Reading Online Novel

Torture to Her Soul(2)



I pay for the food before curiously strolling toward the dining room. The light is off, but Karissa sits at the table alone. The glow filtering in from the kitchen shows me she has a plate in front of her. She shifts the food around with her fork, not eating it, as she once again has those earbuds in.

I'm not surprised.

Another part of her routine: she won't admit defeat.

Wordlessly, I pull out the carton of Beef Lo Mein and set it on the table beside her before I make my way back into the den, leaving her with a shred of dignity, letting her eat whatever she wants in peace.





Dealing with people.

Finding things.

My specialties.

I sit in the den, my feet propped up on my desk, leaning back in the leather office chair as I scarf down my dinner. My eyes are trained on the laptop, on the stock ticker scrolling along the screen. I have some of my money invested in various high-profile businesses, legitimate dealings that keep me off the government's radar, but my focus right now is on the little ones, the barely existing penny stocks nobody cares about.

Chop stocks, they call them.

You find one, invest, and con a bunch of others into putting their money in, convincing them it's the next big thing, and then as soon as the price skyrockets, you pull your money right back out. The stock will plummet, since it's shit, and everyone else loses out, but you walk away with a pretty profit thanks to the suckers.

It's illegal, and I don't do it, personally, but it comes with the territory.

Finding things.

I've always been good at orchestrating schemes, finding a way to get things, to make money, but it wasn't until I started working for Ray that I really honed my skills. I have connections all over the world now—if somebody needs something, I know a person, or know a person who knows a person who can get whatever it is. It goes hand-in-hand with dealing with people, when it comes down to it. If people are terrified of you—of what you're capable of—they'll never cross you or turn you away.

That particular skill of mine wasn't discovered until later… until the world I built crashed down around me, leaving me a ruthless shell. When you've got nothing left inside of you except for darkness, it becomes easier to snuff out somebody else's light.

And that's me. I do what I want, take what I want, and make no apologies for any of it. After all, I wasn't born this way. The world made me who I am, and the world pays for that mistake every day. There's only ever been one thing to evade me, one person to elude me, one clever enough to stay ahead of me all these years.

Carmela Rita.

Johnny was easy to find. He took the same route Karissa is taking now: predictability. He played it close to the chest, settled into a routine, buying a house and working a shitty nine-to-five job, hoping to fly under the radar by becoming nothing. Fitting, really, since he was nothing.

Carmela, on the other hand, shook up her routine, living a life of chaos, of impulsiveness. Whenever I got close to her, she fled, switching tactics, moving on somewhere else.

She's a lot like me, I think.

She's smart.

But I'm smarter.

It's how I know this isn't over, that killing Johnny hadn't ended anything. I wish she would run again, disappear into another life, create another existence somewhere and never look back, but she won't.

I know this, because that's not what I'd do.

Carmela's full of darkness, too. The only light in her life now brightens my home, and she'll come for it. She'll come for Karissa.

God help her when she does.

Speaking of the light of my life…

My eyes shift from the laptop to Karissa when she walks into the den, barely making a sound as she curls up on the couch and grabs the remote control. She turns on the television, keeping the volume low, as she flips straight to the Food Network. A notebook lays open on her lap, a pen tucked between her fingers that she absently shakes as she stares at the screen.

She takes notes, like it's important.

She jots down recipes, like she needs ideas.

And she studies… and studies… and studies, her nose stuck in that notebook half the damn day, like there's going to be some sort of test at the end of it all, like she's going head-to-head with Bobby Flay or Rachel Ray or whatever obnoxious host she's watching today.

I close the laptop and finish eating, my attention on Karissa now. I watch her, dissecting her like she dissects whatever's being cooked, breaking her down into tiny fragments like the ingredients she jots down in her notebook.

I wonder if she knows how much I've done this, how much I've studied her, how well I know her inside and out. I know her sighs and smiles, the meaning behind the crack in her voice and the goose bumps on her skin. I can tell when she's happy, when she's sad, when she's furious all by the gleam in her eyes and the pep in her step. She's an open book, an energetic, emphatic woman, and no matter how hard she fights to keep her emotions from showing, I know what it is she thinks of me.