My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 156

Chapter 156

+15 Banus

Chapter 156

Raphael

38–

The woods smelled like pine needles and damp earth. It was the smell that usually made men feel alive, but I felt nothing.

I never felt much of anything lately.

There was no excitement left. There was nothing new to buy and no one left to fight. I had everything I wanted, so I wanted nothing at all.

There was no thrill in the hunt anymore. There was nothing left for me to chase, except for one thing. One girl. She was the only thing that wouldn’t let me catch her.

She was a mess, and for some reason, she was the only thing that made me feel like the blood in my veins wasn’t made of ice.

I leaned against a thick oak tree and took a slow pull from my beer. The glass was cold against my palm. A few feet away, a twig snapped. I didn’t even turn my head. I just listened to the sound of panicked breathing coming from behind a wall of bushes.

All around me in the dark, I could hear the sounds of the Hunt. The distant crack of a rifle. The high-pitched laugh of Julian as he chased someone through the creek. The wet thud of a blade hitting something soft. My friends, the men who owned the banks, the men who bought the politicians were having the time of their lives. They were red- faced and sweating, screaming like kids on a playground.

I took another sip of my beer. I was bored.

“I can hear your heart, you know,” I said flatly, “It’s beating so fast. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It sounds like a drum. Do you think that’s going to help you?”

The heavy breathing in the bushes stopped.

I pushed off the tree and let the heavy machete in my right hand drag along the ground. The metal blade scraped against rocks and roots, making a slow, screeching sound.

I knew what that sound did to a man’s brain. It was like a countdown.

I walked toward the bushes. I didn’t run. Why would I run? The man hiding there was a piece of trash. We had pulled him out of a dark basement in the city where he kept things that didn’t belong to him. He was a monster

who hurt children.

In my world, monsters got hunted by bigger monsters.

“Come out, little rat,” I called out. I tipped my beer bottle toward the moon. “The woods are big, but you’re small. You’re so very small.”

A man scrambled out from the leaves, his face covered in dirt and tears. He was shaking so hard he could barely stand. He looked at the machete, then at the beer in my hand, then at my face. He saw that I wasn’t even angry. That was the part that made him scream.

“Please!” he blubbered, falling to his knees. “I have money! I can pay you!”

I laughed. It was a short, dry sound. “You have nothing I could ever want… except for your life, maybe.”

1/2

Chapter 158

+15 Banus

He tried to turn but his legs had been injured, he fell to the ground hard. And still he tried to crawl away. He was slow. I stepped forward and brought my boot down on the small of his back, pinning him to the dirt. He grunted, his face smashing into the mud.

I finished my beer and tossed the empty bottle into the dark. It shattered against a rock.

“You like to hurt things that can’t fight back, don’t you?” I asked. I flipped the machete in my hand, feeling the balance of the weight, “You like them little and weak. Now it’s your turn to be the little one. Now you’re the one who can’t move.”

I didn’t feel a rush of blood. I didn’t feel a thrill. I just felt a job that needed to be done. I raised the machete high. The moonlight caught the edge of the blade, making it glow like a silver tooth.

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