CHAPTER 13

He would have to take matters into his own hands after all.

Things just did not work as well without his interference.

In his thirty-three years of existence, he'd never met anyone as efficient as himself.

What a nuisance.

He sipped his drink, showered, replied to some work e-mail, then turned off the music and got into bed.

The lavender scent reached his nose and he closed his eyes, drifting off.

Clank.

Clank.

Clank.

The noise echoed in a loop and he woke up. A faint sound of weeping resounded through the walls like an apparition.

No." Mom shrieked, her cries echoing off his skin. "Please, no. Nooo?—"

But she was interrupted by the report of a gunshot.

Shadows crawled across the ceiling, twisting and writhing into grotesque shapes. Their vacant eyes glowed with a repulsive glee, and their mouths yawned open, releasing a low, scraping scream that battered his eardrums, drilling deep into his skull. They crashed into him, their cold, stifling weight onto his chest in a thousand unseen hands. The air was thick with them, a crushing weight that made it harder to breathe, or even to move. Their black forms pressed against him, the cold seeping in, dragging him down as if the night itself was starved and wanted to devour him whole.

Die already.

Die.

Just die.

The weight on his chest was constricting, suffocating, a pressure that bore down against him on the bed. He tried to breathe, but it was as if the air had been removed from his lungs. His body did not move, was held fast, each inhale short and tortured.

The black forms on the walls of the room twisted and loomed, bunched faces that warped into her countenance.

Her bloodied face.

He awoke gasping, staring at the white ceiling clear of the tacky shadows.

Or the bloody face.

But the pressure on top of him remained, because he was staring at another face.

In the blackness, WENTZ's gorgeous face loomed over him like a fucking demon. He was mounted his waist and holding a syringe as his lips stretched into a freakish smile.

"Hello there, Professor. Time to pay for your fucking sins."

And then he inserted the syringe into his neck.

JAX

He'd waited patiently.

Indeed so.

Even as the desire to inflict pain grew and built, to levels not experienced since that night four years before, he suppressed everything.

Leaving no space for mistakes.

This needed to be perfected. To perfection.

There was no way he'd be caught unaware like the night he was literally brought to his knees.

So he stalked him—his criminally tutored instructor who was teaching criminal law.

He learned his habits to a T and some general facts about him from a private investigator. He needed someone recommended through dark web searching himself, not wanting to take advantage of the mafia's networks. Were he to do that, the word would get back to DEACON or worse, his parents.

The private investigator Nadine, a strict-faced American female former military individual, was reliable and had already checked in with some intel.

ETHAN MIKASON was boringly ordinary. He transitioned from a middle-class Boston childhood to a lawyer father and a college professor mother.

He was a lawyer until recently a few years ago when he decided to be a teacher. He still helped his dad's small law firm, Lockwood & Associates, and owned most of their shares.

He lived a routine, nitpicky life where he did exactly the same thing day in and day out at the same time, like a fucking clock.

His day started at six when he swam in his building pool and worked out in the shared gym. Then breakfast was just coffee that he made himself while reading his news from physical prints of papers like some kind of old grandpa. He had to take a walk to campus—like for fucking forty-five minutes like a psycho.

He delivered his lectures. Spoke to students and professors, then strolled back into the town square. Purchased coffee beans every day—again, like a crazy person. Spent the majority of the afternoon at a chess club. Then, he went home to listen to blasting classical music while he made the coffee he bought, usually throwing away the whole bag afterwards.

Then he drank. Showered. Lived at his computer, and finally slept just to repeat the mindless loop all over again. And again.

He swore, if he got through the dull affair one more day, he'd blind himself.

Only the fact that he was there kept him from leaving.

He even grinned when he embarked on soul-sucking small talk, like he'd figured out it bothered the fuck out of him.

He didn't know when he discovered he was stalking him around, but he did, and he was completely comfortable about it. Like he knew he would.

Like he was a foreseeable thing.

Well, he couldn't have dreamed up this scenario. Because since he realized that he did, he covered his cards.

And since he didn't seem to care that he was tailing him like the grim reaper, he was careless enough to let him see the code he used in the elevator to ride up to his apartment.

He didn't even have to learn how to enter security systems and befriend the concierge and, instead, kind of just walked in here—after he made him believe that he'd gone home for the day.

In reality, he was across the way from the building, patiently waiting until the lights inside his apartment had been extinguished.

Then waited some more until he was fast asleep.

And it was all worth it.

Because now he was on top of him, his knees on either side of his waist over the sheet, and his syringe in his neck.

The black snake on his unclothed chest stuck out from underneath the sheet that'd fallen down to his abs like it was real and would jump up and bite him at any moment.

But he was the only poisonous snake in sight.

As he slid the plunger slowly, relishing this, his sleepy eyes, which had been confused a moment before, slowly cleared up. Not much light from the streetlight outside, and so he could not clearly see him, but he could distinguish his eyes.

Always those fucking filthy eyes.

"Actually, WENTZ? Drugs again?" His coarse-grained, slightly husky voice rang out in the air with obvious disapproval.

"Shh." He watched as the liquid flowed into his veins slowly. "This one is more superior. It'll make you crawl on your belly at my feet with need, Professor, and I'll crush that flaccid cock of yours under my feet."

His hands crept down to his waist, beneath his shirt, running over the flesh before he inserted his fingers deep into the skin.

His spine jerked and he halted.

The fuck was this asshole doing?

"You don't have to use rape drugs. If you were that desperate to swallow my cock again, you only had to beg and I'd allow you to choke on it."

He held up his hand and slapped him.

Not a punch—even though that was becoming more and more tempting by the second—but a degrading slap.

He chuckled, low and wicked in the blackness. He could sense his abs hardening and quivering beneath him, and he resented the way his cock was reacting, growing hard without cause.

"Does wanting me so much annoy you?" His rough whisper dangled in the air.

"I don't want you."

"Breaking and entering while possessing rape drugs with the intention to use them denies your statement. But I suggest you lose any fantasies you have about fucking me." "I don't want to fuck you."

"You're not going to. I'll be bending you over and teaching you some manners you so badly need."

"Like fuck you will."

What did I tell you I would do with any use of profanity?" he breathed softly, his fingers sliding across on his skin, back and forth, back and forth. "You're lean enough to be out of shape but fairly well developed."

"Stop touching me. You're dirty."

"Look at that. We're birds of a feather."

He shoved his hand away, starting to push it off of him.