Payback Princess (Lost Daughter of a Serial Killer Book 2)

by C. M. Stunich

  I whittle away the rest of the time while Maxx is gone to dig deeper into the insane asylum theory.

  When he comes back and knocks on my door, I barely let out a grunt to welcome him in.

  “I take it you’ve found something interesting?” he says, his face painted with clear annoyance. But not at me. At Mr. Volli, probably. I pause to look up at him, trying and failing to suppress the small flutter in my belly at seeing his gorgeous face.

  He really is the all-American boy, athletic and gorgeous, kind and charming. I guess he’s also a bit of a dick, but only when he feels that someone he cares about is threatened. It isn’t off-putting in the least to me.

  “I take it Mr. Volli pissed you off?” I query as Maxx flops down on my bed, kicking off his shoes and then lying back on the mattress. He closes his eyes and throws an arm across his forehead.

  “He mocked us relentlessly. I almost punched him, too. I’m just lucky Chasm was there to chill me out.”

  I give a little chuckle at that, scooting closer to him to show off my findings.

  Like a clumsy anime character, I actually end up getting caught on my own blankets and falling face forward to land right on top of Maxx’s muscular body. My forehead hits his chin, and he grunts, his arm coming up automatically to grab me.

  That muscular limb wraps my waist as I curse and struggle to sit up. Only to find myself locked down by his strength. Trapped, essentially, lying half on top of him. I lift my head up and we stare into each other’s eyes for a moment that seems to stretch into forever.

  “What are you doing?” he whispers, his voice rough. There’s a duality to it, half longing, half repulsion. I understand it implicitly. We’re both thinking about Maxine right now. “I can’t do this, Kota,” he ends up choking out. All of a sudden, that pressure on my waist releases and I’m scrambling back against the headboard as he sits up and swipes both hands down his face. “I’m so sorry,” he says for the millionth time that day.

  It occurs to me then that he isn’t just apologizing for hitting Justin.

  He’s apologizing for … feeling however it is that he feels about me.

  Crap.

  Chasm was right. Maxx likes me. I like Maxx. I’ve liked Maxx since I met him at the coffee shop.

  “I wasn’t …” I start, pausing to swallow my feelings down. I’m full of them now. I couldn’t possibly eat another bite, and yet Justin keeps offering plate after heaping plate. This conundrum however is only partially his fault. Nobody forced Maxx Wright and me to have natural chemistry with one another; it just is. A fact. Something that we can’t do a damn thing about. “I wasn’t trying for anything. You’re … you belong to Maxine.”

  He drops his hands back to his lap and glances over at me.

  “And you belong to …” He pauses and bites his lower lip. The expression almost makes me smile, since you know, I’ve taken it for myself. But the moment is far too serious and totally weird. I’m not usually like this, I swear. I’ve only ever had like three crushes in my whole life and one of those was when I was eight, so it totally doesn’t count. This thing with Parrish, Chasm, and Maxx is brand-new. “Well, you don’t belong to anyone, really, but … are you dating Parrish or Chasm?”

  The question makes me physically ill.

  “I never wanted to be a cheater,” I whisper, and Maxx’s green eyes go wide. He lifts up two hands in my direction, palms out.

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Kota,” he rushes to explain. “I know that. I know you didn’t have a choice. If I were Parrish, and I had to share my girl with my best friend to have any chance of seeing either of them again, I’d do it. All I meant was: what happens when he comes back?”

  Maxx’s question is loaded. Like loaded AF. But it’s a valid one, one that I haven’t allowed myself to obsess over. But I like his confidence, the way he says when Parrish comes back. Not if. Never if.

  “I don’t know,” I admit, my heart cracking in half. I can feel it. I’m bleeding on the inside. I put both hands to my chest to stifle the pain. “I’ll be with Parrish if he still wants me.” I turn away, certain that my cheeks and breasts are crimson with an annoyingly telling blush. Why do I have to quite literally wear my heart on my sleeve all the time? It’s annoying. “I think. But I really like Chasm, too.”

  Maxx lets out a small chuckle, and I look back at him. He’s still watching me, but there’s no judgement there.

  “This is … at least there’s no chance of … us.” He points between us, his expression open. He’s just willing to lay it all out there apparently. Oh, to have such confidence. As he said to me before, I need to carve space for myself. X just takes it whenever he needs it, no apologies, no qualms. Well, except for the ones he keeps giving me today. “I like you, Kota. I really do. You’re smart and funny, empathetic and adorable.” He gives me that brimming smile of his, the one that gleams like gold, that’s crafted of self-assuredness and glittering aplomb. “But because of Maxine, I couldn’t … this could never happen. I’m attracted to you, I won’t lie. And it kills me to see you with Chasm. To hear about you and Parrish.” He tapers off, but he doesn’t look away. He holds my gaze, and he slays me with it. I can barely breathe.

  “But we are an impossibility,” I promise, even though the words are gutting. Why, I’m not sure. I have two amazing guys in my life, my feelings for them both so strong that I can’t bear even the vaguest idea that I have to choose between them. Adding a third is nuts. This isn’t a reverse harem anime or some crazy romance novel; this is real life. “I love Maxine more than my own life; I would never do anything to intentionally upset her.”

  My voice thickens with unshed tears and Maxx’s face softens.

  “I know that,” he says, making himself smile. “I could see that the moment the two of you hugged in the coffee shop.” He turns away slightly and chews on his lower lip again. There’s a fresh bruise on his arm that he rubs at before looking back at me. I wonder if he fell off his bike today? He pauses and looks down at the phone on my bed, grabbing both it and the Tess-phone that’s lying beside it. “Give me a minute; I just need to use the bathroom.”

  I say nothing as he leaves the room, dumping all the electronics on Parrish’s desk before I hear his footsteps retreat downstairs. When he comes back, he has my book bag on one arm, a shopping bag on the other.

  I’m not sure what he’s up to, so I just wait.

  Maxx nonchalantly sets the book bag down and then knocks the throw blanket at the end of my bed over the top of it. He puts a finger to his lips, and I nod, watching as he pulls out a small device from the bag. It looks a bit like a walkie-talkie with a long antenna on the top of it and a bunch of colored light indicators on the front and back.

  I have no idea what it is, but Maxx seems to.

  He starts in one corner of my room, moving slowly and carefully along one wall, aiming the device inside each dresser drawer, under the desk, in each shelf of the bookcases. He continues on until he gets near the book bag, and the device flashes with a red light. He frowns and then looks up at me.

  The meaning in his gaze is clear: get rid of the bag.

  I fling my body out of bed, snatching my book bag up by the handle and making sure that when the blanket falls off, the heart pin is facing the empty bathroom and not looking at Maxx.

  I head into the bathroom, close the door, and very purposefully set a box of tampons in front of the heart pin. I strip my shirt off and chuck it over the camera, turning both the bathroom fan and the shower on for privacy—this is sort of standard operating procedure at this point.

  Then I head back out to see Maxx.

  It isn’t until I’m standing in front of him and his eyes drop to the lacy black bra—not the one with holes for once, thank god—that I’m wearing.

  Oops.

  X swallows hard and turns away, acting as if he isn’t affected by the sight while I scramble to find a new shirt. I yank it over my head, and he smiles when he turns around, noticing that it’s another
Ashnikko tee.

  Like Chasm said, I’m a simp.

  “I’m not a huge fan of her music, but she’s a cutie,” he says after I’ve shut the bathroom door behind me, hopefully cutting Justin’s eyes and ears off at the source. “You remind me of her, actually.”

  I blink a few times in surprise, but maybe he didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded.

  X continues his sweep of the room and the closet, paying extra special attention to nooks and crannies. I still haven’t received my laptop, TV power cord, or PlayStation back from Tess. She hasn’t even returned my Kindle. All I have now is the new phone she gave me, the one Maxine gave me, and my academy-issued iPad. The prior two items are now in Parrish’s room while the latter is in my book bag inside the bathroom.

  We are officially tech free now.

  “This is a bug detector,” Maxx explains, once he’s confident enough in the fact that we’re safe to talk. “A hundred and fifty bucks. I looked it up online and picked it up while I was out today.” He studies the device in his hands for a minute. “We were right: if there were other cameras or mics in here, they’re gone now. Makes sense, considering the FBI could sweep this place again at any time.” He lets out a dry laugh. “That, or Justin has such advanced tech that it can’t be found with one of these. If so, we’re screwed either way.”

  He sits down on the bed with the device in his lap. We don’t have a lot of time. Too long like this and Justin will know what we’re up to. But I love the idea that we might actually be able to have private conversations from time to time.

  “Sorry about bringing the bag back up here; I didn’t want Justin or Tess or anyone else to see me doing a sweep in the dining room.” X taps the device against his palm in thought, as if he’s considering whether or not to say the thing he needed all of this privacy for in the first place. “I talked to Maxine today,” he finally adds, and my heart jumps. “She wants to come down here tomorrow and see you.”

  “No!” I shout, that bouncing heart of mine getting stuck in my throat. “She cannot come here, not with Justin around like, in person now. He’s a freaking serial killer who cuts teenagers into pieces.”

  “I know,” X agrees softly, playing with the bug detector some more. “I asked her not to, but she was insistent. She might very well just show up here. If she does, I’ll deal with her.”

  I nod, even though the thought of spurning my sister at the gates to the Vanguard mansion makes me queasy inside. I need to distance myself from her and not just because Justin told me to. I don’t want him to get any ideas regarding Maxine. If she died, I would probably break into a million pieces. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  I’d die to keep her safe, if I had to.

  “Thank you,” I tell him, and he looks up, chewing that pretty lower lip all over again. We stare at each other, and it gets awkward as hell all of a sudden. I decide that reverting back to the business at hand is the best option to keep things from getting weird. “You will never believe what I just found,” I begin, and even though the change of subject is abrupt and unnatural, we both roll with it.

  Because to do anything else would be to hurt Maxine.

  And I won’t.

  Not unless I absolutely have to.

  Maxx and I spend several hours organizing my spreadsheet and making a list of places to check out. How, exactly, I’m going to get to any of them is beyond me, but we’ll figure it out. Eventually, my lids get so heavy that I start falling asleep and dropping my phone on my face.

  “Alright, Kota, it’s time to get some sleep.” X takes the phone from me and puts it on the charging pad inside the nightstand drawer, even as I grumble protests at him.

  “I’m sure Parrish is tired, too,” I murmur, but X flicks the lights off anyway.

  “I’m sure he’s just fine in that department seeing as he has nothing better to do with his day. You, on the other hand, cannot find him if you collapse from exhaustion.” He retrieves the throw blanket from the floor and covers me up with it even as I groan in protest. But I know he’s right. I really do need to sleep. “I’ll be just across the hall if you need me.”

  My eyes are already drifting shut. I barely hear him. I do, however, feel his warm, calloused hand brushing my hair back before he leaves. His touch makes me shudder, but I shove the feeling away and turn toward the wall. Within minutes, I’m out like a light.

  Unfortunately, about two hours later, my phone buzzes from inside the nightstand drawer. Seeing as my Tess-phone is back on the mini-tripod atop my dresser, I snap out of a deep sleep knowing exactly which phone it is that’s just received a message.

  I roll over, yanking the drawer open, even as I’m still blinking sleep from my eyes.

  My stomach’s in knots, and my pulse is racing, my palms are sweaty. Being woken up in the middle of the night like this is never good. Even were the texter to be someone other than Justin, I’d be worried.

  But it is, of course, Justin.

  Princess, wake up.

  That’s the first message. As I’m staring at the screen, another comes in.

  Oh good, you’re up. That’s a relief. I wouldn’t have enjoyed coming over there to wake you myself.

  My mouth twitches. I’m not sure if he’s telling the truth or if he has an agent to do it for him. Either way, he’s made it perfectly clear through his actions that getting access to this house, to this room in particular, is not an impossible feat. I imagine that even with the new cameras in all the common areas, the live monitoring of the feed, and the police officers and security guards that Tess hired prowling the property, that Justin could figure out a way to me.

  I sit up with the phone in my hand, so tired that I could cry. Maxx was right: I really did need to sleep. I still need to sleep.

  What do you want? I text back, even though I know that antagonizing the man is not a very smart idea.

  Want? He queries back, probably staring at me through the phone on my camera. I frown at him, certain that he can see me. I had intended on giving you today and tomorrow off. It is, after all, Memorial Day. Besides that, you had a very busy afternoon.

  Can you please just get to the point? I shoot back, wondering how the hell I’m going to survive tomorrow’s luncheon. What if Maxx and Chasm are right? What if I don’t survive it? Then again, Justin had me in the woods all alone in the middle of night. Why not kill me then? He certainly wouldn’t reveal himself to the public the way he did today and then murder me on our first father-daughter outing together, not unless he really, really wanted to get caught.

  I warned you more than once to choose your pawns carefully. People can be useful tools, but they must be managed carefully. If you’ll recall Mr. Fosser. He disobeyed me and needed to be punished.

  Adrenaline rockets through me. Is he … is he going to ask me to kill Maxx?! What if he does? Then what? I could never do that. I’d have to give up on Parrish right then and there, run and tell Tess as quickly as I could. But Parrish would still die and everything I’ve done thus far would be for naught.

  Maxx Wright was not a good choice. He’s impulsive but also morally righteous, in his eyes. He cares much for little things. You allowed him to react toward me today in an inappropriate way, and I would be remiss if I didn’t use this opportunity to impart my parental wisdom.

  I’m shaking so hard right now, but all I can do is wait for his directive. I’m essentially helpless in this moment. And I hate that. I hate it so fucking much. Rage fills me, bright and hot, but there’s no outlet for it. Just a screen and a series of text messages that are so goddamn vague, they’d never hold up in a courtroom.

  Sure, Justin’s mentioned Mr. Fosser and Mr. Volli, but they aren’t him. Sure, he’s said things like ‘parental wisdom’ but so what. It could be anyone on the other end of this phone. Anyone. I’m sure he’s covered his tracks with all due care.

  I’ve heard word that he values his virginity.

  That last message throws me a bit. I blink a few times, but apparen
tly, I’m dense as hell. That, or I’m just too exhausted to think clearly. I don’t understand why that’s a relevant piece of information. Where did he hear that from? From Maxine? Oh god, I hope not. More than likely, he was listening to Maxx and me talk through our phones while we were on the trail.

  It’s effortless, the way this man hops from one device to another. Seamless. No wonder he was able to craft an app like Milk Carton, a facial recognition app that can be used by anyone, anywhere. This isn’t military stuff; this is for the public. How terrifying is that?

  As much as I despise Justin Prior, I must admit: this technology could change the world.

  For the worse, more than likely. What good will facial recognition technology do in the wrong hands? Stalkers, murderers, opportunists, sexual predators, they’ll all use the app in a way that Justin either didn’t intend or doesn’t care about. Milk Carton will not just bring lost children home, and everyone knows that.

  Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m feeling generous tonight. Maxx took something from me today, so I will, in turn, take something from him. It’s a small thing, tit for tat. And you will not like it. But as a parent, we sometimes must do things that our children don’t like.

  I’m still trying to figure out his aim when the next text comes, obliterating me emotionally, physically, mentally. Ruining me in a single sentence.

  Tonight, you will have sexual intercourse with Maxx Wright.

  Bile comes up in my throat, and I know before he even continues talking that I’m going to be sick. I end up on my knees in front of the toilet, retching over the bowl and throwing up nothing but feelings. I haven’t eaten in hours, not since breakfast this morning. My feelings were in too much of a tangle to eat.

  Not only did I meet my biological father for the first time: I met the Seattle Slayer.

  Gasping and choking, I pick up the phone to read the newest messages.

  You will complete the act before the sun rises in the sky, or I will finish what I started. He took a piece of my dignity today, so I will take something from him. He values his virginity, and it now belongs to me.