Page 126 of Lady Killer

Yes, she was stunning, with an air of innocence that belied just how wicked she was. The temptation was understandable, but we were smart enough men not to be led around by our cocks.

“Details,” I ground out. “As per our revised contract.”

“I didn’t, don’t, have a lot of friends. Mami and I moved around a lot, and school always made more sense to me than people.” Luz dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, still taking her time.

A brat through and through.

“But in tenth grade, I had a lab partner. Neveah Martinez. She was popular and social, everything I wasn’t, but she was also smart, hardworking . . . kind. We weren’t friends, but I liked her.

“She killed herself in February of that year,” Luz said without emotion. “Neveah had been at a party that fall. Kai had been by her side, feeding her drinks all night. Her friends said she was wasted, and that at some point, the two of them disappeared. Rumor was that Kai had photos of her, from that night. Of Neveah passed out and naked.”

Her eyes bore down on me in a challenge. She was testing me as much as I was testing her.

“It was almost too easy to get him alone that night. At another party, just like how he targeted Neveah.”

Locke scoffed. “You were supposedly a loser and they just let you into the party?”

She looked over at him derisively. “Maybe things are different in whatever posh boarding schools you got sent to, but in Texas, the schools are big. The parties are big. A pretty girl can walk in and stalk her prey with ease.”

Nixon tried to hide a laugh behind his hand. She had Locke there.

The vixen had trained killers wrapped around her little finger. Manipulating idiotic teenage boys would have been child’s play.

“I let him think he was in control, that he had the upper hand.” She smiled.

It was a sly, vicious thing, and for the first time, I saw the true predator lurking beneath her skin.

“He didn’t even question the pills I shared with him, or why mine looked a different from his. By the time he stumbled into the bedroom he wanted to show me, his speech was slurred, his reactions delayed.”

She took a sip of her water.

“The first dose of fentanyl was pharmaceutical grade. I’d measured it out ahead of time to make sure it didn’t kill him. But it did give me enough time to get into his phone. The monster hadn’t even tried to hide the photos.” Her voice grew colder as she stared at Locke head-on. “And she wasn’t the only one. I didn’t have enough time to go through every single one, but I saw enough to know he had to die.”

While she was baiting Locke with her casual indifference, I could see she was also truly secure in her decision to kill the boy.

“I deleted the photos, and from there, it was simple. One more shot of fentanyl, and Kai would never hurt another person again.”

She was just but ruthless.

Luz arched a brow at Locke before returning her gaze to me.

“And no one suspected you?” I asked.

“He was a known partier found with a cornucopia of drugs on him and in his system. No one remembered the girl he had been with that night because everyone was used to overlooking his bad behavior at that point,” she said before pausing to eat another bite.

An exquisite little killer.

“And the other?” Alister had been sitting quietly until now, but it was clear he was engrossed in her every word.

Luz speared the last of her mushrooms with her fork and brought them to her mouth before chewing them slowly. “Asher was two years and two schools later. Mami had passed away that fall, and I was . . . lost without her guidance.”

My fists clenched under the table. Luz clearly had a type as a killer, and I already knew where this was going.

“Maybe that’s why he thought I was an easy target, the new girl whose mom had just died. Maybe he would havegone for me no matter what. Regardless, I didn’t see his . . . attention coming.”

“What the fuck did he do?”

Luz offered Alister a tight smile. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

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