The Annihilator (Dark Verse #5)(6)

The shot came in through the window, through the monster’s hand that had been about to touch her again, blood splattering on the white walls of the hotel suite. The monster screamed, shaking his hand that had a hole in it.
The bullet missed her by inches, and yet her heart never once raced or thought to dive away to save herself like it once had. Of all the things he had and hadn’t done, physically endangering or hurting her had never been one of them.
The man in front of her grabbed her by the other arm, suddenly turning her to the glass window, using her body as a shield, which was frankly stupid because she was short and petite and his head was way above hers.
That was exactly where the second bullet went through.
The man fell down, his eyes vacant, dead to the world in a split second.
He was the fifteenth.
Sighing, Lyla looked down at the blood on herself and went to the bathroom, shutting the door. She knew the drill. She knew a call would go to security and her handler, that someone would come and escort her back to the housing complex the girls lived in and all of it would take about twenty minutes. Those twenty minutes were precious. They were hers.
She threw the damned translucent robe to the side and stepped into the bath. She had never had baths until she started being auctioned and men brought her to the hotel. It was close to the club, owned by whoever ran the whole operation, and just easier for people to slake their lusts at immediately after a purchase.
She didn’t know who ran the operations, none of the girls did. But she knew it was called The Syndicate, only because she had once served at a meeting where they had talked about it and she had eavesdropped. On the ground though, they had handlers who had handlers, who also had handlers, and she didn’t know how high the chain of command went. She was just at the lowest rung of the pyramid, given a hotel to be used at. This was where all short-term purchases were taken care of. Long-term contracts meant moving somewhere else, wherever the buyer wanted.
The hotel catered rooms to every kind of debauched desire, the most rampant being non-consensual sex. But if a fetish existed, it was catered to. There was no concept of consent and legality, no empathy or morality. It was an abyss of nothingness.
She had been to many of the rooms in the hotel, and all of them had an en-suite bath that she always made use of, even if for just five minutes. Those five minutes were special. She cherished that time of being alone from eyes and relatively safe.
The tub filled to the brim and she went underwater, blessed silence encompassing her, her eyes closing, her breathing on pause. She gripped the side of the tub with her fingers, the black hole beckoning again, so close. Over the years, the hole had gotten larger and larger, its pull more intense than it had been. She would not get a chance like this again, the ultimate escape, the ultimate defiance of everyone who took pieces of her, leaving her hollow on the inside, until she could feel nothing.
Under the water, in the silence, she didn’t have to be anything. She didn’t have to know who she was. She didn’t know who she was. She didn’t know what she liked or didn’t like, or what she would choose if she was a normal person with a normal life. Would she be an artist or a doctor or a dancer or something else? Would she have loving parents, brothers and sisters, family that loved her and worried for her if she didn’t return home on time? Would she care for them or would she be selfish? What would her hobbies be? Would she like cats or dogs or none? Would she have allergies? Would she have a partner who loved her? Would sex actually be something pleasurable or something she dreaded? Were people on the outside ever raped? Would she be free?
Her lungs began to burn, the urge to let them burn out filling her, to let it all go, to let it all end once and for all.
It would be so easy to let go.
But she had to live.
For that one answer he held.
One more day. If she made it one more day, she could worry about the day afterward later.
Taking a massive gulp of air, she came out of the tub, her chest heaving as oxygen rushed into her bloodstream, her hair dripping as her eyes moved to the corner of the bathroom. The door she had locked was open.
He stood there.
That gave her pause. Twice in one night?
Why the fuck was he there? He didn’t really make himself known after a kill. This was unprecedented. But she wasn’t going to talk to him, much less give him the satisfaction of a reaction. He was cold and manipulative. Just because he was fixated on her didn’t mean a thing.
Under the muted yellow lights of the bathroom, he was more visible to her than he had been in a while. She took him in, her eyes taking in his vision. He was rich, she knew that much, not just because of his clothes. He was wearing all black like every single time she’d seen him. It probably helped him blend into the shadows—a three piece suit sans the tie, the shirt opened to give a glimpse of his masculine chest.
He wasn’t the best-looking man she had seen. No, she had seen many, many more beautiful men. But he was, without a doubt, the most dangerous-looking. Maybe it was the way his jaw was carved, shadowed with a dark scruff that seemed to perpetually be the same length. Or maybe it was his frame—tall, wide, muscled in the sleek way of a combative panther. Or maybe it was the stillness, his sheer ability to lock and focus on something so intently it made him feel like a weapon of death. Or maybe, it was those eyes—one utter black, the other an odd combination of green and gold—hypnotic, ensnaring, lethal, a duality of death and afterlife within one gaze.
Maybe it was none of those things. Maybe it was just the fact that she had seen him murder people without an iota of emotion for so long, she just associated danger with him.