My trek to an overflowing bar two blocks up from the motel I left Megan at slows when a text message sounds from my jeans pocket. My hands are visibly shaking when I lug out my phone. I nearly killed her. Megan’s pulse was nearly decimated because of me.

Usually, I’d feel no remorse, but even a man as emotionless as me can’t deny the sensation thickening my veins right now. Her denial angered me; it stripped my veins of blood and left me to die.

But that isn’t the reason I nearly strangled her.

I was stuck in a debilitating blackness. I knew where I was and what I was doing, but the person I was doing it to wasn’t the person I saw when my hand curled around Megan’s throat.

I thought Megan was Cleo.

I’m unsure if Megan’s rejection was the catalyst of my breakdown or if it’s the way she is snaking herself beneath my skin, but whatever it was, I’m losing control—and not in a good way.

I could pretend I was teaching Megan a lesson about what happens when something I’m dying to taste is brutally stripped away from me, but then I wouldn’t have let go. I would have killed her.

Perhaps I should have. I should have fucked her like her eyes were begging me to, then killed her. It wouldn’t be the first time things have occurred in that order. I’m sure it won’t be the last. But for some fucked up, annoying the living shit out of me reason, I can’t hurt her.

The more her pulse flatlined, the louder the voices in my head shouted. They weren’t screaming murderous thoughts. They were begging for mercy, pleading for me to give her one last shot.

I’m not a merciful man. If you double-cross me, expect to pay your penance in blood. But Megan didn’t double-cross me; she merely denied me. I don’t know why. I read the thoughts streaming from her eyes; I smelled the erotic scent of her cunt. She wanted me—she still does!

She must be playing a game I don’t participate in. Her loss. Now instead of being bedded by a god, she’ll be fucked by a peasant. If the idea didn’t grate my nerves, I’d laugh. Just the thought of her with another man has me seeing red. It triples the adrenaline surging through my veins and has me actively seeking my next target. I need to work this girl out of my system, and the best way to do that is to put another woman in her place.

As my strides lengthen, I drop my blurry eyes to the screen of my phone to discover who my message is from. It isn’t Nick’s security personnel seeking additional proof Megan is alive; it is a reply to a message I sent nearly an hour ago:

Moose: Vicar exterminated. Send taxidermist.

My dad’s reply is just as short.

Big Bear: Call me. Now.

An additional text quickly follows the first.

Big Bear: It says delivered. Don’t keep me waiting, Son.

I toss a curse word into the night air before hitting a soon-to-be frequently dialed number and pressing my cell to my ear. When he is in game mode, my father’s contact with the outside world is borderline extinct, so his quick reply isn’t a good thing. He is either without a target or reminiscing about an old game. Neither scenario is more appealing than the other.

“You owe me thirty seconds.” My father’s deep chuckle pelts down on me. When I was a child, his laugh scared me. Now, it sparks morbid curiosity. “What happened with Vicar?”

I wait for him to finish shooing people away from him, no doubt women eager to take my mother’s place, before replying, “He hunted without an invitation. My target was not his to contain.”

“Dexter. . . Son.”

I don’t know which greeting agitates me more. He only calls me Dexter when he is disappointed in me. He used “Son” when he wanted to taunt my mother.

“I know hunting was never your thing, but you are well aware of the rules. The game is the target, not your fellow player’s.”

“I wasn’t hunting—”

“It’s her, isn’t it? The pretty blonde you escaped with? Does she remind you of your mother; is that why you’ve taken such an immediate liking to her?”

I’m a little lost on a reply—not the mother part; that is accurate. What did Dr. Nelson call it? Oedipus complex, where a son sees his father as an emotional rival because he sleeps with his mother. It is the part about Megan being blonde. Her hair is a little mousy, but it definitely isn’t light enough to call her a blonde.

I stop combing my internal dictionary for an adequate term to describe Megan’s hair color when my father asks, “She’s younger than your usual toys. How old is she? Sixteen? Seventeen?”

I’m filled with sympathy for Megan’s mute state when my mouth refuses to cooperate with the prompts of my brain. I have no clue what my father is talking about. Megan is immature, but I know for a fact she isn’t a teen. Her cock-stiffening curves could never be confused with someone who is barely a woman.

With my mouth refusing to cooperate, my ears have no trouble picking up my dad’s faint murmur, “She doesn’t have your mother’s dark hair and molten eyes, but she is around the same age your mother was when I sliced you from her stomach.”

Her screams lit my dreams for the next three years, I mouth at the same time my father vocalizes it.

“Do you remember when I shared her with you, Dexter? It was only the quickest touch of her jiggling breast as she lay motionless next to you, but I’m certain you’ll never forget it. How old were you then?”

He says, “Four,” at the same time I say, “Three.”

“Three—four, close enough. One touch wasn’t sufficient though, was it? You wanted more. I could see it in your big, beady eyes when you watched me claim her.”

“It was enough. . .” Enough to spark a manic psychosis.

It was at summer camp when I was thirteen that I discovered not every child sleeps in their mother’s bed. To me, it was normal, almost as routine as being woken in the middle of the night by my father’s grunts of ecstasy. It didn’t matter if I was two or twelve, my father never fucked my mother unless I was lying beside her. It was the ultimate way to display the power he had over her. He could do anything to her, even in front of her son, and she would never say no.

Her submissiveness is one quality she and Megan share. The other is the fact they’re both orphans. My mother was a misfit runaway. Her foster parents’ wish that she abort me was what sent her to sunny California with a backpack full of clothes and a four-month rounded stomach.

My mother often preached that my father stole the light from her eyes, but over the years, my father exposed that wasn’t the truth. He saved her life, and in turn, he saved mine.

My mother’s foster parents wanted her to abort me so I wasn’t born addicted to drugs. After seeing how careless my mother was, my father made a decision to raise me as his own before I had even left my mother’s womb.

The rehabilitation methods he forced upon my mother were barbaric but effective. From the stories I heard, I only shook uncontrollably the first twelve days of my life.

Although my mother’s first few years as a parent were rocky, she stepped up to the plate when my father granted me permission to attend middle school. She didn’t wear a frilly apron, nor did she cut my sandwiches into heart-shaped designs. She just told anyone and everyone that my father was her abductor and that she was a prisoner in his luxury mansion in the hills of Malibu.

Everyone thought she was hilarious. Even I laughed along with them. Her story was utterly ridiculous. How could anyone be held “captive” in a multi-million dollar estate by a much-loved and revered member of society, be forced to wear clothes in excess of four figures per piece, and be draped in diamonds?

No wonder no one believed her. Her story didn’t make any sense. She was sick. Kind of like Megan. . . Kind of like me.

I was fortunate to have my father’s guidance to see me through my dark days. He thickened my skin and proved I wasn’t what was wrong with society. Society is the one with the issues.

I’m pulled from my thoughts when a drunken patron stumbles into me while navigating the eight foot-wide sidewalk. If I could look past my arrogance, I could take responsibility for some of our collision. My steps have never been so wobbly.

“Sorry, sugar,” she murmurs with a hiccup before her bare feet gallop across the cracked concrete to catch up to her friends a few paces up. She is lucky she is with company, or I would have passed on my dislike for drunken idiots.

Her slur doesn’t just break me from my thoughts; it halts my dad’s reminiscing mid-lecture as well. “Jeez, Moose, you let me get carried away again. See what happens when you get locked away for years at a time? I reminisce instead of discussing business.”

His last word should fill me with worry, but his use of my nickname keeps it at bay.

A chair creaks. He must be in his office. “I’ll send the taxidermist to Vicar’s playground. . .”

I wait, knowing there is more.

“But. . .”

Told you.

“You owe me. Vicar wasn’t just a member of my association. He was also a friend.”

“What do you want?” My voice is thick from lack of use.

My father sighs heavily, either pondering or hopeful. I realize it is the latter when he asks, “Was Scarlett present during extermination?”

“She was.” When his sign turns into a moan, I quickly add on, “But I doubt she is anymore.”

Glass smashing resonates down the line. “You let her go?! My god, what’s the matter with you?”

His sneer is delivered with a memory, a vision of being slapped over the head while hearing the same screamed words on repeat.

I shake my head, ridding the confusion. Usually, the vision is accompanied by my mother’s voice, but today it presented with my father’s. This is even more proof that I need to get Megan out of my head. She is fucking with me, making me an idiot who can’t see the entire picture.

I practically sprint to the bar. My fast strides chop up my words when I say, “Scarlett won’t talk. Joseph called me Moose—”

“I don’t care if he called you Jesus, you don’t leave witnesses—ever!” A rustle sounds down the line, as if he is cupping the receiver. “Send Micha. We have more than just a body to clean.”

His message isn’t for me; it is for his right-hand man, Charles.

“Dexter. . .” My father drawls my name in a long, derogative slur, ensuring I can’t miss his fuming anger.

“Yes,” I answer without pause.

I do not cower from prosecution. I encourage it. His retribution will make me a better man. It will strengthen and condition me for the cruelty of life. He didn’t beat me when I was young to be mean. He did it so no one else could ever break me. I don’t feel pain; I absorb it. Even the slice of Megan’s blade when it skimmed across my skin didn’t register. If it weren’t for the faint trickle of blood dribbling down my neck, I wouldn’t have realized she nicked me.

I freeze. Nick. Is that why Megan denied my advance? Because she didn’t want to cheat on Nick? If so, I’m even more annoyed I succumbed to the voices in my head. Nick may have millions of dollars in his bank account, a wife with model looks, and the standard one son-one daughter combination every American family strives to achieve, but he isn’t half the man I am. He’s not even one tenth!

I was certain Megan’s obsession with Nick had shifted to me. She barely reacted when she saw his photo earlier tonight. I put it in my glove compartment as a test. She passed.

Well, I thought she did.

Maybe I can’t read her as well as I thought I could? That annoys me even more than her pulse weakening under my touch.

I stop imagining the life in Nick’s eyes vanishing via my grip when my father asks, “Is your new pet pure, Son?”

My throat works hard to swallow a lump before I answer, “Yes.”

I don’t need to see my father to know he is smiling. I can feel his gleam from where I am standing.

“Bring her to the stables. It is time for you to repay your debt.” He pauses to dramatize his last sentence. “If you’re not here by sundown Sunday, I’ll send out the vultures.”

With that, he hangs up the phone, confident I will never go against his command.

I won’t. Even a man as powerful as me knows I am a mere peasant when it comes to a god like my father. I will obey his rules. I always have. Meaning, in just under thirty-six hours, Megan will go from being hunted by the authorities to being hunted by Death himself.