Page 265 of Chaos Kills

This asshole may have tried to kill me. But this asshole won’t be fucking anyone in the same room as me.

Ever.

“Bitch,” she mutters, finally stomping away like the desperate little cunt she is before I return my focus to fuckhead.

“Where did you hear the sounds?” he asks me, not waiting for me to say anything more.

“Behind the bookcase…I’m not sure which office upstairs, but it was loud enough to scare the shit out of me.”

“How much did you drink tonight?”

I sigh and attempt to pry his hand off my throat. “Let go.”

Then it hits me like a ton of bricks.

Reeve.

“You guys said you were looking for Reeve’s dad,” I utter absentmindedly. “Horror movies, crime shows with people getting kidnapped and being locked away for years?—”

“Grab Cairo.” His hand drops as he scans the crowd forthe man he just asked me to find.

“Where is he?”

“Upstairs.” I’m rounding Torin’s frame as I make my way toward the massive marble staircase before Torin’s hand clutches my bicep. “Which office?”

“All the way down the hall.” I point to it. “On the right. It has blue walls and a brownish gold rug.”

“I know the one.”

And he’s off, squeezing through the crowd to handle the mission I was supposed to be on when I run up the stairs to find the only sane man among us.

SIXTY

ozzy

“You’ve been hiding from me.”

My whole body goes rigid at her voice.

The soft texture, the way it used to soothe my anxiety as a kid who knew nothing of a female’s vices and what they could do to turn you into doing the unthinkable.

Once upon a time, I believed myself to have feelings for a bright blonde-haired girl who gave me the attention I lacked since my parents passed away when I was eight.

She brought me sandwiches and sat with me at lunch.

She danced with me in eighth grade when Cairo dragged me to a school dance and softly kissed my cheek.

I bought her a handful of tulips once, yellow ones, with the roots still fully attached to the bottoms because they were her favorites and she was having a bad day.

I beat a kid up in ninth grade when he called her a slut and made all the kids in the hallway laugh at her. Later earning the nickname psycho because one minute I was fine, but when it came to her, I’d lost it.

But Vivian saw past all that.

She saw past a lot of things.

When I believed she was a safe haven, a small portion of the love I’d never had, I didn’t know she was setting me up to be her scapegoat.

Her killer.

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