Page 53 of No Small Sin

She looked at me like I was insane. I was. "You don't think I've earned it already?" She asked, almost dumbfounded.

I huffed a small laugh, letting her know that I was half-joking.

I’d feed her any hour of the day, and give her anything she wanted without asking for anything in return.

But I was obsessed, and apparently now making excuses for it.

I brushed her wet hair off of her shoulder and laid a line of kisses down the side of her neck. "You have," I said, running my fingers along the inside of her waistband. "But I think you can give me one more."

CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE

Beck

Iwas in the middle of a particularly bloody job when my phone rang. Ijah had known I was busy. He never called while I was working, so when I saw his name flash across the screen, I knew it must be important.

I typically favored the neatness that came with my preferred means of ending someone, but there were always occasions in which torture was the name of the game. I was being paid handsomely for it, so who was I to deny the request?

Not that I could have if I’d wanted to.

I was covered in blood, sticky and wet. It dripped from the tips of my fingers and mingled with the pools of red puddled at my feet.

The scent of death was thick in the air and had settled itself somewhere near the back of my throat.

I scrubbed my hands on my jeans as best I could and took the call.

He’d asked me to finish up as quickly as possible and come into the office immediately after.

Typically, this wouldn’t have caused any alarm bells to sound for me, but there was a hint of concern in his voice and my gut told me it had something to do with a certain detective.

The mess I’d just made was no easy cleanup, so I opted for a method I didn’t often reach for.

I needed to be quick — tossing a match on the scene seemed to be the best option.

In truth, committing arson always left me with a satisfied feeling in my chest, and it was effective. If the impact was severe, bones and teeth would be all that was left, making the victim nearly impossible to properly identify.

Even more so if you took the teeth with you.

And I always made sure the impact was extreme.

Once I’d finished, I went into the office expecting the worst and was still completely caught off guard by what Ijah had to show me.

I stared at the screen, eyes wide and heart pounding. Ijah's finger hovered for a beat before clicking to pause the video, the click seeming louder than it should have been, consequently filling the room with a deafening silence.

My vision tunneled.

“You wanna explain to me what the fuck?” Ijah asked, glaring in my direction, burning a hole through my quickly deteriorating composure.

“Shit.” A haze crept in, thickly blanketing my senses.

“What’s going on, Beck? What have you been keeping from me?” I could tell he was pissed. It was dangerous for either of us to keep things from one another, but I’d been trying to protect TK to the best of my ability and it just seemed like the fewer people who knew how we met, the better.

“Just. Give me a second.” I plopped down into a seat, the images from the screen assaulting my mind like some fucked up rapid-fire cinematic experience.

TK eating alone on her lunch break, unaware of Detective Carson eyeing her from several tables over.

TK finishing her meal, leaving the table to clock back in for the rest of her work day.

The look in Carson’s eyes when her table was left unattended.

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