Page 3 of Born into Madness
“Go to bed, Mia.”
She nods before running back into her room. The part of myself that feels normal fades away with her footsteps, and by the time I’m crawling into my own bed, I’m lost again to the dried blood that still coats my fingers and the images it puts in my head.
It’s a long time before I fall asleep, and then I’m lost in dreams of knives and blood, so much blood I could bathe in it.
A part of me knows I’ll never be clean of it.
A bigger part of me doesn’t care.
Chapter 1
Sasha
Present Day
“You’re fucking crazy!”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes, because if I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it a million times.
“I really don’t like labels, Drew.” I step around the naked man who’s hanging from the ceiling and shake my head at him. We’re in one of the warehouses our Bratva uses for interrogations, and Drew is wishing he were anywhere but here.
When I come back around to his front, his panicked eyes widen when he catches sight of me again. I’m not sure if it’s because of the knife in my hands, the skull mask I’m wearing, or the look in my eyes that I’m unable to hide. Sometimes I can appear normal, and other times I can’t pull it off. Right now is one of those times. Whatever it is, it almost makes him piss himself.
Again.
Drew gasps for air, threatening to hyperventilate, and we haven’t even gotten started yet. The only blood that stains myknife is from the very light cut I’d given his cheek. Nothing more than a scratch, really. Not nearly enough to satisfy me.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpers.
“For?” I ask the question while lightly trailing the knife along his chest. I know exactly how sharp the blade is, and I know exactly how much pressure it would take to split his skin.
“For calling you crazy,” he says, and I laugh.
“Maybe I am, but I’m not the one trying to roofie girls in a club, am I?” I lean closer, tightening my grip on the black handle as I press in hard enough to prick the skin. My eyes stay locked on the blood that immediately blooms, beading at the tip of my knife before slowly sliding down. Drew whimpers as I say, “You thinkI’mcrazy, but you’re the asshole who was planning on raping someone tonight.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt her,” he pleads. “I just wanted to get her attention. She’s been ignoring me all semester. I thought I could slip her something, and she’d finally just relax around me, give me a chance.”
“Jesus,” I say. “You are one stupid motherfucker if you think I’m going to buy that bullshit.” I pull back the knife and tap the front of my mask with it. “Do I look like I’m going to buy your patheticI can’t get laid unless I drug hersob story?”
Drew finds the balls that I can see are shriveled up from fear and says, “You don’t look like a guy who gets hung up on morals. What? Are you some masked psycho who goes around saving women?” He takes another shaky breath, but adrenaline and a healthy dose of superiority keep his mouth moving. “From where I’m hanging, you look like the kind of guy who would get caught drugging girls and dragging them back to your apartment so you can kill them.”
“Unlike you, right?” I ask, eyeing the pile of expensive clothes I’d cut off him. “The perfect, upstanding college student, makingMommy and Daddy so fucking proud.” I smile, even though he can’t see it. “You look like you still shop at Baby Gap.”
His cheeks redden with anger. “And you look like a fucking psycho,” he yells back at me.
Before he can even track the movement, I’ve set the blade against him and flicked my wrist.
“Holy fuck!” he screams. “You just cut my fucking nipple off!”
I watch the small piece of pink flesh roll across the concrete floor. Blood seeps down his chest, running freely from the open wound, and I start to enjoy Drew’s company a lot more.
“Want me to take the other?” I ask. “You just look funny now. It might help even things out.”
When I start to raise my knife again, Drew starts screaming, begging me to let him keep his last remaining nipple. He flails around like a fish on a line, tears and snot running down his face while he frantically begs for me to free him, and I feel nothing.
The only reason he’s here is because he tried to drug some girl in one of our clubs. It’s been a problem lately, one we need to get control of because it’s bad for business. I’m not some fucking superhero who’s grabbing perverts off the street to save women. The honest truth is I don’t give a fuck about the girl he was trying to drug. None of these people mean anything to me.
This is work, plain and simple, and I fucking love my job.
