Page 61 of Psychotic Faith
The text sends with a swoosh that sounds like fate sealing, like signing a deal with devils. But my mother's photo watches from my nightstand, and I know she'd understand. She fought back too, in her way. Just not hard enough. Not with the right weapons.
I walk to my window, the one where I used to leave my crappy folded messages for Luca. The streetlight outside flickers, casting shadows that shift like living things. For a moment, I swear I feel eyes on me again, that familiar weight of being watched that used to make me flush with anticipation. But when I look, there's only darkness.
"I still need him dead," I whisper to the night, to whatever shadows might be listening. "If that means needing you…"
I can't finish the sentence, but my body completes it anyway. Nipples hardening, pussy clenching, every cell remembering exactly what needing him felt like.
The decision is already made. I'm choosing revenge over righteousness. Choosing to become the kind of person who makes deals with killers, who trades justice for vengeance, who admits that being good got me nothing but Neumann's laughter over corpses.
My reflection in the window shows someone I barely recognize. Not the girl who prays every Sunday. Not the patient librarian who's spent her life playing by rules. Someone harder. Someone who counts bodies like chess pieces and feels anger rather than horror at losing witnesses. Someone whose body still aches for a killer's touch.
Someone who understands why Luca does what he does.
Tomorrow I stop pretending to be good.
"I'm becoming what you are," I tell the darkness, not sure if I mean Luca or my mother's killer or both. "And I'm choosing it."
The window reflects my face back, hollow-eyed from sleeplessness but resolute. This is who I am now. Who I've probably always been, underneath the cardigans and smiles.
Someone who needs Neumann dead more than I need to be good.
Someone who'll shake hands with devils to make it happen.
23 - Luca
Seven PM, Friday.
The dining room walls pulse around me, or maybe that's the exhaustion making everything shift. Ninety-seven hours since she fled the compound. Since she saw what I really am. My brain counts obsessively, each second another proof that time means nothing without her in it. My hands shake against the mahogany table, worse than an addict in withdrawal because at least junkies can find another hit. There's only one Faith, and my cells scream for her proximity like a chemical dependency I'll never break.
My throat burns like I've been screaming, but I haven't made a sound in days. Stomach cramping from refusing food. My cock throbs painfully, the only part of me that refuses to die, staying hard despite exhaustion, like my body's biological imperative to claim her overrides even starvation.
The car engine cuts through the mansion's silence. I know it's her before the door opens, my body responding to her nearness with violent recognition. Heartrate spiking, temperature rising, pure chemical reaction to her proximity. She enters through the kitchen, the back entrance Sofia must have suggested, avoiding me. The black dress stops my heart. Her mother's funeral dress, still carrying death. She's lost weight, shadows under those hazel eyes that match mine.Good. We're both dying by degrees.
The black dress clings to curves I've marked with my mouth, hips I've gripped while fucking her until she screamed. Every inch of her belongs to me, even if she's pretending otherwise.
She takes the chair furthest from me, the distance deliberate as a blade. Won't look at me, shoulders rigid while Marco arranges papers. My family fills the spaces between us but they might as well be furniture. Every atom of my attention locks on her refusal to acknowledge I exist. The shaking gets worse, my nervous system shorting out from withdrawal and need fighting for dominance.
The chandelier light fractures into prisms, each crystal becoming Faith's eyes judging me. Can smell her phantom jasmine even though she's across the room, my brain creating sensory ghosts.
Marco slides the tablet across polished wood toward Faith. "Ms.Winters. Thank you for coming." His voice carries the authority of a Don who's never questioned. "Sofia mentioned you had thoughts about approaching Neumann."
Faith nods, producing her own tablet. "I've been thinking since yesterday's call," she says, fingers steady despite everything. "He has a type. Women who reject him. Makes him aggressive, sloppy." The photos she shows make my vision fracture: three other women, all dead or missing after refusing his advances. She's never told me about the others.
"I could trigger that response," Faith continues, voice flat as autopsy notes. "Approach him as bait. Women who reject him become his obsession."
My vision starts fracturing when she says "bait." Red bleeding into the edges. Hands clenching and unclenching.
Sofia's eyes light with interest. "There's a pharmaceutical conference this weekend. You could play the traumatized daughter having recovered memories. He'll want to control that narrative, get you isolated to talk."
"You'd wear a wire," Nico adds, tactical mind engaging. "We could control the conference security. Could isolate him in fifteen seconds once he takes the bait."
Sofia's words trigger something primal. The third time hearing 'bait' breaks something in me. Not my sister anymore, just another voice suggesting Faith should be dangled like meat for a predator.
I'm on my feet before conscious thought, the chair clattering backward. My hand slams on the table hard enough to make glasses jump, knocking one over. Red wine spreads across the white tablecloth like blood.
"No." The word comes out shredded, raw. "Absolutely fucking not."
"Luca—" Sofia starts.
