Lady Killer (Dead Girls Club #2)

2. Luz

Chapter two

Luz

D espite the warmth emanating from the fireplace in front of me, the atmosphere at the Blackwell Estate was dark and foreboding. I sat, my head held high, ankles crossed, and hands placed gingerly in my lap, facing down the infamous Lucian Blackwell.

Everest had offered me a deal—come willingly to meet with Lucian, and he and Alister would not only vouch for me but would also help me get Aaron’s body out of the woods and displayed somewhere to be found later.

I couldn’t claim to understand or trust Alister, but I could see why he might offer his support in facing his older brother based on his past behavior. For whatever reason, he appeared to want me alive . . . for now.

What I couldn’t wrap my head around was why Everest, a complete stranger and reputed psychopath, seemed so invested in me. His peculiar pet names and familiar attitude were in direct opposition to the threat my instincts registered him to be.

He acted as though he . . . adored me . . . Which was concerning, to say the least.

Still, I would have been an idiot to say no, considering we all knew I’d end up going with them one way or another.

So here I was, in Lucian Blackwell’s office in the earliest hours of the morning, after watching Alister and Everest transport and display Aaron’s corpse with an ease that made me uncomfortably jealous. I’d never had to transport a body after killing before, and there was no denying that I would have struggled to do it alone.

They had also disposed of my bloody dress and shoes, dropping them off at an incinerator conveniently located on one of the back roads that led to the estate. This left me facing off with the heir to the Blackwell empire in the old workout clothes I had hidden in the woods. They were still damp from the snow, and I was more than aware of the water stain I was leaving on the gorgeous leather chair beneath me.

Lucian radiated a sense of deadly command so intense that it seemed to physically fill the room around him. Like the rest of the Blackwells, he was inarguably beautiful, but there was a hardness to him that was absent in the others.

If the twins and Locke had been carefully carved and polished from the finest marble, then Lucian had been forcefully hewn from the hardest granite. Eyes dark as coal stared at me from under a heavy brow bone that was balanced by a strong jaw and wide nose. His hair was the same inky black as Locke’s, although it was longer and thicker, worn brushed away from his face, and his beard was neatly trimmed.

When I entered the room, I’d only gotten a glimpse of him at full height before he sat down, but from what I could see, he was built like a linebacker—taller than the twins with shoulders that would make Atlas jealous.

“Who would like to tell me what is going on?”

Lucian’s voice was low and soft, with an underlying venom to it that sent the most delicious pulse through my body.

“Right, introductions . . .” Everest clapped and plopped in the seat next to me. “Lucian, this is Luz—polyglot, murderess, and future mother of my children. Luz, this is Lucian—the big guy, boss man, my bestie, my l—?”

“Everest,” Lucian growled.

“And I believe everyone else knows each other . . . Although maybe we should all go around and introduce ourselves, like a sort of icebreaker . . . Oh! I can go first. My name is Everest and—?”

“Enough.”

“Lucian, if I may?” Alister interjected from behind me.

“No.”

Nixon remained silent, probably still pouting, and an uncomfortable quiet fell over the room.

Lucian inspected me coldly, almost clinically, and I could feel myself nearly choking under the weight of his stare.

A minute of raw silence felt excruciating, and I bit down on my lip to distract myself from the compulsion to speak. The opening gambit would be his. I refused to spill my secrets to this man in a futile effort to avoid his wrath.

Another painful minute passed before Lucian spoke. “Tell me whom you killed, little girl.”

“Aaron Croft,” I said without missing a beat.

He looked up and over my shoulder at the twins.

“Student, Hollow Oak, no one of importance,” Nixon said .

Lucian’s gaze shifted to me. “And why is he dead?”

“He deserved it.”

Lucian’s jaw shifted, his dark eyes bearing down on me with icy viciousness as he clasped his hands in front of him. “I asked for an explanation, not a justification. Do not make me repeat myself.”

“Aaron Croft was a violent rapist. He stalked me, sold date rape drugs on campus, and likely would have killed me last night if I hadn’t killed him first.”

Everest growled next to me, and I could feel someone grab furiously at the back of my chair.

“You killed him in self-defense?” Lucian said, ignoring the growing tension.

“More or less.”

“Either you did or you didn’t.”

I chewed on my lip, considering my response. Too few or too many details would inevitably lead to questions about my past. If the best lies were built on the truth, then the easiest truths to swallow were lies of omission.

“Aaron terrorized and chased me into the woods on Halloween night. He wore a mask, so it took me a while to realize it was him, but once I did, I began slowly poisoning him. ”

I didn’t mention the other sheep. I didn’t want them to make an immediate connection between Aaron and the serial killer.

Lucian looked unimpressed. “So, this man died because he scared you?”

I wanted to ask him how many had harassed his family and lived to talk about it but choked my retort down.

“He died because I have no doubt that, had he caught me that night, it would have been me lying dead in the woods.”

Behind me came the sound of cursing and crashing as someone kicked a chair.

Nixon had warned me to stay in that night. I hadn’t listened.

Lucian scoffed but let me keep going.

“Originally, my plan had been to simply let the poison kill him slowly over time—?”

“And just how did you poison him?” he asked.

I gritted my teeth. “Elderberry and nightshade.”

“Elderberry?”

“While the berries are edible, the rest of the plant, including the seeds, contains cyanide-inducing glycosides, making it toxic. It grows in abundance locally and was easily disguised in the blueberry smoothies Aaron liked. ”

Lucian raised an eyebrow—in interest or disbelief, I couldn’t tell—before gesturing with his hand to continue.

“Over the course of poisoning him, I came across evidence that Aaron was in possession of GHB, which sealed his fate. I have a zero tolerance policy for rapists.”

“Do you know if he used the drug to rape girls himself or if he just sold it?”

This time, I didn’t restrain myself. “Does it matter? If you’re willing to sell a drug so someone can rape someone else, how far can you be from committing the act yourself?”

“Legally, they are two very different crimes,” Lucian argued.

“And the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that the legal system is not designed to address sexual assaults. Less than 10 percent of cases reported to the police result in a felony conviction. Excuse me for not believing in a system with a 90 percent failure rate.”

“You said that if you hadn’t killed this man last night, he would have killed you,” Lucian said, changing the subject. There was no indication that he had been swayed by my argument.

“I knew that eventually Aaron would come after me again, so I planned ahead. I swiped some of his own stash. Then I waited for the opportunity to present itself .

“I knew Aaron went out every weekend, the same way he knew I stayed home every weekend. I decided to attend the party last night in the hopes that he wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to get me alone.”

I found myself nearly breathless.

“And that was exactly what he did, before leading me away and attacking me. If he hadn’t been weakened from the poison, there’s a good chance he would’ve succeeded at raping and killing me. If I hadn’t spiked the punch bowls, I wouldn’t have been able to get away from the party and lure him into the woods where I was able to kill him.”

“How did you ultimately kill him?” he asked.

“I knocked him out, and then I cut his still-beating heart from his chest,” I answered, channeling Everest’s nonchalance.

Lucian’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. The heir to the Blackwell empire could be surprised, after all.

“You cut out his heart?” he repeated slowly.

“Yes.”

Everest jumped in, no longer able to contain himself. “It was magnificent, Lucian, honestly, you should have seen it. I wanted to get some photos but—?”

“Why?” Lucian asked brusquely, ignoring the other man.

I chose my words carefully. This was the dicey part. Why had I needed to cut out Aaron’s heart and taunt a known serial killer with some sort of sick obsession with me and inexplicable knowledge of my past?

“Someone has been harassing me since I arrived at Hollow Oak. As I believe you know, it started when someone nailed a pig’s heart to my door. Since then, I’ve been receiving . . . messages. These messages escalated around the same time Aaron first attacked me, and they included information about the murdered girls that no one should have.” I leveled a look at Lucian.

“And you think this person was behind the murders?”

I paused, weighing my thoughts. It was a question that’d been plaguing me since I first realized Aaron had been a sheep. I didn’t have any solid evidence that he was connected to the “Virgin Sacrifice Killer” as Everest had called them.

There was the phone call the sheep took that night in the woods, and before I’d killed him, there was Aaron’s rambling about whether I belonged to him or some other nameless man. Both of which indicated Aaron wasn’t working alone and wasn’t involved in simply selling drugs. But did that make him the killer?

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “My gut tells me he’s involved, but it’s bigger than just him. ”

“Then why cut out his heart?” Lucian said, irritated now.

“Because I wanted to send a message, and even if he was innocent of killing those girls, he was still a violent rapist who was going to die soon regardless. As I said, whoever has been harassing me is involved in the killings. They should know that two can play that game.”

“And can you?” Lucian rumbled. “Can you play that game, little girl?”

“Well, Aaron Croft is dead,” I said. “His body is on display near the stadium on campus with his bloody heart atop his chest, so I would argue that I am already playing the game, Mr. Blackwell.”