Page 93 of Wicked Little Secret

I’ve emerged at the same time, appearing in the skeletal mask, holding up the large knife from the kitchen. As Nyssa knees him a second time, her gaze lifts to spot me coming toward them, and she screams.

She vaults over the wide bed to put space between us.

But she has the wrong idea—she’s not who I’m after.

Mr. Wicker staggers, groaning with a hand to his gut. “You little bitch,” he spits. “What did you do?”

Nyssa’s eyes widen as she peers beyond his shoulder and finally realizes what’s about to happen.

I tap Jackson Wicker on the shoulder and wait for him to turn around. Before he can even properly react, the blade comes down and stabs him in the chest.

Right in the heart.

His meaty hands fumble at the knife handle sticking out of him, his mouth opening and closing in sweaty, blanching shock.

Then he collapses backward onto the bed and his eyes go blank.

He’s dead.

Nyssa hasn’t moved an inch, except for the shake her body gives at the mysterious intruder.

Me.

I rip off the skeleton mask, aware how I must look. Questionable sanity—or lack thereof altogether—has begun to feel alarmingly normal.

“Hello, Miss Oliver,” I say in my authoritative tone. “Care to tell me what the fuck you’re doing?”

19

NYSSA

BITTERSUITE - BILLIE EILISH

Theron isdead silent as we meticulously stage Jackson Wicker’s murder scene. We scrub the bedroom for all potential evidence leading back to us and then set up everything perfectly for when the police show up.

He’s not found until the next morning, having bled out on his bed, stripped naked, lying right next to his personal laptop with the heart-shaped Valentine card directing authorities to check the files saved on the device. His thousands of files of sickening child content are easily discoverable once they do.

The news spreads like wildfire within minutes.

Theron and I are lying in bed at my apartment as we parse through the many stories pouring in from the media. He’s still angry with me on some level, his tone clipped, though that didn’t keep him from pulling me close lying in bed.

“It looks like it’s gone as we hoped,” he says, scrolling through the articles on his phone.

I’m seated beside him, my legs folded under me, as I browse on my laptop. “It seems the major headline is thefact that he was a pedophile. Which is exactly what it should be. If Valentine were still around, Mr. Wicker would deserve to be his victim.”

Theron raises a brow at me. “If he was?”

“Twenty years later,” I clarify. “Whoever Valentine was… if he’s still alive…”

“That brings us to a topic of discussion we’ll have to go over. Just why you’re seeking to imitate the Valentine Killer in the first place.”

“I never intended for Mr. Wicker to wind up dead. That was sort of… you.”

“For good reason. That still doesn’t explain why you were imitating Valentine.”

I shrug. “I have my reasons.”

“Which are?”