Page 41 of Ambition

I crouch down only to snatch up the lighter, pleased to find it’s a torch lighter. I bring my foot up and crash my gray boot down on Lenox’s groin as he still cradles his head.

He groans, dropping his hands and doubling over.

I smile, then sink down to kneel on one knee in front of him.

I depress the button on the handle of the lighter. Blue flame jumps out and I carefully caress the tip of the fire over Lenox’s knee. Intentionally, I don’t catch the cotton of his sweats, not quite, but it’s close enough I know this asshole can feel the burn.

He manages to open swollen eyes, and I see blood along his eyebrow line, crawling carefully down the contour of the side of his face.

His brown eyes lock onto mine.

I tilt my head. “Hello, Lenox.”

He’s breathing unevenly, his face a mass of distended flesh. His forehead has already swollen to twice its usual size. I know if I hit him two, maybe three more times directly on the temple, he’ll be unconscious.

He seems to know it too because as I twitch my finger away from the trigger of the lighter, he asks in a groggy sort of voice, “What the fuck do you want?” His chest heaves beneath his T-shirt, stretched tight over his muscular body, and sweat mingles with the blood on his face.

I can smell his body odor from all of his fearful perspiration.

I flip the lighter casually in my hand as his fists press against his groin in an attempt to relieve the pain.

“Next week you’re bringing in a lot of trouble to Alexandria,” I say casually, playing with the lighter in my fist.

Lenox reveals nothing, but then again, his face is screwed up into a swollen grimace. Even his lip looks too big for his face now and I can’t quite remember hitting his mouth.

“Where?” I ask.

Lenox swallows. He might taste blood because his eyes screw up tight. He blinks puffy eyelids and shakes his head once. “You’re that whore’s friend, aren’t you?” He smiles, and red stains the outline of his teeth. “This is good.” He laughs, but it sounds almost like a gurgle. “God, this is so good.”

I say nothing. I simply stare at him, doing my fucking best to keep my features blank.

He laughs again, a snorting sound from his throat. “You should have heard Theo fucking her. She wasscreaminghis name. I mean, I was right outside the door because he likes to break them in first, but at one point, I heard some kind of…crash, and I thought he was probably fucking her corpse.”

I don’t react. Not outwardly.

“And he’s always nice the first night, but I have to say, his past two whores have turned up missing. So when she’s here tonight, well, don’t plan on getting her back. And if you do, I’ll have had her too, so there’s not gonna be much you can do anything with, if you get what I’m—”

I toss the lighter into my left hand, then hit him again with my right.

He falls back against the table, papers scattering over the hardwood floors, baggies sliding over the surface. I plant my fist in his stomach to prop myself up as I lean over him, then I hit him again, between the eyes. Or maybeonthe eyes, because blood spurts from his face, coating my knuckles. He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t make a fucking sound at all.

But as I hover over him, he slowly blinks open one eye, blood caked in the fine lines of his skin.

“Where?” I ask again, staring down at him. I feel nothing. I think of nothing. My hand doesn’t hurt. My breathing is even. My pulse is probably steady, too.

He closes his mouth, like he’s sucking on something.

Then he spits, blood and saliva both landing on my lips in warm ooze.

I drop the stupid fucking lighter as I think of spitting in Isadora’s mouth and how this piece of shit might have had the chance to do it to her, too.

I hit him again.

And again.

And again.

And I keep hitting him even after he has completely stilled. I might have fucking killed him and still, I only think of Isadora. There is a dull ringing in my ears. But aside fromher,there is nothing but darkness inside my brain, like white noise.

---