6. SIX

SIX

I t's been a while since I've had to sneak out of the house, but I still remember how. I feel like I'm in high school again, making sure my door is locked and ambient noise on like it would be if I were in here sleeping before leaving through the back door, climbing over the back wall, and dropping down into the yard below.

I don't stick the landing, falling back onto my ass, but I've had worse. I get up, brush off my clothes, and head down the block to my car.

The warehouse is in an industrial area of the city. It isn't nice, but it's also desolate. When I drive past a group of people who look like they're headed to a secret concert, I pull over, park, and follow them, zipping my jacket and pulling the hood over my head.

And it looks like a Gods of Tomorrow concert when I step inside the building. There's a stage set up, dim lighting, and a makeshift bar. Hundreds of people, mostly women, crowd into the space. And it feels…familiar…in a world that's now so foreign. It's like coming home.

I push my way through the crowd, getting as close to center stage as possible. I keep my sunglasses on like I'm Elton John and just kind of wait with my hands in my pockets.

An hour later, when nothing has happened, I get that sinking feeling again. Maybe I'm wrong—maybe they aren't coming. Maybe the secret concert was on the football field in Pasadena, and they're there now, and I'm in the wrong place.

But then the lights go down. Fog billows across the stage, and two tall, darkened figures stand in the middle, one with longer hair and a guitar over his shoulder.

My heart stops. I don't breathe. The intro to "Pretty Poisoned" plays over the speakers, and I'm shaking, waiting for them to turn around.

Turn around. Please turn around.

They do, but not before they reach for something on the ground. Suddenly, we're all being sprayed with a hot, red substance. Before I can process what's happening, the lights go up, and the music cuts off. Two more men are on the stage recording as the crowd scatters.

I get a good shot of whatever it is directly in my face and into my mouth. It's corn syrup…fucking corn syrup.

It's a stupid fucking prank.

All around me, people are screaming and shoving their way to the exits; some are on the ground, shouting for help, while others trample over them. After I'm knocked over for the second time, my sunglasses go flying, and I give up on the front door and head for the back of the warehouse—there's no way there isn't a back exit or a loading dock in a place like this. Eventually, I spot people slipping out a door on the far-left side. I break out into a run, slipping on the corn syrup-covered concrete floors and falling flat on my face once more before I finally make it out the door and into the dark alley. I step aside to let others out the door, and then stop with my hands on my knees, catching my breath while others run past me. Many of them are crying or calling out for friends as they scatter in all directions while fireworks erupt overhead, somehow making the entire scene even more disturbing.

Once I'm alone in the alley, I slip off my soaked hoodie, using the inside to wipe my face clean before throwing it into the dumpster beside me.

"Fuck!" I scream at the night sky. I kick that same dumpster hard enough that it hurts. "God fucking damn it! Where are you? Why haven't you come for me? You said you'd never hurt me! I'm hurting! I—"

I see a man in a gold mask standing just around the back of the building, half of his body obscured. "Hey!" I scream. "Do you think this is fucking funny? Huh?" I pick up a rock and hurl it at the figure, who casually ducks around the corner before it can hit him. "Get back here, you shiny ass mother fucker!" Seething, I stomp toward that back corner. Glass crunches beneath my feet, and I stop, picking up the largest of the shards, which is about six inches in length but thin enough to fit in my palm. "You want to play monsters? I'll fucking play!"

Of course, when I round that corner, I look all around and find that I'm completely alone. "Fuck!"

And then the loading door opens. Three men, maybe a few years older than me, step out into the alley laughing, unaware of my presence.

"Holy shit, that was amazing," one of them says, holding up his phone. I can hear screaming on the video they're watching—it's us inside, minutes ago. "This is going to go viral as fuck."

A fourth man joins them. "We can't post this," he says. "We need to call an ambulance. That girl in there isn't moving; she won't wake up. This isn't funny anymore."

"That's not our fault," one of them scoffs.

"He's right," another one says. "We have to get rid of her. We'll put her in the dumpster."

"She has a pulse!" the shorter man says.

"Well, we can't let her go to the hospital. Do you want to go to jail?" the man holding the camera says.

"We didn't do it! It was an accident!"

"No one cares about these girls, Nate," he says. "They're just a bunch of stupid sluts. And I'm not giving up this footage; it's too good."

Finally, I catch someone's eye. "Um…Jackson?"

The one called Jackson looks back at the other guy, who gestures with his head in my direction. He turns, finally spotting me.

"Hey, there…" Jackson says. "How much of that did you hear?"

I turn the glass shard over in my hand, keeping my eyes on him.

"Holy shit," another one says. "Look at her chest. That's Teagan fucking Townsend. Get the camera!"

"No!" Jackson says. "She heard us; we can't record her. We'll have to take care of her, too."

I laugh. "Take care of me, Jackson," I mock in a high-pitched voice. "No, really. What are you going to do? I'm curious. Tell me all about it."

"Jason, grab her arms," he says.

Men.

It turns out they're almost all like me—none of them ever learned to run in the other direction when they found themselves face-to-face with real monsters, either.

"Jason, don't!" Nate says.

But he puts the phone back in his pocket and comes at me from my left side while Jackson walks toward me head-on, his hands working his belt buckle. I spot Bone Saw in my periphery just as he grabs one of the men, jerking him backward, and pulls out a knife.

Huh. Maybe he is real.

And I laugh.

"What's so fucking funny?"

"There's something bigger and scarier behind you," I tell him. "I think you're going to die."

He turns just in time to see a man in a gold mask drag a knife across his friend's throat. At the same time, I turn and drive the shard of glass into Jason's stomach. When I can't push any further, I drag it upward, letting the glass dig through the skin on my palms and fingers just to feel it tear at the flesh a little more.

It's better than I remember. Every cell in my body hums to life. My pussy clenches.

When I pull it out, he drops to the ground, a dark river of crimson running from his abdomen toward my Chucks.

Shit. I quickly jump to the side. I like these shoes.

When I turn back, Bone Saw has Jackson pinned against him, a knife at his throat.

"I guess you are real," I say.

Bone Saw nods slightly, and I watch a dark stain form at the crotch of Jackson's light blue jeans before running down his right leg.

"Ew."

He pissed himself. What a baby.

"I always want to play monsters," Bone Saw says, extending the knife to me. "There was something scary in front of you, too," he tells Jackson. "You were just too stupid to see it."

I slice his shirt open first—not carefully from the inside but from the outside, letting the blade pierce his skin the whole way down. Jackson screams, sobbing once I pull the knife away.

"I didn't like your joke," I say to him.

"I'm s-s-sorry," he sobs. "I'm s-s-so s-s-sorry. P-p-please don't—"

"Don't what? Kill you? Should he rape you first like you were going to do to me?"

"I-I-I have a f-f-family."

"I don't care."

I jam the blade into his throat, pulling it back out and watching the blood gush from the wound.

Bone Saw releases him and he drops to his knees, clutching at his throat with his hands. I kneel beside him, driving the knife into his stomach over and over and over again until finally, he drops and stops moving.

"Is the other one gone?" I ask, catching my breath.

"Nah, he's behind the dumpster."

"Please don't hurt me!" Nate cries. "Just…let me go. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I wanted to call the police—just ask her. I won't tell anybody."

"What do you think?"

I shrug. "He's not lying, but he's seen me. He knows my name." I pass him the knife. "I don't want to do it, though. Make it quick."

"You're smarter than your boyfriends."

Nate tries to run, but Bone Saw catches him in two strides, snapping his neck in seconds and leaving him a lifeless heap on the ground.

I'm in a dark alley with four dead bodies. On instinct, I begin making excuses in my head. They hurt people, and they were going to kill a girl. They were going to hurt me. But the truth is I'm not sure I care about being a bad person anymore. And they pissed me off.

"How do you feel?" Bone Saw asks.

"I don't really feel anything."

"What about…here?" He reaches between my legs, cupping my pussy through my shorts and rubbing me with his palm. "Do you feel anything here?"

I close my eyes and suck in a breath. "Yes."

I jump back when I hear tires in the alley, flattening my body against the wall. A black delivery truck with its headlights off rolls to a stop in front of us, and when the back opens, three gold-masked men in all black climb out, dragging a barrel down the ramp.

I wrap my hand around Bone Saw's bicep, stepping slightly behind him.

And then I watch as they lift Jason first and lower him into the barrel. Its contents make a hissing sound and steam billows from the top before they replace the lid, pull it back onto the truck, and grab another.

It's acid. They're dissolving them.

"I should check on the girl inside," I say softly before returning to the warehouse through the receiving door.

My shoes stick to the floor and slide beneath me as I slowly cross the room to the girl who's still face down on the floor in this mess.

I turn her over but the way she moves…

It's like rolling Layla in that sheet, and I know she's dead. What I thought was a dark-colored shirt is actually her exposed torso, battered and stained black and blue from bruising and internal bleeding. Still, I bring two fingers to her neck and search for a pulse.

I'd be surprised if she were older than sixteen or seventeen. Leather cuffs and bracelets line her wrists, badly covering the thin, light self-harm scars. I wonder if she needed this as badly as I did—a place to belong, a community.

A family.

"She's dead," I say, hearing his footsteps behind me. "Are they going to put her in a barrel, too?"

He stands with his gloved hands in his pockets. "Nah, we'll leave her here. Make sure someone finds her."

"How?"

"We're everywhere, Teagan. Always have been."

"River thinks you're going to kill us."

"I'm okay with that. Maybe we will."

"You're annoying," I tell him. "I'm going home."

He scoffs. "No, you're not."

"I have a curfew."

"You're a serial killer . Grow up. Let's go."

"Where?"

"Does it matter if you don't have a choice? I'm still the bigger, scarier thing."

Bone Saw doesn't wait for me to answer, turning and stalking off toward the back of the warehouse and out the loading door.

I could go out the front and run to the car. I don't have to follow him.

Of course, old habits die hard—or, in my case, they don't die at all. I slip and slide back toward the alley, where Bone Saw waits with his arms crossed in front of him. The other men are still there, working another barrel back up the ramp.

"Leave your clothes and shoes here," he says. "They'll take care of it."

"What? But—"

"You're not getting in my car like this. Strip down to your underwear and let's go. Besides, it's nothing I haven't seen before…beneath me, shaking while I fucked your pussy until you blacked out."

"I like these shoes."

"You have four pairs."

I grit my teeth and pull my shirt over my head.

Folding my arms over my chest, I follow him around the corner to a black Aston Martin. When I open the passenger side door, there's a yellow t-shirt draped over the seat.

Everything is bigger in Texas!

"You're fucked up for this," I say, pulling it on. He shakes with laughter as he speeds down the alleyway, whipping around the corner and nearly throwing me into the backseat when he pulls onto the main road.

"Fuck!" I shout, searching for my seatbelt. "And you're laughing! Stop fucking laughing."

He pulls onto the 805 and speeds away from the city. Now, at almost two in the morning, he drives with the headlights off down the mostly open road. Every now and then, I look out the window and spot a few stray fireworks erupting in the sky.

Happy birthday, Luca. I love you, I think, leaning my head against the window.

"Was there a concert?" I ask.

"No. I can't believe you fell for that shit. It was stupid."

"I know," I say, picking at the broken skin on the palm of my hand. It hadn't hurt so much when I did it, but it hurts now, and it's still bleeding a lot. "I used to fall for stuff like that all the time—conspiracy theories. I was just…hopeful. Is that so bad?"

"Yes."

"What's your name?"

He scoffs. "I'm not telling you my fucking name."

"It's something stupid, isn't it?"

"It's probably not as cool as Bone Saw."

"How old are you?"

"Would you shut the fuck up?" he says. "Stop asking me questions you know I'm not going to answer. Just sit there."

"Fine. But you're not like… super old, right?"

"Stop talking."

We head east at the same high speeds for about forty-five minutes before turning onto dirt roads. Eventually, we pull up to a home—or something like it. It's a dark grey concrete structure built almost entirely into the side of a cliff. He pulls into a garage underneath the house, and I follow him up a staircase to the main living space. It's large and open, everything inside is dark grey or black. Floor-to-ceiling windows cover the side of the house overlooking the cliff.

"This is nice," I say. "I didn't realize things like you had homes and cars."

"We don't," he says. "This is not a home. It's a place for things like me to stay when they need to. There's a bathroom—second door on the right. Go shower."

He disappears around the corner, and I step through the door.

The bathroom is like the rest of the house—the decor is plain but immaculate, modern, and slate grey. There are no shampoo or soap bottles in the shower, just unlabeled dispensers built into the tile.

I take my time under the rainfall showerhead, only about seventy percent sure I guessed which was soap and which was shampoo correctly.

And when I step out onto the slate tile, it's warm—heated, just like the bathroom floors at Declan and Luca's home in Coeur d'Alene. A pang of longing hits me right in the chest. I pull a towel from the rack, plush and soft enough to sleep on, and wrap it around my body.

Then, I step back into the expansive main living space. It's empty now; soft classical music plays quietly from speakers hidden somewhere in the room, and Bone Saw is nowhere to be seen. I walk through the space, peeking into doors until I open one with a bedroom behind it.

I step inside and go directly to the closet, pulling open the doors. In front of me hangs the same sets of clothing, over and over again. All black, all long pants and long sleeves. All hooded.

They look like they come in all different sizes, but when I look into the collars and waistbands, there are no labels on any of them, just like in the bathroom. No brands, no sizes.

Perfect for people with no faces—people who don't really exist.

I pull on one of those long-sleeved black shirts, the one that looks the smallest, and then go to the dresser, pull out a pair of men's boxer briefs, and step inside them.

Then, I return to the kitchen in search of food and find the same situation. There are no boxes, no labels—just dry foods with no packaging, starches and grains in clear storage containers. Almost everything is shelf-stable and questionable, aside from a fruit bowl on the counter with a few red apples inside. I grab one and eat it over the table.

Bone Saw sits beside me a few minutes later. If he's showered and changed, you can't tell—he's wearing the mask and fully covered in the exact same clothes again, the ones I saw copied and pasted on every hanger in the bedroom closet.

He sets a small plastic black box on the table. "Let me see your hand," he says.

I unfurl the injured hand on top of the table with my palm facing upward. "It's not that bad," I say.

"A few of these need stitches," he says.

"There aren't any hairbrushes in the bathroom."

"This isn't a home, Teagan. I told you that."

"But I have curly hair."

Ignoring me, he opens that small plastic box and threads a needle.

"You're going to do it?"

"Not like it's my first time."

"Well…aren't you going to like…numb the area or something?"

"No," he says. "You're going to suck it up and sit there—still and quiet—like a good little monster."

He starts with the larger cut just under my thumb joint.

"Sweet mother of god, that's uncomfortable! Fuck!"

"Be quiet, Teagan," he says.

I put my head down on the table and breathe through it. Minutes go by before I finally feel him tying it off.

"Finally," I say.

"There's one on your finger, too," he says. "It's going to be worse."

I almost hear the smile in his muffled voice. I wouldn't think things like him—without homes or faces or labels in their clothes—would smile, but I know they laugh when they mock me. They must smile, too.

"Holy fuck!" The needle digs in right where my finger bends and he's right—it's worse. With my other hand, I reach for anything, and it ends up being his thigh. Except it's not his thigh…it's his hard dick. I almost move my hand away, but I stop myself, instead running my thumb over the thick tip in slow circles while he works.

"You like hurting me?" I ask, stroking it slowly now from tip to base.

"Yes," he says calmly. "Did you like killing those men earlier?"

"I liked the blood; I liked the sound it makes." I grit my teeth as he threads the needle through the skin again, instinctively tightening my grip on his dick. "Sinking a blade into someone over and over again. I don't think it'd be the same using a gun. It reminds me of fucking; it scratches a similar itch."

His cock jumps in my fist, and when he speaks again, his voice is a little huskier than before. "I didn't expect such an honest answer."

"Normally, I wouldn't be—not even with myself. But Declan said it was poetry—taking what I wanted, just because I can. He said it made me better than everyone else, and I believed him. And you're the kind of monster who slides his dick into girls' pussies while they're sleeping, so who are you to judge?"

"I take what I want just because I can, too," he says. "And that's not all I did to you while you were unconscious on that bed. I stood over you, jerking my cock until I came on your face, and you didn't move, so I slipped my hand into your pants and sunk my fingers inside your pussy. It was so wet and tight, and you started squirming and moaning in your sleep, and it made me hard as a fucking rock again. Killing is like fucking…if you had a big thick cock to sink into someone's guts over and over, listening to them scream and beg…for more, for god, for it to stop. They're different sides of the same coin." He ties off the end of the thread and sets the needle aside. "We're all just animals, Teagan. The only difference is some of us are content in a cage, and others need to know what it feels like to tear flesh with our teeth and howl at the moon."

"Well, I just spent three months in a cage. I think I'm owed some flesh."

I climb into his lap and grab the hemline of his hoodie, lifting it with my fists. He quickly rips them away and pins them behind my back, bending them in a way that's painful.

"Ah!" I shout. "I just want to feel your skin. I haven't touched anyone in so long."

"No," he says, pushing me off his lap and onto the ground. I fall on my ass on the sealed concrete floors, knocking the air from my lungs. "Don't ever fucking do that again."

"Okay," I say, catching my breath. "I won't."

"Say you're sorry."

"I'm so—"

"No," he snaps, cutting me off. He pulls a knife from his pocket and drops it at his feet. "That's not how I want you to apologize. Take off your clothes, then get on your knees and pick up the knife."

I slip off the shirt and boxers and then pick up the knife from the floor, flipping it open.

"Write it in blood," he says.

"Where?" I ask.

"Wherever you want. Just make me believe it."

I drag the blade across my left wrist, applying only enough pressure for blood to pool in the wound. And when it does, I set the knife aside and use my right index finger to paint the words I'm sorry on my lower abdomen, right above my pussy.

Then, I draw a heart around it.

"That's cute," he says.

I rest my head on his knee and look up at him with my best 'fuck me' eyes. "Do you believe me?" I ask.

"I'm going to fuck you up, Teagan."

"Promise?"

Bone Saw stands, grabbing a fist full of my hair, and drags me on my knees toward that first bedroom I found. As he crosses the threshold, he kicks the door shut and turns off the light. Once we reach the bed he throws me forward, and I land face down on the bed.

"Spread your legs, little monster," he says, positioning his hard dick at my opening.

"Yes, master," I tease.

He pushes just the tip inside me, pulling my hair back hard. "Say that again," he growls.

"Yes, mast…er, ahhh!"

He sinks his dick into me before I can get the words out, grunting before sliding it out and thrusting back into me again. I arch my back and push up onto my knees with my ass up in the air and he uses that same grip on my hair as leverage as he slams into me.

"Oh, god!" I scream. "Yes! Ohhhh, fuck! Fuck me!"

"You sure are tight for such a desperate little slut," he groans. "You're soaked like one, though. Can you hear it?"

And I can hear it—each time he drives his thick cock into me. I feel it dripping down the inside of my thighs, too.

"Yes!"

"Aren't you embarrassed? That you got so wet bleeding on the floor at my feet?"

"No," I moan. "I like it."

"Fuck…"

He pumps into me hard and fast, hitting me deep enough to send chills up my spine. I grip the comforter for leverage while he fucks me like a ragdoll, drool running down my chin as he pulls back my hair and neck painfully.

But as long as the head of his cock keeps hitting my pussy just like that, I don't care what he does to me.

"Don't…stop!" I manage to cry out. "Please. Oh, please. Just like that."

He groans loudly. "I like it when you beg, little monster—it reminds me what a pathetic, desperate thing you are."

I let out a high-pitched scream as the orgasm rips through me. "Fuck!"

My knees slip out from under me and he fucks me through it, not missing a beat when I fall onto my side. All I can do is whimper and beg just like he likes as the spasms wrack my body, my pussy pulsing around his dick.

"Jesus, look at what a mess you are," he says as he slams into me. "You like getting fucked like a whore?"

"Yes!"

"Remember that you said that."

Bone Saw throws my top leg over his shoulder, and, just as my body begins to recover, he pulls out and slips his thick, wet cock into my ass.

"No! Fuck! Oh, god!" I scream as he thrusts in and out of my tight hole.

"You don't have to call me god, Teagan," he grunts, pumping into me. "Master is fine."

"Bone Saw!" I groan. I dig my heel into his back and grip his arm hard in one hand.

It hurts. He has a monster cock, and I'm out of practice.

"Try again," he says, slamming into me harder.

"Master," I say. "Please, Master."

"There you go," he says. "Just relax and let me use you. I want my flesh, too. This is what happens to bad girls who get horny slicing men to pieces."

"You're so big," I whimper.

He groans in response, and I think I know what might push him over the edge.

"Your dick is so fucking huge it hurts," I moan.

He spreads me wider, picking up his pace until he finally stills deep inside me, filling me with cum.

"Oh…fuck," he groans. "You fucking whore."

When he pulls out, I roll onto my back. He traces the bloody heart on my lower abdomen with his gloved fingertip, and I watch, still desperate to feel skin on skin.

"Different side of the same coin," he says again.

"Fucking and killing?" I say, breathless. I stare up at the ceiling, sated but not quite satisfied. "Yeah. Almost."

The thing on the bed shifts beside me, tucking his cock back into his pants.

"Are you going to sleep in all of those clothes?" I ask him. "And the mask?"

"Teagan, I'm not going to sleep in here with you," he says, pushing off the bed and heading for the door.

And then he just leaves me there, closing the door behind him, and I…

I lie there cold and alone, my body sore and used, and stare up at the ceiling. It doesn't feel good.

Once I no longer hear his footsteps on the staircase, I leave the room, too, grabbing the clothing I'd discarded from the kitchen floor and taking it with me into the bathroom. I close the door behind me and clean myself up before wetting a towel and scrubbing the blood from my wrist and the bloody I'm sorry heart from my stomach.

I won't cry about this.

I step back into the unlabeled boxers, pull on the t-shirt, and stare at the girl with the matted curly hair—the serial killer—in the mirror.

Is this who I am? Is this what I am now? Is it the best I can hope for?

I return to the bedroom but linger in the doorway, just staring at the bed instead. I don't really want to sleep there.

The blanket is a bit bloody, but I take it anyway, dragging it behind me to the bathroom, where I curl up beneath it on the heated slate floors.

Just to feel something warm against my skin again.

My body hurts when I wake up the next day on the warm, hard rock floor. As much as I'd like to stay there and act like the rest of the world doesn't exist—squeeze my eyes closed and pretend it all isn't real—I know I can't.

After all, this isn't even a home.

I step out into the main living space; the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the valley are now covered in thick blackout blinds. The midday light seeps from the small gaps in between, pushing grey light into the grey space.

I don't see Bone Saw until he speaks, sitting on the couch reading a goddamn newspaper.

"Your car is in the garage," he says.

I don't bother asking how it got there.

"Aren't you worried about me knowing where this place is?"

"No," he says. "If you ever tell anyone or show up uninvited, you'll be dead."

"Cool," I reply. "You look stupid. There's no way you're really reading that fucking newspaper in this lighting with a mask on. How'd you even get it?"

"You look stupid sleeping on the bathroom floor. Why'd you do that?"

"It was warm," I reply weakly. I grab my purse from the countertop. "I'm leaving. I'm sure I'll fucking see you around even if I don't want to."

"Yep," he says without looking up, still pretending he's reading the fucking paper.

As I walk toward the doorway, I realize…

"I don't have any shoes."

"There are shoes in the closet," he says.

"They won't fit me," I say. "They'll be too big."

"So? Go barefoot, then."

I sigh. If he were Luca, there would have been new shoes waiting for me when I woke up this morning—coffee and food, too. There's no way this guy doesn't drink coffee. He can't do that in a mask.

If he were Luca, he'd hold me after.

"Where are they?" I ask. My lower lip trembles, and I bite it back. "Where are Luca and Declan?"

"I don't know," he says dully. "Eastern Europe, I think."

"Why aren't they here? When are they coming back…for me?"

"The De Rossis brought an organization that's existed as a feared whisper for hundreds of years into the spotlight and under scrutiny because they couldn't properly dispose of bodies and needed to bring women they barely knew, like you, behind the curtain, and then they couldn't even run away right. That's why they aren't here."

"Isn't that last part your fault?"

"No," he says. "They should have shot you all and left you on the bus to be placed into barrels, but they didn't. They've been given too much leeway because of their father and their fame; people who should have known better let Declan De Rossi make his own rules and his own harem, and now we have a bunch of twenty-year-old girls to babysit and one of the dead ones left a diary behind for the police to find. I don't think anyone is in a hurry to help Declan and Luca back into the country. Famous people on 'Most Wanted' lists don't exactly move around easily. And Teagan, as far as I know, they haven't even asked."

"Luca loves me. He wrote that song for me."

"Maybe he did. But that doesn't matter," he says, so disinterested he still doesn't even bother looking up.

Defeated, I grab my bag from the counter, throw it over my shoulder, and walk toward the door, preparing to drive home barefoot.

"Your phone will be scrambled until you're ten miles away from the compound," he says to my back as my hand closes around the doorknob. I pause, listening. "Just head west once you're down the mountain. The government is watching you, Teagan. They're listening to your calls and reading your texts, too—keep that in mind."

"And are they the only ones?" I ask.

"No."

Without replying, I pull the door open and begin descending the staircase into the garage. And there sits my old grey Toyota, right beside the shiny blacked-out Aston Martin.

The garage opens on its own as my feet hit the floor. I climb into my car and pull out onto the one-lane road, heading down the mountain and then west once I get to a highway. When my phone starts lighting up with notifications, I put in my address and continue home.

Two hours. I'm two hours from my house, and it takes even longer once I hit traffic outside of L.A.

When I finally make it home, I park down the block and walk through the front door, finding my parents sitting in the living room.

"It hasn't even been a week, Teagan," my mom says. "Where were you?"

"I was out," I say. "With a man."

"Jesus, Teagan," my dad sneers.

"What man?" she asks. "Where did you even meet this person?"

"I knew him from before." It isn't really a lie. I did know him from before I was locked up, just…not that long before, and I don't really have any idea who he is. "If you don't want me to bring people to your house, that's fine," I tell them, tears welling in my eyes. "But I am so lonely, I think it might kill me. I miss being touched; I miss being loved. I miss them, and I know I'm not supposed to say that, but I do. And I want this to work, but I don't know how. No one is ever going to hire me, and no one is going to love me ever again. And I know you guys are trying to love me, but you have to try. How do you think that makes me feel?"

"Teagan, that's ridiculous," my dad says. "Of course we love you. We're doing everything we can to help you—after everything you've done to humiliate us. Stop being selfish."

"You're not listening to me," I say. "Do you have any idea how miserable I am? I can't live like this, or I'm going to hurt myself. If you want me to go, I'll go. But I can't do the curfew. I'm going to go…take my medication and lie down. I'm in pain."

"They didn't love you, either, Teagan," my mom calls after me as I climb the staircase.

"You're not making the point you think you are," I tell her, turning into my bedroom and pulling the door closed behind me.

I crawl under the covers, pop my earbuds into my ears, and listen to "Pretty Poisoned" on the web over and over again.

It occurs to me that no one ever let me mourn. Not for the love I lost, not for the family, not for Brady and Rhett. I certainly wasn't comforted. I was just locked up and told I needed help—that I needed deprogramming to realize that I didn't lose anything at all. And I almost believed it when I thought Luca was dead. I almost believed it when I saw Hazel on TV.

I almost believed it when I thought I'd be able to get a job, wear a dress at my sister's wedding, and slip seamlessly into a life where I wasn't a murderer, and where I'd stop fantasizing about all the ways I could kill someone with only the things in the room and biting my cheeks just to taste blood.

But I can't get a job, I can't wear the dress, and in this life, I'm still a murderer. And I don't even care if that makes me a bad person anymore. I know I'll do it again; just like Declan said, I won't be able to stop. It's the second-best drug I've ever experienced, and I'll never have the very best drug ever again.

But unlike Declan, I don't have anywhere to hide—no mountains, no wealth. I'm going to end up in jail or Bone Saw is going to put me down. Maybe I can convince him to do it nicely.

And worst of all, Luca is alive, but he can't and won't come for me. There will be no putting my heart back in my chest, no getting away with our crimes. No foreign beaches, no secrets.

The road to ruined really is paved with good intentions. That's certainly what I am now.

I don't move for three days.