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

by C. M. Stunich

  I furiously text Justin back, tears brimming in my eyes. What I did with Chasm was one thing. It almost broke us both, but at least there was some … I don’t know, understanding there. Parrish already knew that Chasm liked me. That, and he wasn’t my sister’s ex-fucking-boyfriend.

  You must really hate me, to turn me into a cheater like you. Why would you order your own daughter to keep having sex with guys?!

  I can barely see through the haze of my rage. What if he asks me to sleep with some other random person next? Someone old or gross, someone I hate? What then? Will I do it? How far will I go?

  The body is a tool to be used, princess. In this case, you will use yours to exact punishment. Perhaps you’ll learn to control your pawns in the future. As for the cheating, I was never the cheater.

  Your mother was—with Dr. Paul Vanguard. Ask her about that next time you’re having a heart-to-heart.

  He calls me almost immediately, and I answer, tears streaming down my face.

  Parrish is sitting cross-legged on his bed, and he’s eating a meal. A real meal from a plate. He stabs a piece of broccoli and stares at it quizzically for a minute, like he doesn’t trust that it isn’t poisoned.

  “Not that you couldn’t kill me anytime you wanted, you stupid fuck,” he mutters, and then he sticks the broccoli in his mouth and chews. A satisfied groan escapes him, one that makes my heart hurt. Tears prick his eyes and then he’s stabbing another floret with vigor, shoving it between his pretty lips and chewing so quickly that he almost chokes.

  The call ends, and another text comes through.

  I’ve been generous. More than generous. I have given Parrish these meals, asking nothing in return. But I very easily will poison this boy’s food. Or slit his throat. I’ve often fantasized about killing Paul’s firstborn son. It would bring me immense joy, princess. But for you, I stay my hand.

  If privacy is a concern, fear not. Mr. Volli attends to these situations, and he is asexual. You are my precious daughter, and I won’t allow perverts to access you.

  I just stare at those messages for a while.

  I’m not even going to bother with that last statement; I can’t deal with that right now. I try to focus on something else to ground myself.

  Tess was a cheater? She cheated on Justin with Paul? Even if she did, I imagine it was in the middle of Justin’s abuse. In no way do I blame Tess for that. Her ex is a literal murderer.

  But … it also means that she lied to me.

  Assuming, of course, that Justin is telling the truth. As Chasm suggested, it does seem to be a kink of his. Like, his morals are twisted but solid.

  Like Maxx’s.

  I groan and bring my knees up to my chest.

  I don’t think I can do this.

  Maxine, she’ll be devastated. I think of the overwhelming love in her eyes when she looked at X. How upset he was when he broke up with her. I think about all the things we said to each other tonight, about the possibility of anything happening between us to be nonexistent.

  I think about Parrish and Chasm and how much I care for them both. I think about the way Parrish grit his teeth as he watched me and Chasm make love, how he threw the phone against the wall, the way angry tears pricked his eyes.

  This is insane.

  Beyond insane.

  Justin Prior is fucking insane.

  Now I’m certain that the skeleton key comes from the insane asylum. Why wouldn’t it? This man needs to be locked behind steel doors and evaluated by a team of specially trained psychologists.

  I stand up and I start to pace, my mind whirling as I search for a solution, a trick, some wordplay that I can use the way I did when he told me to murder the bunny. I grab my phone off the floor, flush the toilet, and set it beside me while I brush my teeth and swish mouthwash around until I feel clean again.

  Tonight, you will have sexual intercourse with Maxx Wright.

  That’s … very specific.

  I check today’s sunrise, just to see how much time I have.

  Five-sixteen in the morning. It’s currently three-thirty. That … does not leave me much time.

  I strip down and turn the shower on, removing my cup and cleaning it out before I put it back again. All the while, I’m plotting and planning, working things out in my mind.

  Accepting the inevitable.

  I consider playing with the rules a bit. What if we just did, like, hand stuff? Does that make it any better? Is it worth the risk?

  Justin warned me against playing more word games with him.

  I brush my hair out and head back into my room, my phone in hand. Never in my life have I wanted to call Maxine so badly. I miss her so much that it becomes a physical pain, this burning inside of me that chokes me up, that makes my eyes burn with tears.

  Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I check the time again.

  It’s nearly four. I’m running out of time. Should I call Chasm and talk this over with him?

  I make the call before I can talk myself out of it.

  “Little Sister?” he murmurs, voice groggy but quickly sharpening with alarm. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  “He wants me to sleep with Maxx,” I whisper, and Chasm goes completely silent on the other end of the line.

  “What?” he breathes, anger making the word roll off his tongue like a growl. “What do you mean?”

  “Maxx took something from him, and he wants me to take something from Maxx.” I’m almost crying right now. A battle of morality wages inside of me, one that I’ve questioned over and over again since this started. How far will I go? How low will I sink? Is there any price that’s too great to pay to save someone you love?

  Even if I hate myself, and everyone I know hates me just the same, Parrish will be alive. He’ll be able to placate Ben when he gets carsick; he’ll be able to play hide-and-seek with Amelia and Henry. He can hug Tess and save her from total emotional collapse. He’ll be here to walk across the stage to graduate high school with Chasm. He’ll be there for Maxx when he gets married to a girl that’s so much better than me. He can talk Kimber down from the edge.

  “You’re kidding me?” Chasm whispers, and I hear his bed creak as he moves around. “What did he say exactly. Word for word.” I do him one better by screenshotting the conversation and sending it over.

  “Make sure you delete those when you’re done,” I choke out, watching the minutes tick by. I really am running out of time here.

  “Fuck. Motherfuck. Bitch. Fuck.” I can hear Chasm start to pace, his footsteps loud even through the phone. He starts muttering in Korean, and I just let him go. Five minutes later, he finally calms down, but he struggles to speak English the way he does when he’s really upset. “I … Why … Fuck.”

  Well, not that word. He never forgets that word.

  I almost smile.

  Doesn’t happen, but the spark is there.

  “Sunrise is at five. Chas, I don’t have a lot of time.” I’m practically pleading with him, but that isn’t fair. He can’t do anything to change these circumstances. “What do I do? What if … what if his demands just keep getting worse? I almost thought he was going to ask me to kill Maxx tonight. What if he tells me to sleep with someone I hate next? I … I’d do it for Parrish, but I’m going to lose myself in the process.”

  Chasm is completely silent for a moment, and I hear his bed creak as he sits back down on it.

  “We have to find him. Soon. This can’t wait anymore. I …” Chasm trails off. “If you don’t want to do this, Little Sister, Parrish would understand. He’d … he’d be okay with it.”

  A choking sob escapes me, and I clamp a hand over my mouth as I close my eyes.

  Am I worse a monster if I sleep with my sister’s ex than if I let the man I love die?

  I’m not.

  This is the lesser of two evils.

  Oh, Maxine, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.

  When my sister finds out about this, will she be able to forgive me? What about
Parrish? What if he doesn’t want me when he comes back? I wouldn’t blame him.

  “I love him too much to give up now,” I whisper, wondering what might happen if we actually find Parrish. Maybe then, it’d be better if I … if I just gave into Justin. I could agree to go with him, to do whatever he wanted me to do, so long as he left the people I love alone. Tomorrow, I’ll talk to him about that. I don’t have the time to have a long conversation now. That, and I might have more sway face-to-face.

  He can let Parrish go, and I’ll move in with him. I’ll beg the judge to give him full custody. I’ll just give him what he wants, so nobody else has to hurt because of me.

  “Little Sister,” Chasm starts, and I’m not sure if he’s crying, too, or if his voice is just thick with emotion. “Saranghae … doesn’t mean goodnight. It means …” He trails off, and now we’re both choked up and sniffling. “It means ‘I love you’.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut tight.

  “Nado saranghae means ‘I love you, too’. So … saranghae. I’m here for you, naekkeo. No matter what. This won’t change anything between us.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper back at him, even though I know he’s lying. It’s impossible for this not to change anything between us, and we both know it. “Nado saranghae.”

  I hang up before I lose my nerve, taking my phone in hand and pausing as I realize I don’t have a condom. I need to find one, and quick.

  I move over to my dresser, dragging the drawer open and finding a plastic bag with all the loose items from inside. There’s a condom there, one that I got during sex ed last year. There’s also a yellow sticky note stuck to it that I didn’t notice before.

  I pull it out and nearly lose my shit when I read it.

  Make safe and comfortable choices. I love you, Grandma Carmen

  Closing my eyes, I let my head fall back and allow the emotions to run wild through me.

  Safe and comfortable choices. It was a safe and comfortable choice when I was with Parrish. Chasm and I … I wanted that even if it was wrong, even if I refused to admit it.

  Maxx … If he didn’t belong to my sister, I might’ve made this choice long-ago. I might’ve asked him out at the coffee shop. Might’ve dated him. Might’ve chosen to do this all on my own. Even now, my body reacts when I think about what I’m supposed to do, and I feel sick.

  I’m not going to hate this, just as I didn’t hate it with Chasm.

  That’s the worst part.

  With soft footsteps, I pad into the hallway, testing Parrish’s door to see if it’s unlocked.

  It is.

  Whether because Maxx knows that locking the door is pointless against the Slayer or because he left it open in case I needed something, I’m not sure. I move into the room as quietly as I can, and then I pause beside the bed.

  He’s asleep, shirtless and only half-covered by the blankets. With gentle fingers, I reach out and brush some of his dark hair back from his forehead. He stirs, but only a little, sighing and turning his head before falling fast asleep.

  I put my phone on Parrish’s desk, positioning it in such a way that I know we’ll be seen enough for this to count, but not so much that I won’t be able to go through with it. I get that Justin doesn’t watch the videos himself, and he says that Mr. Volli doesn’t get off on them, but … it’s still horrible.

  It’s horrible, and it shouldn’t be.

  This should be fun.

  It should be …

  I move back to the bed, climbing in beside Maxx and lying on my back so that I can look up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. He stirs again, rolling over and wrapping an arm around me.

  Almost immediately, his body stiffens and he sits up in alarm, blinking through the hazy gloom at me.

  “Kota?” he asks as I keep my gaze on the ceiling. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

  I close my eyes and breathe in his comforting scent, squeezing the condom in my right hand.

  “Yes,” I say as he stares down at me in the dark, his face a shadow amongst shadows. “But don’t worry, it’ll be okay.” I turn over and then sit up. Before I can stop myself, I reach up with my right hand, sliding my fingers along his chiseled jaw in a way that I’ve wanted to since I first saw in him in line at the coffee shop.

  I’m leaning forward for a kiss when X grabs my wrist in a firm grip and draws away from me.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, alarm clear in his voice. “We just talked about this. I can’t, Kota. We can never be anything more than friends. You said you understood that.”

  I take the condom and press it into his hand. He looks down at it and then up at me.

  “Fuck.” Just that one word, as pretty falling from his lips as it is from Chasm’s. “What are you even doing? I told you: I’m saving it until engagement—”

  “You shouldn’t have hit Justin,” I tell him, dropping my hand to my lap. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

  Maxx squeezes the condom in his hand, sitting beside me in silence. I can feel the tension between us, this sticky, hot longing that’s so taboo that I can barely put a name to it. Sleeping with my stepbrother was one thing. His best friend, another. This is … something different altogether.

  “Tell me,” he commands as I look away, toward the phone on Parrish’s desk. Is Justin listening even now? How much time do we have? Not a lot, considering I came in here with about an hour to spare.

  “Justin knows that your virginity is important to you. He said you took something from him today, and he wants something in return.” I look back at Maxx and, even though it’s dark, I can see enough of his face to watch as it falls to devastation. “You heard him: I need to choose my pawns carefully, control my own pieces on the board.”

  “No,” Maxx breathes, and then he’s throwing his feet off the bed and standing. I watch as he storms around the foot of the bed to grab my phone. He comes right over to me, grabbing my hand and pressing my finger against the scanner to unlock it. This time, I don’t fight him. I just let him do it.

  He stands there, reading the text messages, his body getting tenser and tenser by the minute.

  “It’s four-twenty,” he whispers, his voice stricken. “It’s nearly sunrise.”

  I sit up all the way, draping my arms over my legs.

  “It’s nearly sunrise,” I agree, and watch as Maxx precedes to go through the same series of reactions that I did.

  “I can’t do this,” he warns me, putting the phone back down on the desk. “Not just because of Maxine. Not just because of Parrish or Chasm. Dakota, you’re sixteen; I’m nineteen. I won’t do it.”

  Oh. That thought hadn’t occurred to me.

  Shit.

  “Parrish is going to die,” I tell him, choking on the words. “You met that man today: does any part of you believe he’s bluffing?”

  Maxx just stares at me, and then he turns and storms out of the room. I scramble out of the bed to chase after him, but he isn’t going very far. He ends up in my room, chucking my phone on the desk as he moves over to the wall of windows. I make sure to close the door softly behind us.

  Maxx puts his palm up against the glass and looks out, at the very beginnings of a sunrise.

  There’s just enough light for me to see his face by.

  “We’re technically only two years and three-hundred and sixty-two days apart, that’s less than the four-year legal limit. There’s an age gap provision; you couldn’t be charged. It’s called a Romeo and Juliet law, and besides all that, the age of consent in Washington state is sixteen.”

  He turns his head very slowly to stare at me like I’m a crazy person.

  “First off, how do you know that?” he whispers, still clutching the condom in his opposite hand. “Second, do you think it was only the legal ramifications stopping me? It isn’t right. You’re in high school; I graduated last year. It’s not right.”

  “Parrish dying isn’t fucking right either!” I snap back at him, cheeks and boobs flushing re
d. “And I know that because Danyella wrote up an opinion piece about age of consent; she thinks it should be a federal law rather than one that varies state by state.” I’m blushing so badly right now that my face feels like it’s on fire. “Don’t let the boy we both love die over your stupid morals.”

  “Stupid morals? Not wanting to sleep with a sixteen-year-old isn’t stupid: it’s normal. Normal people don’t want to sleep with sixteen-year-olds!” He growls this out at me as I grind my teeth together in frustration.

  “Chasm warned me about you,” I toss out at him, so frustrated that I could scream. “He said you had weird morals, and that once you decided something, there was nothing that could be done to change your mind. So I guess Parrish dies then. He dies because of you!”

  I’m whisper-yelling which is totally a thing.

  “Whoever said he was going to die?” Maxx snarls right back at me, stepping forward and fisting his hand in the back of my hair in a way that makes me gasp. He isn’t pulling hard, just putting pressure on my scalp in such a way that my body buzzes at the contact. “Do not wake up Tess. She’ll kill me. Literally. I won’t even have to worry about the Slayer.”

  “You’re … you’ll do it?” I whisper, and then, because I’m an idiot, I add, “you’ll do me?”

  Why did I say that? What a weird thing to say. Fuck.

  Maxx blinks at me, licking his lips and releasing my hair so suddenly that I nearly stumble. He turns away from me sharply and stalks across the room, pausing briefly to flip off both phones.

  “You’re a sick fuck,” he says, still clutching the condom as he flicks the lock on my door, and my pulse goes into hyperdrive. Maxx turns to look at me, studying me with a hungry gleam in his gaze that wasn’t there before. “To be clear: this is a onetime thing.”

  He huffs out a breath and closes his eyes, turning away from me for a moment to catch his breath.

  The angel wings tattooed down his back catch my attention. He’s so goddamn muscular. Like, his muscles are some of the stupidest muscles I’ve ever seen in my life. He looks like a fitness model or something. And those arms? Those calloused hands?