Chapter 277: Sins

"Are you even sure he’ll pay you?" I forced the words out, fighting to keep my voice steady. "From what I know, he’s hardly wealthy."

The man only smirked, exposing a row of crooked yellow teeth.

"Your information is outdated, little beggar. You have no idea who this man is. But that’s all right—once you’re inside his house, you’ll understand everything soon enough."

His oily gaze drifted down my face, slow and appraising, then lower still, lingering on the hollow of my throat. A shiver ran through me so sharp I wanted to yank the cardigan tighter, though it was already stretched to its limit. The dress was short; bare legs offered nothing to hide behind. There was nowhere to retreat. Only the bone-deep cold and the sticky weight of a stranger’s filthy attention.

"Then tell me who he is," I said, feeling the tremor climb my spine. "I have nowhere left to run. At least I’d know what I’m walking into."

I kept my eyes locked on his, refusing to acknowledge how violently I was shaking. A thin, icy film of sweat coated my skin from the sheer need to put even a hand’s breadth more distance between us. Still I stayed where I was. Showing the revulsion rising in my throat felt too dangerous. There was no telling what this unbalanced creature might do next.

"Maybe I will," he answered with an obscene little grin. He closed the two steps between us and leaned over me, flooding my face with the sour stench of last night’s liquor and stale cigarettes. "But nothing comes free. Spread your legs or open your mouth—your choice."

Something inside me dropped into freefall. Disgust locked every muscle. I had never known hatred could feel this pure, this total. Not even when Damian had been forced to hurt me had I felt such bottomless horror and filth. With him, some stubborn internal mechanism had always refused to let real hatred take root; I could only burn with anger.

But this man ignited a dull, murderous rage that made my knuckles itch. I could not remember ever striking another living soul, yet the urge was there—raw and sudden. Perhaps this was how monsters were made: not by choice, but by the meaningless cruelty of others.

Inhale. Exhale.

I shut my eyes for a heartbeat, swallowing the nausea. When I opened them again, the gaze I turned on him was empty, burned clean. I looked past his shoulder rather than at him, refusing the gag reflex that clawed at my throat.

It was a strange contradiction. Hunger still gnawed at me, sharp and real, yet the mere sight of him made me ready to empty whatever little remained in my stomach. Filthy. Base. Pathetic.

He had pinned that label on me—poor thing—because something in my body was broken, as if I were damaged goods. But the true poverty, I thought, lived inside a person. A rotting emptiness where a soul should be.

"No." Each word came out clean and hard. "I don’t sell myself. Not for information. Not for money. Not to you. Not to anyone."

I braced my palms against the mattress and edged sideways along the wall until the short chain of the handcuffs snapped taut and dug into my wrists. There was nowhere left to go. I pressed myself into the metal headboard, wedged into the farthest corner I could reach—anything to put even a few more inches between myself and the nightmare leaning over me.

"You’re wrong. Everything has a price, and you are for sale. You’re just not the one doing the selling—I am. And I’ll make good money off you."

He barked a short, boastful laugh and finally straightened, no longer looming over me. One hand braced against the wall, he pushed off with a springy motion and shoved both hands into his jacket pockets. He fished out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, lit one, and drew in a deep lungful. Then he exhaled a dense, acrid cloud straight toward my face, watching the smoke curl with quiet satisfaction.

"Though if you got on your knees and put that mouth to work, this day would turn into something truly fucking perfect."

"I won’t give you the satisfaction. Something in your life should go wrong for once," I snapped, deliberately turning my face to the wall.

His mocking laugh rang out, loud and ugly.

"Ever heard the saying that biting the hand that feeds you leaves you hungry?" he drawled, the words stretched with deliberate mockery.

He paced the narrow space like a gangly, unbalanced teenager rather than a grown man.

"No," I answered, still facing the gray wall. "But I’ve heard that everyone is repaid threefold for their sins. Heard of that one?"

I kept my eyes fixed on the wall, yet tracked every shift of his body from the corner of my vision. I had chosen this angle on purpose—so I could watch him without granting him the dignity of a direct stare. Too much honor for a creature like him.

"Oh, kid." He almost sounded amused. "You’ll be surprised. In our world, the ones who break every law rarely get what’s coming to them. So rarely that if you saw the numbers, you’d cry from the sheer unfairness of it."

I turned fully toward him then, trying to pour every ounce of boiling contempt into my gaze. It came out wrong—less like a challenge and more like the look of something cornered and already hunted.

"How do you sleep at night," I asked, "knowing how many people you’ve sent to certain death? How many you’ve insulted and broken just for the pleasure of it? Don’t the nightmares ever find you?"

"I sleep fucking beautifully," he said. "Soft bed, big money stashed underneath. Sometimes not even my own bed. And some nights the prettiest she-wolves and women in the city keep me company—ready for anything at the snap of my fingers."

"They’re ready only because you pay them. Without the money, not one of them would look at you twice. You’re far too repulsive for that."