Page 23 of Tricked By Jack
My answering scowl just makes his smile wider. “Is she—”
He waves me off. “She’s in there.” He points at the wall they’re sharing. “Watching some horror movie or some shit, judging by the sounds.”
After placing the bag on the floor, I press my ear against the wall separating the two apartments, and he’s right. The shrill scream, maniacal laughter, and sounds of a chainsaw confirm it.
I check the clock on my phone, finding there are still a few hours left until midnight and I don’t want to disturb her until then.
“Want anything to drink?” Ned offers, and I accept an ice cold beer.
Unzipping my leather jacket, I make myself comfortable on his couch. We don’t really talk about anything of substance. He thanks me again for setting him up here, but I just shrug off his gratitude.
“It was nothing,” I say before taking a large swig. “I needed eyes and ears here.”
“Come on, man,” he argues. “Even if you didn’t need my help, I know you would have helped out when I got out of jail. So just accept my fucking thanks. Plus, you helped look out for Shelby. That won’t be forgotten.”
Ned served six years in jail for drug possession and a few other charges, which is bullshit, since the stuff wasn’t even his. But the prosecutor had a hard-on for putting him away, and I was too busy being hated by my dad to really pay attention.
Sometimes I don’t get why the hell he’s loyal to me. My dad killed his parents, only leaving him and Shelby alive. Yet, he’s never blamed me or Nick. It was never a secret he would have loved to be the one to kill daddy dearest. But so would most of NYC I’m sure.
“It was the least I could do,” I grunt. I’ve known Ned forever, so it makes me really uncomfortable to be thanked for doing something he had a right to expect.
“How’s Nick?” he asks, changing the subject.
“Busy living his best life,” I reply, not offering details.
Ned used to work for Nick, but my older brother never really liked him all that much. So after I’d done a few jobs with him where we got on, Nick was all too happy to let me have him. I snort into the bottle at the thought.
It sounds really fucking pompous to say you just move people around like they’re property. But that’s exactly what they are to the Knight family. Either you’re one of us, with us, or against us. There’s no other option.
The hours bleed by in slow, silent increments. Ned dozes off halfway through some rerun on TV while I sit motionless, tracking every creak of the old pipes, every scream through the wall.
When my phone finally buzzes a few minutes before midnight, I’m already on my feet, slipping my gloves on as I reach for the mask. With the box in hand, I leave the bag behind and slip out of Ned’s place and walk the few feet to Eve’s.
As I stand in front of her door, I feel a rare pulse of something like anticipation. It’s not nervousness, I abandoned that weakness long ago, but a heightened awareness that vibrates beneath my skin.
The culmination of planning, the precipice before action. I check my watch one final time. It’s almost midnight, only half a minute to go. I count down inwardly, and when it’s time, I raise my hand and knock. The sound echoes in the empty hallway, sharp and demanding.
Then I wait. My posture is a study in patient inevitability—feet planted shoulder-width apart, spine straight, head slightly tilted as if in curiosity. Through the mask, I hear my own breathing, deep and rhythmic, the sound slightly mechanized by the filter.
There’s movement behind the door; a subtle shift in the quality of silence that speaks of presence. She’s there, perhaps pressed against the wood, perhaps looking through the peephole. Studying me as I’ve studied her, trying to understand what can’t be explained, only experienced.
I imagine her eyes widening at the sight of me, her pulse quickening as she recognizes the pattern. The third visit. The third gift. The final invitation before the claiming.
My thumb traces the edge of the box, feeling the sharp corner against the leather of my glove. The rose waits inside the box—death preserved in unnatural beauty. The invitation rests separately, just as carefully chosen. Both offerings that foreshadow what’s to come.
I hear the lock disengage, the subtle click of metal retreating from metal. The door begins to open, a sliver of light widening into possibility. I stand motionless, the box extended in offering. Midnight has arrived, and with it, the next chapter in our evolving ritual.
Eve appears in the doorway, her face a complex study in warring emotions. I catalog each one—curiosity, defiance, and something darker. Her waist-long hair falls loose around her shoulders, the orange ends vivid against the black, wild and untamed like the rest of her.
She’s wearing a black tank top that clings in all the right places and leaves just enough to the imagination to make me grit my teeth. It’s so thin I see a hint of her nipples pressing faint outlines through the fabric from the chilled air behind her.
Low-rise sleep shorts hang loose on her hips, showcasing her long, bare legs that look like they’re fucking made to wrap around me. Her tongue flicks out, wetting her bottom lip as she stares me down, and I feel it—sharp and unwanted—the pull of her.
She shouldn’t affect me like this. Not when I’ve spent months crafting a plan that hinges on control. But she does. Every goddamn time.
There’s something about her—reckless and vulnerable, soft and sharp in the same breath—that makes me want to consume and destroy in equal measure. And that want is dangerous. It makes me human, which is as unpredictable as you can get.
Her eyes fix on the mask, searching for humanity in the glass lenses and finding none. Just as intended. Just as needed for what comes next.
