Page 44 of Ruthless Riches
The Butcher tapped out his reply on the phone. “I don’t want to kill you,” said the robotic voice.
I scoffed. “Bullshit. I know why I’m here. This is the same place you kept the others,” I said. “You’re going to do the same thing to me that you did to them—keep me here for weeks, kill me, and string my body up at Blackthorne.”
“I don’t want to kill you,” the robotic voice repeated.
“Why? Are my organs not good enough for you?” I said, voice dripping with scorn. I didn’t believe a word this psychopathic asshole said.
I heard a stifled chuckle behind the mask. “Your organs are not my type,” came the reply.
“Why am I here, then?”
There was another pause as the Butcher typed out his next response. “You know why, Alexis. I really didn’t want to do this, but you forced my hand.”
“I didn’t force you to do anything.”
“Yes, you did. I warned you, and you kept digging,” came the reply. “I’ve been watching you for a very long time. I know what you’re like. If I waited any longer, you would’ve found me and told the whole world.”
I let out a long, shaky sigh and scrubbed my hands over my face. “You can’t keep me here forever,” I said in a hollow voice. “So you obviously are going to kill me at some point.”
He shook his head at that.
“Why?” I said. “What makes me so different from the others that you won’t kill me? Do you know me?”
The Butcher remained impassively silent.
I narrowed my eyes and lifted a palm. “Wait… I get it now. You’re lying about not killing me. You did the same to the others—convinced them they’d make it out of here one day just so you could see the shock and horror in their eyes when you finally decided to come and kill them. You’re sick like that, aren’t you?”
He shook his head again and typed out another message on the app. “I don’t want to kill you, Alexis.”
“What the hell do you want from me, then?” I asked, banging my hands on the bars. “Are you going to tie my hands behind my back and make me suck you off? Make me take it in the ass every day?”
“I’m not interested in that,” said the robotic voice.
“Bullshit,” I spat out. “I know how this works. You’re trying to lull me into a false sense of security because you’re hoping I’ll eventually offer you sex as a bargaining chip for my release. That way you get to do whatever you want to me without feeling like you forced me into it, because I’m technically the one who instigated it. But just so you know—that’s still coercion. Still fucked up. And it’s not going to happen. I won’t ever touch you, you sick fucking sociopath.”
The robotic voice repeated itself. “I’m not interested in that.”
I folded my arms. “Fine. Let’s say I actually believe you for a second,” I said. “If you don’t want to kill me, and you don’t want to fuck me, then what the hell do you want?”
“I want to know everything you know about me,” came the reply. “And then I want to make you forget.”
I stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He took a small step forward. “You know some things about me. I want to know exactly what they are.”
I actually didn’t know anything about him, but he obviously thought I did, so I decided to use that against him. “Tell me what you’ve done to Nate first,” I said.
He tapped out another message. “Nothing yet. You’ve always been my main target.”
“So he’s okay?”
There was a lengthy pause as he wrote yet another message. “Yes. For now,” he said. “I took you because I think you’re smarter than him. Better at finding things out. Without you, he won’t know where to look or what to do. But if he starts to wise up and gets too close…”
The message stopped, and the Butcher drew a gloved finger over his throat.
I closed my eyes and sent out a silent wish to the universe. Please don’t let Nate find me. Keep him safe.
The robotic voice echoed through the tunnel again. “Tell me what you know about me, Alexis.”
