Page 104 of I Will Break You
And during the next graduation run, we enacted the first stage of our plan.
Fan questions:
The book club was a great success. The other inmates were touched by the outpouring of love. They thank you for the books, gifts, and snacks. There were lively discussions, plenty of wonderful food, and much lifted spirits. I enclose photos. We’ve inspired many inmates from the general population to start their own book clubs. With your permission, I would like to donate the books we’ve read to spread the joy. Next week, we would like to read George Orwell’sAnimal Farm.
Please don’t be hard on the warden. My visitation rights were revoked when I lashed out at a guard who touched my intimate piercings without my consent. It was a knee-jerk reaction, and I wasn’t yet accustomed to the daily indignities that come with being an inmate. I would give my soul for the opportunity to receive visits, but the rules are the rules.
Love,
Xero
FIFTY-FOUR
AMETHYST
No. I can’t let this happen. Not in the dirt. Not on the grave where I buried Jake’s corpse. Not with Xero still furious at me for a litany of sins.
Xero promised me a room. A bed. A kitchenette. We were supposed to eat red velvet cake and sip Armagnac. He was going to take me slowly, kiss each inch of my skin until my toes curled.
He wasn’t supposed to fuck me on top of his own grave.
I throw back my head, managing only to hit Xero’s cheekbone. With a snarl, he pushes my face into the earth. Soil invades my nostrils, slips through my lips, and rolls onto my tongue. I want to jerk free, but I can’t break out from under his weight.
“Xero,” I scream, the sound muffled. “I can’t breathe.”
The rest of his body pins mine to the ground. I rock from side to side, trying to throw him off, but that only lodges that impossibly thick erection between my clothed ass cheeks.
Heaven help me. I can’t take that kind of girth.
Gripping my hair, he jerks my head to the side, finally allowing me to breathe. The leather of his hood brushes against my cheek as I gasp for air.
“Don’t do this,” I say. “Not here.”
“You swore to devote yourself to me until the end of days,” he snarls, rolling his hips into mine. “But the moment I wasannounced dead, you performed for an audience on social media. I thought you’d visit the next morning. Even the day after. Then you disappeared across town and forgot my name.”
“What difference does it make?” I scream. “You’re not even dead.”
“Oh, but I am, my little ghost?—”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap.
“What do you prefer? Clout chaser? Runaway bride? Mercenary little murderer?”
“Don’t act like you didn’t also use me,” I snarl.
He laughs, the sound so maniacal that my heart skips several beats. The thick shaft pushing into my ass jerks with the force of his bitter mirth.
Sweat breaks out across my brow. Is this the laugh he made when the police caught him tearing out his stepmother’s heart? Will he even leave me intact? Shivering, I freeze beneath his larger body, realizing the foolishness of inciting a madman.
Because there’s no doubt about it.
Xero Greaves is insane.
“Used you?” he says, his voice a low snarl. “Before I replied to your letter, you were a sleepy little dormouse so subdued by prescription drugs that you didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”
I don’t reply because he’s right. It takes a moment like this, where my blood runs hot and cold, to realize that I was overmedicated.
“Now that I’m officially dead, it’s only fitting that I fuck you on my grave.”