Like a miniature sun in the middle of the bar’s solar system, they drew the men around them into their orbit. They pretended not to notice, but they knew. He could see it in their smug laughter, and their self-satisfied smirks.
Whores and vicious bitches. Every last one of them. Laughing at the men around them, laughing at him.
Too tight, revealing clothing pressed their flesh and presented it for display. Their faces were painted to betray men into thinking they were prettier than they were. Deceitful, calculating liars, all of them. The dark one drew his eye the most. Her mouth was painted glossy and pink. She pouted and preened, tossed her hair, and flashed her eyes at every man here. An open invitation.
Her gaze passed over him and moved on, as if she had assessed him and found him lacking. As if she thought she was too good for him.
She would pay for that, just like the last one. Her screams had been beautiful to hear. The warm gush of her blood over his hands had been the ultimate high, and he craved another fix, but he had to go slowly. He’d already made the news. They were calling him a serial killer, but he was so much more than that. He was the equalizer, the balancing force. A hint of glee had wriggled into his chest and lodged there when he’d seen his work televised. It’s me, he had whispered at the screen. Here I am. Catch me if you can. But he couldn’t abandon caution. Others like him had been caught by giving in to the thrill of the chase and the conquest.
“Evening.” The bartender cleared away his used glass as he replaced his beer. “Nice to see you again.”
The bartender remembering him was not good, but it was a different bartender from the one who had protected the first dead bitch, so he forced a smile. “Yeah. This is my local.”
“Good to know.” The bartender lingered a moment, his eyes on the group of women. Leaning his palms on the bar, he shook his head. “I’ve never seen them in here before.”
“No?” He would need to find a new hunting ground, which was a pity. He had the routes around this pub all mapped out, the darker alleys, the shortcuts, even the abandoned row of houses he used to perform his cleansings. Of course, he moved the bodies once he’d purified them. Meticulous attention to detail kept him safe from sharp-eyed coppers and their DNA testing.
The bartender sneered. “That lot is trouble waiting to happen.”
Yes, they were, but then nobody knew how much trouble but him. He was the center of the storm, the spinner of trouble, the controller of destinies, the sword of justice.
“Somebody should deal with them,” the bartender said.
Shock held him immobile for a moment. It could be a trap. Had his arrogance tripped him up like so many before him?
The bartender’s dark eyes met his, and for a moment there was a distinctive red flash across his irises. “But not here,” he murmured. “You have been seen here once before.”
His mouth dried, and he guzzled his beer before he dared speak again. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re right.” The bartender laughed. “You don’t know what I mean.” He winked. “And I’ve never seen you here.”
The brunette stood and yanked her tiny dress over her thick thighs. Before he had slit the first one’s throat, he had used her body for what she had begged him for, begged all the men here. But only he was man enough to do what she truly craved.
She passed by him on her way to the loo, close enough for him to catch a waft of her cloying, sickly perfume.
The thrill of the chase beat like a war drum inside him.
From across the bar, the bartender gave him a tiny, secretive smile.
Somewhere in Africa.
Fucking sniveling cowards, they surrounded him, hemmed him in, tried to clip his wings. They called themselves his ministers, but they were nothing more than oxpeckers feeding off his living carcass.
“Mr. President.” His minister of defense mopped his shiny bald head with a paisley handkerchief. No, not oxpeckers, more like vultures. That handkerchief was Hermès and paid for by the chances he took, the liberties he normalized for them. All around them and outside this room, people lost the struggle for survival in squalor and this coward spent enough to feed three families for a year on a rag to mop his flop sweat. “This will be seen as an act of aggression.”
“Yes.” He held the vulture’s gaze. Let them see his resolve, let them see he was like Shaka Zulu of old—relentless, determined, powerful.
The minister for internal affairs slammed his fist on the table. “This is madness.”
Madness? He’d never been saner in his life. An entire continent peopled by bottom feeders and weak, corrupt bureaucrats, and his for the taking. Where others saw misery, he saw only opportunity.
“Mr. President.” His new secretary leaned over and refilled his water glass. So quietly, he barely heard it, the woman whispered, “Slowly now.”
She had arrived a week ago, with an impressive resume, and his staff had hired her immediately. Beautiful enough to be distracting with her liquid dark eyes and her glowing, smooth skin, he had dreamed of her every night since she had taken up her position. She was like this continent: alluring, compelling, and a mystery waiting for him to unravel. Yet she focused him and grounded him. Had it been only a week?
“I understand your concerns,” he found himself saying to his ministers. “And I share them, but let me present the facts to you. The historical facts written by our people and not by the colonizers who sought to rape this land for all they could.”
He hadn’t noticed his secretary dropping the dossier in front of him, but he opened it now, “Next order of business…” The information poured into his brain and out his mouth.
The atmosphere in the conference room eased, and a few nervously relieved glances slid around the table. He took a mental note of each look. They would bend to his will. He would make sure of it.
His secretary looked at him over their heads and smiled. Soon, she mouthed.
A private basement in Vienna.
And there she was, so beautiful she took her breath away. Up until this moment, she’d been half afraid the sketch was a myth. So simple, yet so evocatively powerful that the reclining woman called out to her. Here was femininity in its glory and mastery. The powerful sensuality of those few simply dashed lines made by a master across canvas had called to her across all these years, and now it was finally hers.
She wanted to stroke the long, graceful sweep of her thigh to her hip, caress the gentle slope of her shoulder to her long, willowy arm.
Her assistant hovered nearby, his breathing an annoyance in her ear. “Lovely, isn’t it?”
No thanks to him. He had reported back failure after failure in his efforts to obtain this Degas. Finally, she had stepped in and used the money earned from the four animals she had married and buried to get what she desired.
“And she’s all yours.” The tone in her assistant’s voice had her turning and looking at him. Gone was the vaguely patronizing assumption of obsequiousness. He looked different as well, standing taller, his shoulders back, his stare as he held hers bold.
