my life. It made sense. You are the reason I was born. You are the reason I am alive. You would have been scared if I had walked up to you then. You would have doubted what I said. You would have said it was impossible.”

“So you followed me. Sent me stuff and directed me to Mike’s Gym. Just so you could create a new first meeting. So that I would accept you? Be less scared?” Sienna shifts out of my arms and gets up, pushing her hair off her puffy face. The tear streaks on her cheeks make her look even more vulnerable.

“You wrote our first meeting off as inconsequential to me. You stole that first meeting and replaced it. Do you know how that moment in the club impacted me? How it turned around in my mind over and over again. I obsessed over it, and when we met again, I thought it was you, but you never confessed. You had no right.”

I can’t even say I didn’t know how much our meeting at Nero’s impacted her. In the days after, I saw her crying in her kitchen and knew it had to do with it. That’s when I sent the Mike’s Gym pamphlet.

“You were vulnerable, and you felt guilty about cheating on your dead husband emotionally and physically. If I had told you those things then, we wouldn’t be here now. You weren’t ready for me. Itwas only after that night that you started letting James go. I would have been competing with a dead man rainbow, and he would have won.”

She knows what I am saying is right. I can see it on her face.

“What about the video? You knew there was a video of us and didn’t tell me. How could you keep something like that from me?” Her voice cracks at the end, and she shakes her head as if trying to banish the emotion from it.

“It was right after The Reaping. You were too fragile for that information, and I handled it. The site was taken down.”

“The site? Are you saying this was on the internet?” She sounds mortified, and when I get out of bed and step towards her, she takes a couple of steps back.

“It was. It isn’t any longer, and anyone who saw it has already paid for that mistake.”

Her already pale face drains of the little blood that is left, making her as white as the wall behind her.

“You killed them,” she whispers, her hand covering her mouth in shock.

“Some. Those who deserved it. I applied the moral code most humans live by in that situation as I knew you would not have tolerated it otherwise. Pedos, rapists, and other bad people, I killed. The rest paid in other ways. Those with money I bankrupted and the funds I gathered were donated to The Victims of Rape Organisation. Those without money were punished in other ways.” I don’t elaborate, as that would mean explaining me chopping off some hands. The hand that they used to pleasure themselves with when watching that video.

Her eyes go wide, and she takes another step back.

“I don’t know you.” Her voice is small and monotone.

“You know me better than anyone. You knew this about me. Youknew I was a bad man the first time you met me. Consciously accepting that knowledge as fact now doesn’t change who I am. It also doesn’t change who you are.”

Her eyes widen, and then she shakes her head again.

“How can you say that? If I accepted it and accepted that that is who you are and what you do, it wholeheartedly changes who I am. I am someone who could live with you, killing another human. I am a monster.”

Her eyes go wide, and then she takes another step back.

“I am already a monster. You made me a monster when you killed people for watching the video.”

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