Psychopath

Parking the car near the Hudson River cliff, I slowly step out onto the ground and inhale deeply, closing my eyes and lifting my face to the bright sunlight streaming down on me.

My lungs fill with the river’s air as I step closer to the cliff, peering down to see it’s fucking high. If one should ever fall, he probably wouldn’t recover.

I hear footsteps behind me, but make no move to face the person as he finally speaks. “Kierian.”

“What’s your real name?”

He chuckles, joining me on the edge, but instead of answering, he asks, “Why did you call me here?”

Removing my sunglasses, I search for words but fail, because I’ve never felt like this in my entire fucked-up life.

A woman changed everything, and it shouldn’t have happened to the likes of me. It has never been written in any textbook that men like me can love, but then why are they denied such emotions? They say they can form attachments.

But I can call her everything but.

Whenever she doesn’t give up after yet another fight, my longing is even greater. Hatred unlike anything assaults me to the point of me barely holding on, to ignore the guns in my house and not shoot myself on the spot.

For all the emotions she makes me feel, I’m not supposed to love, yet what can explain this obsession?

She is a walking reminder that a person can hold on for dear life, even if she has nothing left to live for.

But I will bring nothing good to her.

“I’m going to kill an innocent soul tonight.” My mind immediately protests; it screams at those words, the unfamiliar emotion of regret.

I can’t function with this anymore; whenever she cries in pain, I want to soothe it and then inflict even more pain. This fucked-up dual thinking only confuses me, and a psychopath who loses control is one step closer to dying.

I have to save her, because she deserves to be happy.

Sociopath freezes next to me, and nods. “Who is she?”

“It doesn’t matter. I thought you should know our deal is no longer valid.” If there is one person I respect in this world, it is Sociopath. The man helped me survive all those years ago, teaching me a torture method that allowed me to stay sane through all the nightmares.

The only authority in my life, like a fucking older brother I never had.

Too bad, he shouldn’t have trusted me either.

Since there is nothing left to say, I walk back to my car, when his voice stops me. “This need will never go away. But if you cannot control it and see straight, remember my promise to you.” With this, he goes straight to his car without turning back even once.

A killer without control is a dangerous person. There is a mission and there is killing for sport. The minute you cross the line, Kierian, I will kill you.

No matter where you are.

He didn’t have to worry about that.

That’s exactly what I want anyway.

Ella

I hear the security code being dialed then the door bursts open, and I quickly rush to it, hoping to see Kierian. When I woke up, he was nowhere in sight, and considering how I lost my shit last night, God only knows what he’s going through.

I pushed him too hard when he discovered the truth about his past, and as a result, he lashed out with his torture on that man. But maybe it was a necessary evil, although it sounds now as if I’m justifying him.

No matter that what he does is wrong, it doesn’t change the variables in our equation. I love him, plain and simple, and he loves me too. He just doesn’t know what to do with it. But this knowledge brings no peace, since it doesn’t solve the problem. He will never change, and I don’t think I can accept his little hobby.

Blinded by the sun, I shield my eyes from the light and adjust my blurry vision. The man standing in front of me is not Kierian.

It’s Preston!

My brows furrow as my jaw drops. How is he here? No one has access to Kierian’s house!

“Preston? What are you doing here?” I come closer to him, but slip on the floor and fall on my knees, a gasp of pain escaping me. “Please help me!” He was always with me on cases, and all along, he got all the stuff right. He probably figured this out on his own too and then trailed after Kierian.

After all, he is a computer wizard. How hard would it be for him to hack the security system?

I expect his immediate help, but instead, he cocks his head, seemingly mesmerized by the vision I provide for him. “Ella,” he says with wonder while moving his gaze to my bruises and licking his lips, “you are magnificent.” To my horror, he trails his finger down my cheek, and I can almost taste my repulsion as I try to evade his touch.

“No,” I whisper, refusing to believe what my eyes clearly show me. A tear slides down the side of my nose, while realization threatens to turn me insane. “No, Preston.”

His face falls as he caresses my cheek. “Shh, Ella. Don’t cry. I don’t want to hurt you.”

What is it about me that attracts serial killers? It’s as if they have a contest among each other for who will manage to kill me first, but everyone fails, because they find my suffering more amusing.

“Don’t touch me.” I slap his hand away and he frowns, anger flashing in his eyes, but he keeps smiling when he reaches for another touch. I scoot farther away, my back hitting the wall painfully as he crawls after me, wrapping his hand around my ankle and tugging on it. I kick my foot to get away and it connects with his nose, halting his movements.

He grunts, blood slipping through his fingers, and he kneels and sits back on his heels while I breathe heavily, ready to fight.

I might be helpless and doomed for death, but I’ll be damned if I go down without a fight.

“You are sick.”

He shakes his head, one blond curl lying on his forehead messily as he exhales heavily. “You’re mad. You shouldn’t be mad at me for lying. I couldn’t tell you until I was sure.” His jabbering makes no sense to me, so I stay silent while he continues, taking a tissue out of his backpack and wiping the sweat away from his upper lip. His hands tremble as he adjusts his glasses on his nose. “What if you judged me? But when I figured out your past and Kierian’s… it was like an epiphany. You’d never turn your back on me.” He slides his palm to my thigh, gripping it painfully, and I cry out as he digs right into the fresh cut Kierian left behind. Only, Preston brings nothing but pain. “Beautiful,” he whispers.

Hysterical laughter echoes through the room, and it takes me a moment to understand it’s coming from me as I hold my stomach, tremors shooting through me while the hilarity and desperation of my situation finally register in my mind.

No one is going to save me, so the responsibility falls solely on my shoulders. Out of the two evils, Preston is the greater one, because I cannot predict his next move. So I have to keep talking with him and not agitate him, just hold him off till Kierian comes.

Kierian will never allow anyone to hurt me, because he considers me his. I know that with deep, set-in-stone certainty. People can call it Stockholm Syndrome or stupidity, but for me it’s love. A love he has no clue about, because he simply never lived with it.

Inhaling deeply, I throw aside the victim and leave only the criminal psychologist who studies her unsub.

Preston bites his lip, opening his mouth and closing it as though he’s searching for words, and I can see how he nervously glances at the clock over his shoulder while his hands can’t help but reach for me again.

No control, shyness, creating me as this big ideal, a person who never had understanding. Demanding for me to listen to him and not comprehending that my no means no.

Connecting all the other pieces about him, the profile is formed in my head. “It was the book.”

He whimpers, crawling closer, and I do my best not to show my revulsion as he nods eagerly. “Yes! I knew you’d remember.” He snatches his backpack that’s next to him, grinning at me like a fool while shaking the book in front of my face. “The minute you told me that the book will make you understand the suspect, I knew you got me.”

Since Kierian wanted nothing to do with this case, I mostly spent my days discussing the book with Preston, who was always eager for interesting conversation.

Yeah, and we all read it. Noah likes Hector, which fits him, always the protector. And Preston is into Paris, God knows why.

Paris was the most cowardly of them all, when he left his brother to deal with the problem.

“Our research was foreplay for you,” I conclude, and even though I want to block it all out, I can’t. “Who was she, Preston?” He whimpers again, palming his face while casting his gaze down. “Preston, look at me.” He raises his eyes immediately. “Who was she?”

“Alana,” he says, sitting on the floor. He locks his knees close to his chest and rests his cheek on one of them. “She was so beautiful.”

Lowering my voice to a steady and soothing one so he’ll stay in the trance, I continue to probe deeper. “You loved her.”

He nods eagerly. “More than anyone.”

“What happened to her?” She was Helena in his mind, which means either he had to kidnap her or she belonged to someone else.

In the next second, he proves my theory right; he shifts as if in a trance and tells me his story, which makes me sicker with each word.

Next to him, Kierian doesn’t seem so bad, and how fucked up is that?

“My father fell in love with her, and they started dating. She didn’t want it, but she knew he’d hurt me if I spoke up about our relationship. She always protected me.” A relationship that existed only in his head. One gesture of kindness can evoke this kind of reaction with his insanity. “She suffered, cried all the time, and he screamed a lot.” He tightened his hold on his knees, zooming into space. Reliving all the events from the past. “Then my brother came back from college. And I decided to strike,” he murmurs, and I dread his next words. “Dad beat her up all the time, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I took the knife and aimed it at him, but I only managed to surprise him as he knocked it out of my hands.”

I don’t have to listen to know how this ends.

Or who suffered in the end.

He exhales heavily. “Father would have done something to me, but my brother saved me. Came between us and Dad killed him.” He finishes in a whisper, “Right in front of my eyes.”

Oh my God.

But I can’t lose my focus now, so I ask, “What happened to Alana?”

His face transforms into a mask of indifference and disgust, if that’s possible. Harshness laces his voice. “She blamed me for the entire thing. Goes to visit him every month and claims he is the love of her life.”

“And since then, have you loved anyone else?” Just how many people has he killed? All women would be surrogates for Alana, who he never had and could never save.

“Besides you? Five more girls. I saved them,” he says with a crazy look in his freaking eyes.

I’m in a house in the middle of nowhere with a serial killer whose MO are girls my age in a relationship with someone else.

How long can I stall him before it’s enough?

“You know about Kierian?”

He shrugs. “Not at first, but yes. He became careless with you. And it’s not hard to track him down if you have my resources. I only joined the FBI for fun. I never gave up the old ways. But when he started a relationship with you, I knew it was a sign to act fast. But you understand why he had to kidnap you first, right?” He pinches my chin, raising it higher, and although I wish to pull away, I can’t, because he might be in a violent state. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to save you.”

Two different men grew up in similar circumstances where their father essentially destroyed their lives. But where one learned from others to direct his anger and psychopathic tendencies for the so-called greater good, the other killed people in his misguided attempt to save them, but in truth, he relived the final moments of his brother’s life all over again.

And each time, he wants the girl to be grateful for what he does, because then he thinks he will find peace for indirectly causing his brother’s death.

Looking at all this now, does it make it so impossible to love Kierian? How many more lives could have been destroyed if he didn’t kill those men? Granted, most kids don’t grow up with such tendencies, but a lot have unhealed wounds that affect their entire lives.

Can I be with him and accept all this, knowing he will never stop?

I don’t have much time to dwell on it as the door bursts open and Kierian walks in. Immediately, Preston lifts me up off the floor and settles behind me, pressing my back to his front. He places a knife to my throat, and Kierian freezes in place, awaiting Preston’s words.

Closing my eyes for a second, I bask in the emotion of relief as my monster comes after me.

And he will fix it.

“We need to kill her, Kierian. Only the stronger one can take the prize and honor.” Preston’s words chill me to the bone as he continues. “She deserves it for what she put you through!” he screams in my ear, and I understand then, that’s another fantasy he wants to play out.

He and his big brother punish Alana for betraying them. His ultimate fantasy that he probably didn’t have the chance to experience through all those years.

This nightmare will never end!

Psychopath

My heart is racing in my chest as I assess the image in front of me.

Preston holds a knife to Ella’s neck, and she winces in pain from his pressure on her shoulders.

Fisting my hands, all I want is to grab the fucker and kill him on the spot, but he knows his job. He holds the steel right next to her artery, and the minute I make a move toward him, one cut and she will be gone.

My beautiful prey I intended to set free once and for all won’t die at the hands of Preston.

I never thought the overpowering fear I’d felt in my childhood would ever come back. Nothing scared me, because a person can be scared only when he can lose something.

But in this second, fear unlike anything I’ve known before enters me and penetrates every part of me, ordering me to come up with an idea to save her.

Oddly enough, fear is absent from her features. Only relief is flashing brightly right at me, as if she knows I will save her.

Like she waited for me to arrive.

Despite the hell I’ve put her through, she still trusts me. And in this moment, I can admit the pressure in my chest has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with love.

Emotions I can never speak of or enjoy, but it’s there.

Unfortunately, it changes nothing for us or this story.

It will end today.

I just have to alter my plan.

“Of course we will kill her. What was the point of bringing her here, right?”

Preston frowns, throwing me an accusing stare. “But you were ready to attack me.”

Fuck. He would notice that, considering he grew up with a monster.

This is a surreal experience to say the least.

The last thing I ever wanted to do is hurt a kid who suffered through his childhood. But he threatened what is mine, and no one harms what belongs to me.

Ella

Opening my heart to love certainly filled my life with vivid emotions as Chloe claimed.

Now I’ll have to pay dearly for choosing my love over killing Kierian when I had the chance.

“Then how?” Preston’s knife slips as he loosens his grip on me to lean forward, not wanting to miss Kierian’s words.

“What’s the fun in it? Let’s start the hunt.”

I close my eyes, willing the tears to stay inside them and not concentrate on how my heart painfully pangs against my ribcage at his statement.

I thought he’d save me, but apparently my stupidity has to be seen to be believed. There is no good in him.

And I’m so desperately in love with him despite everything that I still search for it in him.

Live and learn.

“The winner takes it all?” Anticipation laces Preston’s voice, and for a second, I notice fury crossing Kierian’s face, but it’s so quickly gone I think I’ve imagined it.

“Right. Everyone has a chance.”

Preston throws me to the side, and I stumble a little, barely keeping my balance. Kierian is at my side at once, grabbing me by the shoulder and steadying me.

“Listen to me very carefully, Ella,” he whispers in my ear, his breath fanning my cheek while he inhales my smell as if memorizing it. “Run as far away as you can. If you want to live, run.” His voice is harsh and devoid of any emotion, which contradicts his silver eyes that flash with possessiveness and determination unlike anything I’ve seen in him.

Even in this moment, where he feeds me to the wolves, the wolves being their sadistic desires, I can’t help but feel utterly safe in his arms. Nothing is dangerous to me except him, but he betrayed me, right?

Chose his psychopathy over me. Although it’s not like he can control it. I’m just one of those women who believed he could.

My Beauty and the Beast story doesn’t end with the beast becoming a prince.

His thumb wipes away a single tear from my cheek while he pauses, and then pushes me to the door. “Preston, she has a five-minute lead, and then we can follow.”

“And do whatever we want?” he asks excitedly, while his frantic gaze sweeps over me, and I shift to the side, despising the implication it has.

“Yes.”

Kierian stands between us, blocking Preston’s view of me, and our gazes clash for the last time, as he whispers, “Go.” But for some reason, I’m frozen to the spot, hating to leave him here even though I know he’ll most likely catch me soon and kill me. But running away seems like giving him up to the darkness that’s followed him since he was a child.

But there is no solution, is there? He will always be bad, and I won’t ever accept it.

So ignoring the blinding sun and nausea, I dash outside, running and running, my feet burning from touching the rocks and grass that cut into my bruised flesh.

The wind blows into my face while tree leaves slap me, and my raspy breath is the only sound that accompanies me.

My lungs burn from the exercise, my legs getting weaker, but I will myself to go on, remembering my life is at stake and I won’t let a serial killer win. Even if only Preston enters my mind.

Why doesn’t Kierian come to it too?

It’s funny how life had no meaning for me through the years, but now I desperately try not to give up.

Since I’m not watching where I’m running, I don’t see the glass until I step on it. Screams of pain leave me at the exact moment strong hands wrap around my waist from behind, lifting me up. I shout, “No!” and struggle in the hold, kicking the person with all my might, and it takes me a second to register his hands do not feel familiar.

Before I can dwell on it, he pushes me down on my stomach and covers my back, and orders, “Stay low. Do not move.” The voice is laced with authority and harshness, but I don’t recognize the man. Who is he?

The minute the thought enters my mind, there is a loud blast, reverberating through the forest as birds fly up high, circling widely, and pieces of wood rain down around us. A surge of energy washes over me, freezing me on the spot for a moment while I think about the source of the blast.

“What is it?”

The stranger stands up, and I can finally sit up. I turn around and a gasp of shock slips from my lips.

Even though I thought I ran far away, in fact it was only a few hundred feet, and I can still see Kierian’s house, or what’s left of it, behind all the smoke that surrounds the destroyed building. Fire creeps along the grass, and flames consume what’s left of the house as acrid black smoke fills the forest with its disgusting smell.

What the hell happened?

I cough into my hand and the stranger removes his jacket, throwing it over my shoulders while dialing on his phone. “Nine-one-one? There’s been an emergency…” He proceeds to give the address while I numbly study the wreckage, and only once the shock disappears do the memories of my captivity come back.

“You need to leave. They are coming after me,” I croak through my dry throat, but the glance he gives me makes uneasiness settle in the pit of my stomach.

This man could easily be mistaken for the angel of death with his black hair, tanned skin, amber eyes, and the aura of danger surrounding him.

“They stayed inside, Ella. Kierian saved you.” He pauses, then he mutters, “He knew I’d come after him and save you.”

I’m smart, Ella. I can predict everything.

Could he have predicted Preston’s insanity? That’s why he insisted on me running away—he chose love in the end.

He chose me, but by doing that, he sacrificed himself?

“No!” I scream, darting to the building, but the man locks his arms around me once again, stilling any movement I might have made. “Kierian.” My whisper is barely audible, but he hears it nevertheless.

“Dead, Ella. Your nightmare is over.”

Oh, no.

My nightmare has just begun.

How will I be able to live with it?

Sobbing uncontrollably, I sink to my knees and weep into my hands at everything that could have been and everything that won’t ever be. Love and hatred entwined when it came to Kierian, but to think he is no longer with me?

It kills everything inside me.

The sound of sirens echo and the stranger pats me on the back. “The help is here. Good luck, Ella.” With one last glance, he leaves me alone, and I don’t even bother to ask his name, because it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

In a few minutes, paramedics are at my side, wrapping me in tight blankets while tending to my wounds and asking me millions of questions to which I mostly nod.

Firefighters do their best to stop the flames while police shake their heads in disbelief but make notes anyway.

They put me in the ambulance but quickly administer sedatives when I thrash around the minute they want to strap me down.

In seconds, everything goes blank, and for the first time in my life, I welcome the oblivion with open arms.

Maybe all the wounds in my soul will stop hurting and bleeding like they do now.