The Annihilator (Dark Verse #5)(9)

The older woman, at least in her forties, looked down at Lyla with a frown on her face. “Again?”
Lyla nodded. The question hadn’t even needed to be fully asked. After six years, they were all aware of the bad luck she brought her buyers. Everyone knew someone targeted them, but no one knew who.
Three shook her head. “Idiot men, they never learn.”
Lyla stayed silent, waiting for instruction. She didn’t have to wait long.
“Go, get rest.”
Without waiting for more, Lyla quickly skirted the other woman and climbed the stairs to the building. It was a few decades old, the paint peeling in some places and the furniture cracked in some, but it was still the nicest house she had been in. Complexes like these were many, and Lyla had lived in five different complexes—the most unusual for any girl—for some bizarre reason. Usually, a girl stayed where she was initially sent, getting familiar with the location and the handlers. She might be moved once, or maximum twice, but never five times, and Lyla didn’t understand why she had been. She’d been a compliant child, a quiet adolescent, and it just didn’t make sense. She was just glad she’d been steady for the last eight years.
Climbing the stairs to the second floor where her room was, she passed a few girls loitering on the landing, talking to each other about their customers or masters, whichever they had. There weren’t as many girls in this building as the others, mainly because a lot of girls were contracted for long-term and had to stay with their contractors. Just like her friend Malini had been for a few months.
She and Malini hadn’t been close, not until the night that had changed her life and the other girl had stood by her, letting her scream as she held her hand. In the aftermath of that event, Lyla had found the closest thing to a friend for the first time, and it had made breathing a little easier for a while.
Opening the door to her room, she walked in to find both of her roommates locked in a heated kiss, pulling apart when she entered.
“Sorry, I’ll come back later,” she told them.
“Nah, it’s fine,” the taller one of the couple, Reina, spoke. “We heard you got bid on again.”
Lyla hesitated before entering and going to her small bed in the corner, collapsing on it. “Yes.”
“Is he dead?” the other roommate, Millie, asked.
“Yes.”
“Damn,” Reina muttered, climbing the bunk bed to get on the top. “How?”
Lyla pointed to her forehead. “Bullet to the head.”
“Girl, I’d just about give anything for your stalker to be obsessed with me right now,” Millie remarked, the tinge of envy clear in her voice. “Any man near me dying? No fucking anyone? The best kinda life.”
“It’s not just any man,” Reina reminded her. “He's a killer. Sorry, but I’d take rich pricks any day over him. With rich pricks, I know what I’m getting. I can handle that.”
“But can you imagine...”
Lyla tuned out the conversation, closing her eyes and lying flat on the bed, not wanting to hear what they had to say. They didn’t like her. They lived with her, tolerated her, but she wasn’t their friend. They didn’t look out for her like they looked out for their actual friends. She didn’t know why, but that was just the way it was. For some reason, nobody had wanted to be her friend in all the years. The one friend she'd had in childhood had left her behind and run away, and Malini had left now too.
And she was tired.
Without changing, she simply climbed under her thin sheet and turned to the wall, giving her back to her roommates.
The wet sound of kissing filled the room like it did a lot of the nights, and Lyla simply tuned it out. All the girls got trained with both men and women, and many of them found companionship with each other as they grew up. It was perfectly natural in her world, and she was glad that Reina and Millie had each other. In the fucked up world they lived in, it was a boon to find something like this.
For her, there was nothing.
She had lain in countless beds and been used against her will, nowhere to escape but in her mind. Sometimes, her body had reacted, sometimes it hadn’t. Sometimes, it had been painful, sometimes it hadn’t. She’d thought that was the worst that could happen to her, and yet the threat of worse always lingered.
She felt dead inside, the only spark of life brought on by the man in the shadows, and even that she didn’t know if it was because of their history or because of attraction.
As the breathing behind her got heavier, Lyla closed her eyes and wondered about him. Why was he fixated on her? Why give her black eternal roses for every kill? Why have a conversation with her now and instruct her to tell everyone it was him? Why did he do anything he did? The more she thought about him, the more pissed she became. And it was exhausting to have her emotions sway from anger to depression, a constant back and forth.
Somehow, maybe because of the exhaustion, she felt herself slowly drifting, her last thought of the hypnotic mismatched eyes and a feeling of danger chasing her.

***
She woke with a start as someone shook her.
Blinking rapidly to focus her eyes, she saw Reina’s concerned face looking down at her. “Three has called you to the office.”
Dread pooled in her stomach.
The office was never used, not unless someone from higher up in the operation was visiting and wanted to hold meetings.
And they were calling her.
Fuck.
Swallowing to wet her suddenly dry throat, she swung her legs around and straightened, her hair a nest falling around her body. “Did she say why?”