Page 50 of How to Kill Your Rival

Eliza

As if. Plus Maggie and Fraser are here.

James

My bed then?

Eliza

Not tonight.

James

That’s not a never. I’ll get a whole night in your bed one of these days.

Eliza

Goodnight, James.

James

Goodnight, Sweetheart.

I put the phone down.

I look at the takeout containers. At Maggie and Fraser, asleep on my sofa. At Gaston’s paw sticking up in the air.

And for a moment, I have everything I need.

16

JAMES

Watching Eliza with a mark is like watching an artist at work.

She doesn’t just work efficiently; she flows. She imbues every word and every movement with perfected ease.

She’s cable-tied the man to his chair, and she’s moving around him with measured steps, taunting him with her freedom. There are moments of intensity where she leans in close and drags her knife to the chorus of his screams, and others where she just calmly watches. The quiet periods make the man yell louder than being stuck with the blade. It’s like he can’t cope with her sweet, soft smile and would rather she just kill him.

Which only makes her prolong his suffering.

Dragging my eyes away from her is impossible. I’m not supposed to be here. She doesn’t know about the AirTag I slipped into her kitbag one day at the Hamilton estate, or that that’s how I show up so often when she’s working. Not that I always let her know that I’m there. I try to avoid checking it unless I really, really need to see her, and today is one of the days I just can’t help myself.

She crouches in front of him and drags her knife dreadfully slowly up his exposed thigh. Despite myself, a bolt of jealousy hits me. I’d take a stabbing, too, if it meant getting her undivided attention like that.

I can’t hear what she’s saying to him from my space at the back of the warehouse, and I inch a little closer, curious about what she’s whispering while she splits his cock in two right down the middle. Screams fill the air until, at long last, he sags in his chair.

I don’t know what he did, but it must have been especially heinous for Eliza to treat him like that.

Eliza stands, wiping down her knife with a cloth and then her antibacterial wipes.

I almost shit my pants when her eyes flick directly to me.

‘I know you’re there, James.’

‘I thought I was being sneaky.’

‘You thought wrong. Come on out then,’ she says.