The pain in his side was a bright, hot blood. It was a surprise. A good one. Nobody had tried to hurt him in a long time. People saw the wild in his eyes and they either ran or they froze. This one, this girl in librarian's clothing, had stabbed him with a pen. A goddamn pen.
He looked at her, really looked, as he pulled the sleek metal shank from his ribs. Her face wasn't soft with terror. It was sharp with fury, her chest heaving, her eyes lit with a familiar, ugly fire. He knew that fire. He'd seen it in his own reflection in the Breckenville lake, the morning after.
She wasn't some anonymous hacker. She was a person. A furious, obsessed person who thought she was playing in his league.
"Oh," he grinned, the copper taste of blood filling his mouth. He tossed the bloody pen onto her keyboard, where it clattered against the keys. "This is so much better than I thought."
He took a step forward, and the world narrowed to the space between them. The wall of screens showing Avery's life flickered in his peripheral vision, a silent, blue-lit audience.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice low and curious, even as his fingers tightened on the handle of his knife. "Really. Because you're not just data. Data doesn't look that angry."
She didn't back down. She lifted her chin, a defiant, stupid gesture that made the pulse in her throat jump. "You don't need to know my name. You just need to understand that I'm not afraid of you."
He laughed, a wet, ragged sound. "Everyone's afraid of me, sweetheart. They're just afraid of different things. Leo's afraid I'll ruin his pretty fantasy. You?" He took another step, now within striking distance. "I think you're afraid I'll prove you're just like us."
"I'm nothing like you!" she spat, but her eyes darted to the knife.
"Aren't you?" He gestured with the blade toward her wall of screens. "You watch him. You track him. You want him. You think because you do it through a screen it's cleaner? More intellectual?" He leaned in, close enough to smell the stale coffee on her breath. "It's the same hunger. You just don't have the guts to get your hands dirty."
That hit a nerve. Her hand shot out, fast, aiming for his wounded side. She was quick. But he was faster.
He caught her wrist in a vice-like grip before her fingers could touch the blossoming stain on his shirt. He yanked her forward, off-balance, her chest slamming into the edge of the desk. The air whooshed out of her.
"See?" he whispered into her ear, his breath hot. "You want to play with Maddox, but you don't know the rules."
She struggled, a raw, panicked energy now, all her cool calculation gone. She was strong, wiry, and she fought like a cornered cat all claws and teeth and no technique. She twisted, trying to knee him, to bite him. It was exhilarating. She wasn't soft. She wasn't pleading.
She was fighting.
And he liked it.
He used her momentum, spinning her around and shoving her back against the metal shelving unit. File boxes rained down around them with heavy thuds. He pinned her there, his forearm across her collarbone, the point of his knife resting lightly against the soft hollow of her throat.
"Tell me your name," he said, his voice calm, almost conversational, despite the pain in his side and the wild thrill in his blood.
"Go to hell," she gasped, her eyes blazing with pure hate.
He smiled. He applied the slightest pressure. A single, perfect bead of blood welled up at the tip of the knife and traced a warm path down her neck.
"I've been," he said. "It's boring. Now. The name."
She swallowed, her throat moving against the steel. Her eyes flickered past him, to the main screen, where a live feed showed Avery, still curled on his bedroom floor. Something in her face changed. The fury didn't fade, but it was joined by a terrible, possessive longing. A look he knew intimately.
"Sasha," she breathed, the word a reluctant confession. "My name is Sasha."
He followed her gaze to the screen, then back to her face. The puzzle pieces clicked into place with a satisfying, dreadful snap.
Sasha Reid. The quiet girl from the tech lab. The one who'd transferred in last semester. The one who always had her head down, who fixed teachers' projectors, who nobody noticed. She was in Avery's art history class. He'd seen her, maybe once or twice, looking at Avery not with the loud curiosity of the others, but with a silent, intense focus. He'd dismissed her as background noise.
He'd been wrong. She wasn't noise. She was a silent, growing cancer.
"Sasha," he repeated, rolling the name around. "You sit two rows behind him. You handed him a pencil once. He smiled and said 'thanks." He saw the truth flash in her eyes a memory cherished, a trophy. "That's when it started, wasn't it? That's when you decided he was yours."
"He's not a thing to be owned!" she shouted, the fury returning.
"Then what is all this?" he roared back, shaking her against the shelves. "This temple you've built to him! You think you love him? Love is what Leo feels, and that's a pathetic, broken thing. What you feel… what I feel… that's hunger. And you're starving for him."
He leaned in, his nose almost touching hers. "But you're a coward. You hide in the dark with your wires and your screens. You think you're better than me because you don't get blood on your hands." He looked down at the pen wound on his side, then back at her. "You got blood on them tonight, Sasha. How did it feel?"
For a second, he saw it. The shame. The thrilling, disgusting shame of enjoying the violence, the intimacy of causing pain. She'd liked stabbing him. She'd liked fighting him.
She was just like him.
The realization didn't disgust him. It delighted him. It was the most fun he'd had in years.
His grin turned wolfish. "You're a hard girl, aren't you, Sasha? Not soft. Not like the others. You thought you could control the game." He pressed harder with the knife, not enough to kill, just enough to make her gasp. "But you're not a player. You're a piece. And tonight…"
He made a decision. A swift, brutal one. He wouldn't kill her. Not yet. Killing her would be an ending. This… this was a new beginning. A new toy.
He shifted his weight, his free hand moving from pinning her to gripping the front of her cardigan. He yanked, the fabric tearing with a loud rip.
Her eyes, which had been full of fire and hate, finally widened with a new, primal understanding. The calculation was gone. This was beyond her data sets.
"Let me show you," Ezra whispered, his voice a dark promise, "what happens to hard girls who play with fire."
The fight left her then, not in a surrender, but in a terrifying, rigid stillness. The screens around them continued to glow, a silent broadcast of Avery's torment, a perverse witness to her own.
Ezra pulled her leg wide adjusting the panties she wore while Sasha was struggling so had to be free from his grip but Ezra was so strong.
He pulled open his jean zip and took out his little one..... Used one hand to hold both her hand firm above her head
Sasha struggle really struggled to be free of Ezra grip she wanted to beg. To beg to be free and say she would free Avery and not stalk him again but why would she beg this bastard.. she of all person. No she would not
Just then she could feel Ezra thing inside of her little tears drop from her face it was so hot against her cheek.. is this rape? From the Maddox family? Why?? Why did she offend the wrong family???
When he was done, he left her there on the cold linoleum floor amidst the spilled files and shattered illusion of her control. She wasn't dead. She was breathing in shallow, ragged hitches, her eyes open and fixed on the ceiling, seeing nothing.
He stood over her, adjusting his jacket, wincing at the stab wound. He felt alive. More alive than he had since Breckenville.
He bent down, close to her ear. Her head twitched slightly.
"You're part of the story now, Sasha," he murmured. "My story. Leo's story. Our story. Welcome to the family."
He picked up her sleek, powerful laptop from the desk. He considered smashing it. Instead, he tucked it under his arm. Data could be useful.
He took one last look at the wall of screens. On the main feed, Avery had finally moved, crawling towards his bed, a broken, beautiful doll.
Ezra smiled, a genuine, terrifying smile.
"Don't worry, pretty thing," he said to the screen, to Avery, to the broken girl on the floor. "It's just getting interesting."