Page 34 of Insatiable

My phone rings again, my sister’s name flashing up on the screen.

Shit.

I untangle myself from two sets of arms and legs, naked and slick with sweat and God knows what else. Bernadette groans, but instead of waking and yelling at me to go back to sleep, she reaches for… whatever her name is and cuddles into her tits like they’re cushions.

Messages fill my screen, from Luciella and my mum. I have fifteen missed calls.

Luciella: Where the fuck are you? We leave for the airport in an hour!

Luciella: Base is here, and he said he hasn’t heard from you. If you don’t get home soon, I will leave without you!

Luciella: Answer the phone, you dickhead!

Mum: Your dad is happy you’re joining us; he hasn’t stopped smiling. This means a lot to him, sweetheart. I’m glad you’re putting aside everything that’s happened and coming to visit. I’ll see you soon.

Not going to lie, the last one hurt. Our last encounter ended with me flipping a table and storming out of the meeting area after him bringing up Stacey and our split.

Another text appears as I type a reply to Luciella, telling her to calm her shit. I read it twice and my right eye twitches.

Base: Get out of whoever’s bed you’re in and move your fucking ass before I track you down. I need to go pick up Stacey (high-five me if I get a kiss) but am I fuck going to America without you.

I scowl at the message. I read it again and again and again. Why the hell is he picking her up? His bracketed text fucks me off more than I’d like to admit. Stacey won’t kiss him for picking her up. Perhaps he noticed how I go silent and stare at her whenever she’s around, and he’s trying to piss me off?

I dodge a hand trying to wrap around my waist and sit on the edge of the bed. I read the text again and my thumbs start to type before my brain can catch up to what I’m saying.

Me: I’m heading home now. I’ll get Stacey on the way.

I fume at myself but don’t take the words back. She lives on the opposite side of town from Bernadette. But as I said, I’m an impulsive, controlling prick and I refuse to let him go anywhere near her if I can help it.

It’s a lie, I’d said while her hand was wrapped around my cock, and that alone was the biggest fucking lie.

I wish I could erase her from my life.

Even when I’m working in different countries, I’m checking her social media like a stalker, logging into the CCTV to watch her walk into the studio or around the manor, or asking Luciella about their weekend plans just to know what they’re getting up to. I even hacked my sister’s phone to read their messages once, and it was the biggest regret of my life.

Two years of obsessing over a girl who drove me to insanity.

I type back another response to Luciella, telling her that I’m en route before I tug my clothes back on and tuck my gun – which I slid under the bed without Bernadette seeing – into the back of my shorts.

Where the fuck is my hat?

Once I take a piss, noticing the scratches on my cheek and the multiple bite marks on my neck and chest, I soak my face in cold water and debate shooting Bernadette while she’s asleep.

Maybe I’ll suffocate her with a pillow and make it look like the other girl did it.

Too risky. As much as I’d love to end her, I can’t. I have too much emotional baggage to risk it. Maybe I should take a leaf out of my dad’s book and not give a fuck about anyone. Everyone seems to think I’m just like him – might as well prove them right by killing the head of the Scottish underworld.

Archie greets me halfway down the steps. “Morning,” he says, holding a coffee in one hand, a bowl filled with boiled eggs in the other. “She didn’t keep you up all night, did she?”

I scoff out a laugh and ignore him.

This man is deranged. A political leader who works with numerous charities for animals, schools and victims of all kinds of abuse, yet the sick fuck was perfectly fine with having a forced threesome with teenage me then abusing me after I passed out. He was fine with feeding me drugs and booze while I begged to leave the house.

He was fine with watching me kill. Watching me torture people who’d wronged them.

He was fine with weaponising me, a rage-filled kid desperate to keep his family safe, blackmailing me so I can’t ever stop. I did move to Stirling and buy an apartment with the money I earned from the contracts, in the hope they’d lay off me, but they still have their claws in me. Hotels rooms and yachts. Cars and clubs. Anywhere they can have me, they do.

I want to kill him the most. His time will come.

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