Page 31 of Sadist

I snorted at the thought, and Theo’s eyes fluttered.

“It’s not funny.”

“No,” I agreed. “Some would say you are in quite the predicament.”

That earned me a frown, barely a crease between her brows as she fought to open her eyes and failed, slipping back into unconsciousness. I watched her for a moment, reassuring myself that the rise and fall of her chest was steady, before walking back into the living area to get her water.

And then it hit me.

Why did I care?

The woman who had ripped me from my life and was actively holding me to extort my father was incapacitated. Unconscious and unable to defend herself. I, on the other hand, was out of my cell with full access to the weapons I knew were in here. Yet that hadn’t been my first thought. I had seen her hurt, and I had jumped in to help her.

The glass I was filling spilled over as I stared at the flow of water, my eyes sliding to the door and its softly glowing keypad. It was shut…but still…

Crossing to it, I tried the handle. Locked. I recognized the keypad as one that needed an eight-digit code—I would be here until I went grey trying to figure it out. But…there were knives in the kitchen. And there was no way she could fight me off.

No.

My skin crawled, and I flung that thought from my mind as fast as it had entered it, my gaze falling on the monitors on the far side of the room. I was on them in a flash, firing up the screens and glancing behind me with a wince as they beeped and hummed to life.

It took me less than a minute to get past the Vanguard security screening, opening multiple pages and bypassing theVPN to bring up our location on one screen, before displaying the prominent news channels on another.

I froze, my fingers hovering over the keys as I stared at the screen.

The words “Vanguard heir murdered in extortion attempt”flashed across the screen with an old photo of me.

“William Vanguard asks for privacy to mourn his late daughter,”another read.

“What the fuck?” I breathed, clicking to another screen that showed an aerial view of a collapsed bridge, multiple cars crushed and smoking below as flames licked their way through a couple of burned-out vehicles. Every channel I clicked through was reporting various renditions of the same account. According to the world…I was dead. Killed in the collapse of the bridge after an unexplained explosion took the lives of twelve civilians.

Was Theo there?Is that where she was injured? I went cold. Was she the one who set off the bombs? Twelve civilians had been killed…Their faces started coming up on screen. Mothers…Fathers. Two were barely out of their teens.

“No.” I shook my head slowly, my hand to my mouth as I clicked through news articles. No…She didn’t do this. The logical part of my brain took over, calming the panic that had been steadily rising. No. My death is the opposite of what Theo needed to secure whatever negotiation was happening with Vanguard Technology. I was the bargaining chip in this situation—faking my death would undermine their efforts. The more I looked, the more questions I had as reports were released that a burned corpse had been identified as Octavia Marie Vanguard by the coroner.

“Holy Mother of God,” I breathed, sitting back in the chair and clasping my hands behind my neck.

For all intents and purposes. I was now a ghost.

11

THEO

Death hurt.

Anyone who claims it’s peaceful is a filthy liar who deserves to gargle battery acid until their teeth melt, because there is no way anyone could feel like I did and still have both feet in the land of the living. Even my eyelids hurt when I tried to open them. Pretty sure I found some new muscles in my neck that I didn’t realize I had possession of…because fuckingow.

Groaning, I rolled to my side, fighting a wave of nausea so I could call for the nurse.God, how long had I been out?My abused brain sluggishly grasped at the murky memories that hovered just out of reach until a face drifted out of the haze.

Octavia.

How long had it been? My stomach went cold. I’d only left her with a jug of water in my rush to leave. Pain lanced through my skull as my eyes shot open, pushing myself with a groan as blankets fell off my naked body.

I was in my own bed.

Squinting in the dim light, I could make out the softly glowing fairy lights above the table beyond, my own room lit bythe bedside lamp that looked like it had a jumper thrown over it to soften the light.

“What?” I rasped, my voice gravelly as if I hadn’t used it in a long while. My body shook as I pushed myself up trying to remember how thefuckI had gotten myself here.

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