Chapter 29: Rebel Girl

"What did you say to me?" Her voice trembled. It sounded like someone else speaking entirely.

They stood alone in an empty apartment that smelled like her sweet perfume. The crescent moonlight cast pale rectangles on the hardwood floor, which in turn illuminated the most bewitchingly beautiful woman he had ever seen. Alcide wished with all his heart that Olivia Carson was as pretty inside as she was outside.

"The way he looks at you, Oliva. Any moron who's seen you together can see it."

She laughed, looking at her own shoes. He couldn't tell if the feeling was mutual, but he could see Olivia was distraught by considering her boss's feelings. As she should, vampires destroy and consume everything and everyone they claim to love. If she caved to Eric's desires, he would suck the life and happiness right out of her, because that's what vampires did. Maybe this was the key to getting her to switch sides. Ironically, with a simple enough truth.

"Have you reconsidered my offer?" She changed topics, crossing her arms.

"Have you reconsidered mine?"

The woman stepped closer, looking up at him with her big brown eyes, and tiny nose. Her angelic reddish amber hair cascaded down her shoulders perfectly. An apartment this big, and she had to stand right there. But he knew that it was all a ruse, a lie, a crafted illusion. That's what she did; she let him believe he could have her, just as she tried to make him believe she could somehow bring Debbie back. It was one hell of a magic trick.

But he had seen the truth; Alcide had caught a glimpse of the real Olivia Carson when he told her Eric loved her. There was a different twinkle in her eyes, a quiver in her lips, a lack of air in her lungs. A small flash of something raw and vulnerable, of something real that she hid behind this brave mask she always wore like armour. It was unfortunate that a treasure guarded so tightly, and someone so vile had somehow gotten ahold of the key.

They stood in the moonlight for what it seemed like forever. She looked at him so intensely it was like she could read his thoughts. But it was of no use, he could see through the veil of the facade now. For whatever reason, his father's voice spoke in his head, an old saying he always heard growing up: the devil doesn't come wearing a red cape and pointy horns. She comes as everything you ever wished for.

Olivia broke the silence with a faint laugh. Then she simply walked away towards the exit, pausing briefly on the doorway and looking right at him over her shoulder.

"Out of all the devils I've met, trust me, I'm the nicest one."

Then she disappeared in the hallway, leaving him alone in the apartment with his own confusion. He didn't know what prompted her to say that, it was almost as if she could read his mind.

Alcide had to face a hard reality. If he wanted to win this fight, he would have to bring the whole damn war.

Olivia woke up yet again with the phone ringing. Her hands slid through the expensive Egyptian thread sheets trying to find the goddamn source of the buzzing and piping at this ungodly hour. It was a number she did not recognize.

"Hello?" Her morning voice was always raspy.

"Tell Northman I'm in."

She recognized Lafayette Reynolds' twang from anywhere. Olivia shot out of bed. "Okay, great. I'll pop by in a couple of hours and we'll get it started. Text me your address."

It was another blazing hot summer day in Louisiana and Olivia was never so thankful for her AC. It was 9 AM and already 83 degrees outside. And no heatwave warning either, this was considered perfectly normal for late July. This place was truly hell on earth. After a quick cold shower, she brushed her hair and teeth, put on makeup and her favourite summer dress and headed out the door. First stop, Office Depot.

Actually, the first stop was Dunkin' Donuts for coffee and breakfast, then Office Depot. Unfortunately driving a Corvette through the drive-thru was not as glamorous as you think it would be. The car was so low she had to awkwardly shimmy half her body out the window to reach the little order window.

Once Liv parked at Office Depot, she noticed a familiar car pulling in the parking lot. It was a Camry. Granted, there are thousands of dusty Camrys in Louisiana, but this one parked at the edge of the lot and the driver did not get out. She recognized his short grey buzzcut and friendly face instantly. Olivia walked all the way to his car, already pissed off. The window rolled down once she got close. Inside was none other than Bobby Burnham, Eric's day man, sipping a Dunkin's coffee. He had been following her since she left her house.

Bobby beat her to the punch. "Could you pick Starbuck's next time? Dunkin's coffee tastes like piss."

First of all, as a proud New Jerseyan, rude. Secondly, next time implied he would do this again tomorrow. "Why are you following me?"

"Boss's orders."

"Why?"

"Cause you've been a bad girl, Olivia. If you meet Alcide Hervaux again, I'm on strict orders to shoot you."

"Shoot me? With what, a glitter gun? He can't hurt me-"

"You sure you wanna test that theory?"

She scoffed, shaking her head. That motherfucker put a tail on me? She could feel sweat starting to form around her bra's underwire. It was far too hot out in this dark paved parking lot for her to stand here and argue. "Fine. But I happen to like Dunkin's coffee, so get used to it."

Olivia stormed off across the parking lot and went inside Office Depot. Even the chill of the store's air conditioning did not cool off the anger boiling in her bloodstream. She pushed that small cart with hatred only a wronged woman would have. Shoot on sight? Who the fuck does Eric think he is?! She was going to put that vampire prick through a world of fucking pain. She tossed a pack of expensive bubble wrap lined small envelopes into the cart.

Alcide was so fucking full of shit. The way he looks at you - yeah he was clearly so obsessed with looking at her, he was now paying people to do it during the fucking day. Olivia was sent here to be Eric's punishment? Maybe she should start acting like it! He loves you. Pfft! Monsters aren't capable of love.

Next, she purchased a small laser printer, a large package of stickers for the shipping labels and a box of large nitrile gloves. All paid in cash. This should be more than sufficient to start shipping V orders as soon as they go live. It was adding insult to injury that if this stunt worked, because it would make Eric and the Queen beyond rich. Neither of them fucking deserved it.

She drove to Lafayette's house next. He lived on a dirt road just outside Bon Temps. She parked her car next to a cream-colored Mercedes convertible on the long dirt driveway, and Bobby Burnham parked right behind her, but she ignored him. Olivia carried her Office Depot bags up to the small porch.

Lafayette's house was quaint and charming. A small wooden bungalow painted red with white trim, surrounded by large Louisiana trees and small untrimmed bushes. There were small garden decorations scattered everywhere. From wood chimes to little metal butterflies, porcelain frogs and solar string lights in the shape of little pineapples strung up around the covered porch. It was modest but very warm and homey. Liv knocked on the door, and Lafayette answered right away. He was wearing a fuzzy pink robe and matching slippers.

The man looked at his driveway suspiciously. "Who dat?" He nodded to the Camry parked behind her Corvette.

"Ugh, don't worry about him. He's my…" Babysitter? Snipper? "Security detail."

Dis bitch fancy as fuck. "A'ight. Come in."

Inside was an explosion of eclectic bohemian decor. His living room walls were painted a deep eggplant purple, the floor was covered in 70's brown shag carpet. All the furniture was mismatched animal print (a zebra ottoman was the centrepiece of the room), and on top of the fireplace mantle was a shrine filled with different figures, from black Jesus to Dolly Parton worship candles, all surrounded with red Christmas lights. The rest of the room was full of clutter, from trinkets and books to half-folded clothes, to a collection of artsy bongs. Which explained the smell of the room, a mix of incense and weed.

Eric did mention Lafayette was better than second-hand furniture, and she understood what he meant by it now. She also realized that if he knew, it meant he had been here before. The mystery continues.

"You want somethin' to drink?" He asked.

"I'm okay, thanks. I need your laptop and we can start."

Lafayette pointed to a Dell laptop on the coffee table, and both of them sat on the big brown couch by the living room window. She opened his laptop and turned it to him so he could input his password. Reading his mind, she discovered it was Rihanna4ever. Next, she downloaded firewall upgrades and several cloaking softwares to make his computer more secure, and his IP untraceable. Lafayette had already downloaded Tor, the dark web browser, and so she just logged into her Silk Road account. She made Lafayette memorize the login and password information and forbid him to write it down or save it anywhere. Now it was time to set up their e-commerce store.

Lafayette took some artistic photos of the blood vials he kept in a small cooler, along with photos of a single drop on a white napkin to showcase its true color. He knew the exact vampire each vial was from, and the nuances between each. Younger vampires had had wilder effects, older vampires gave a more subtle high but it lasted for much longer. Some vampires made you healthier, more confident and better looking, other vampires made you stronger, faster, livelier and reduced your need to sleep. Some vampire's also had bad blood which made people lose their temper, become violent, and hallucinate terrible nightmares. For the common buyer out there, purchasing V was like playing Russian roulette. But Lafayette was a responsible and knowledgeable dealer, and he refused to sell the bad stuff.

She learned about Lafayette's harvesting practices. All vampires were willingly and were paid by the pint. That's how Eric recruited his dealers - kidnap and drain vampires against their will and you'd be receiving a visit from the angel of death. Strike a deal and harvest it consensually, and you'd live another day.

Then, he started on the curation process of the drug. Lafayette mixed a specific weighted amount of crushed Aspirin into each vial to increase the sample's longevity, along with a little bit of powdered Doxazosin. According to him, mixing a low dosage of Alpha-blockers into the drug impeded blood bonds between the human and vampire. It would be bad for business to have vampires bonded to hundreds of strangers, close and far. Too much connection would drive any vampire, especially a young one, into madness. Lafayette taught her a lot about the trade. He had grown quite close to his suppliers and really appreciated V for what it was. Lafayette was a stoner, but for blood (and other things).

"Do the blockers work if you drink it from the source?" She asked. Being able to pop a pill and end a blood bond would have been very useful.

Unfortunately, he shook his head. "Nah, I tried. I think there's something on their skin that prevents it. Trust me, I had some of Blondie's blood once and I was trippin' for fuckin' weeks."

"Did you..." She didn't know if it would be too personal to ask, but it's not like she could google it. "Have dreams?"

"Oh hell yeah. Awful, nasty, fantastic dirty dreams. You?"

Olivia nodded apprehensively.

"Trust me, if I could bottle and sell his blood, we would put El Chapo to fuckin' shame. Nothing I've gots in this cooler even gets close to what runs in that cold mo'fucker's veins."

He then got into writing descriptions for the effects of each vampire blood he offered. He had a refined entrepreneurial taste that was something you either had or didn't. It wasn't a teachable skill, and it was certainly wasted on being a drug dealer in the backwoods of Louisiana. He put far more effort than most people who were selling on Silk Road. Most product pictures were shitty flash photography on a dirty bathroom floor or on a messy unmade bed, with subpar and lame product descriptions like "the stickiest of ickies". But Lafayette wrote beautifully, giving a detailed description of each high, along with an enticing synopsis of each vampire the blood was from (while keeping their identity secret, of course).

After a couple of hours of photos, file transfers, and editing product descriptions, their store was finally online. Olivia walked him through the process of reading orders, and the meticulous operation of packaging without leaving prints and minimizing DNA. She set up the printer so it would create the shipping labels without a return address. Using a printer also eliminated the need for his handwriting, which could be used as an identifier for any police investigation.

With the nitrile gloves on, Lafayette sprayed all the vials with alcohol to get rid of any fingerprints, and he put away the envelopes and shipping labels in a shoebox and hid it under the couch.

"What now?" He asked.

"We wait. Call me when we get our first order. Always message the burner phone when you are leaving for drop-offs and when you come back. Call this number if you encounter any troubles with law enforcement. Not me, not Eric, this number, got it?"

He took the little business card and made a sour face when he read it. "Portia Bellefleur is ma lawyer?"

"You know her?"

"Un-fuckin'-fortunately. I went to high school with her older brother, and I work with their cuz'. Uptight hooker that one tho."

She laughed. Olivia liked Lafayette, a lot. Next, she drove to the pawnshop where the owner managed to sell her cursed earrings as a wedding anniversary gift to some rich couple down in Dallas. Bag secured, she headed to Fangtasia to check on the contractor who was a vampire in his own right and pay him. The amount of money she handed him and his crew was fucking absurd, but at least they had made considerable progress. She almost had a fit when she saw the paint being delivered. Olivia had specifically requested zero-VOC to mitigate the smell - there would be no fucking time to aerate the place, they were set to open 36 hours after the last construction guy left. There was simply no room for error here, and she didn't care if she made enemies with every single construction worker and supplier in the fucking south, this goddamn strip club was going to get built out of fucking spite if it had to!

Other than the paint incident, everything was on track to be done by Friday morning. Olivia then spent the rest of the day organizing and scheduling the following:

The cleaning crew would come in Friday evening to get rid of all the construction dust and the years of booze spills and grime. Saturday morning the movers would bring in the booths, furniture and new appliances. In the afternoon an events technician would install the sound system and lights and finally, they would get a truckload of liquor by 4 PM which was when bar staff was set to arrive to put everything into its final place. At 7 PM they would do a dry run of the place with the bartenders, dancers, servers and bouncers and the Grand Opening would be at 9 PM sharp.

It was like choreographing a very complicated ballet, and it had definitely shaved at least 2 years of her lifespan.

At sunset, she managed to drive home. It was disconcerting to be followed by a car all day. After she noticed it this morning, Bobby following her like a fucking shadow was all she could pay attention to while driving. At every glance in her rearview mirror, there he was. Once she was home, she peeked through her living room curtains, watching him read the newspaper in his car parked directly out front. At least he didn't bother hiding it anymore. She wondered who would watch her during the night.

Pushing that dreadful thought into the background, she decided today called for an extra-long pole dancing session. Her body, soul and mind needed it. It had been almost a week since she hadn't practiced and in pole terms that was a lifetime. Her muscles had definitely atrophied - her body felt like a million pounds heavy at every movement off the floor. She turned up the music and then got lost in it. Her body flowed and twirled around the pole and all over the floor. Olivia used every inch of her body to make pretty shapes and enchanting lines. Slow, controlled and smooth transitions between each trick. Spinning fast, then slow. Upright, then upside down, then back down on the floor. She stretched her body, claiming it with her own confidence. When you are that strong, and that sure of yourself, there is simply not a thing in the world you cannot do.

Except when there is. An hour in, and her body was so sweaty no amount of grip lotion on her hands helped. Without warning in the middle of the tricky transition from cradle to butterfly, her grip slipped down the pole making her body drop on the floor like a heavy sack of potatoes. Luckily she tucked her neck into her chest just in time, but she landed hard on her back instead. Immediately she was stabbed with deep pain in the back of her ribs. Olivia tried to breathe for several moments, and it took a concerning number of tries for her to get air back in her lungs.

She whimpered on the floor, slowly turning on her stomach so she could use her arms to push herself up. "Ah, fuck me this hurts-"

The pain felt like a knitting needle driving itself between her spine and ribs, right below her right scapula. Or maybe it was the world's worst muscle knot. Making more effort than it should, she wobbled to the kitchen to get a bag of frozen peas for her back.

It was now completely dark outside - she had completely lost track of time. Checking her Blackberry and burner phone there were three missed calls, all from Lafayette. Sandwiching a bag of frozen corn (she was out of peas) with her back against the fridge door, she called him back.

"What's wrong?" Liv asked the second he picked up.

"Log into mo'fuckin' Silk Road, right now." He demanded, anxiously.

"Why?"

"Bitch just fuckin' do it!"

"Okay! Okay!"

Olivia put her phone into speaker mode and tossed the corn bag back in the freezer. She chugged water from a bottle as she typed her password in her laptop in her home office. This chair never felt so uncomfortable.

"You in?"

"Give me a second! If it's so damn urgent you could just tell me what it is," she opened her Tor browser and logged into the website and clicked into the store manager page. Her eyes wandered skimmed down the order tab trying to understand what it was that she was seeing. She blinked multiple times.

"Am I trippin' or is yous seeing what I'm seeing?"

Olivia stood up immediately, heart pounding on her chest. "I'm… Gonna have to call you back."

She didn't even shower, she just pulled a black t-shirt dress over her pole shorts and sports bra, slipped her sandals on, popped some Advil, grabbed her laptop and walked out, ignoring the pain the best she could. The Camry was gone, and in its place was a black Escalade, blocking the front of the house like a giant dark horse. She passed through her front gate and knocked on the tinted windows, which rolled down the second after. On the driver's seat was Chow, staring at her with his perfect almond eyes. He was certainly nicer to look at than Bobby.

"Take me to Eric."

He nodded and unlocked the back passenger door. She thought it was strange she didn't ride in the front, but Eric had probably given him orders to keep arms distance from her or he would chop his dick off or something. Chow was a much more cautious driver than Eric, but it also made their short drive insufferably longer. The second he pulled into the dark secluded driveway, Olivia shot out of the car before Chow even threw the Escalade in park.

She walked up the front steps as fast as she could and entered the house without knocking. It was technically her house, and Eric clearly had no issues invading her privacy whatsoever. Music was playing loudly in the living room, and it was a song she recognized anywhere - it was Mozart's Lacrimosa. But no one was to be seen anywhere, which turned the peaceful melody creepy and eerie. Then a weirdly foul smell hit her. It was vaguely reminiscent of her father's Jiggs dinner, which was boiled corned beef with cabbage and potatoes. However, the way her stomach was folding itself in her belly told her that whatever was cooking, it was not fit for human consumption.

Her overwhelming sense of immediacy had vanished. She stood awkwardly and painfully in the foyer, hugging her laptop and slowly building up the courage to move her feet towards the kitchen. She was trying really hard not to ask herself why vampires would be cooking - or what. Maybe she was about to find out why vampires kept kitchens in their homes after all, other than for obvious resale value.

Olivia ventured deeper into the house of horrors, and gently pushed the Kitchen's swing door at the end of the hallway. The smell was the same, but what she saw made her stomach convulse and she had to actively swallow vomit back down.

Pam and Eric stood around the stove, holding down a man's arm inside a large chilli pot of boiling water. Their victim was a shirtless man, and his other arm hung beside his body with no skin left from the elbow down. The skin had rendered away, the flesh was exposed and cooked to a brownish-grey color, with streaks of clear and swollen fat. His hand was melting off, bones were completely exposed and most of his fingers had fallen off bit by bit, all over the kitchen floor, leaving the tendons hanging off his wrist like strings.

His head hung down low, and his body was barely standing. Pamela had to hold him up by the waist as he faded in and out of consciousness. Eric pulled his right arm out of the pot, took a good look at the boils, deemed it was not cooked enough and dunk it back in. The man let out a guttural wail, but he was so exhausted there was nothing left in him to scream. She now realized the loud music playing was to muffle the sounds of his torture. His chest was also dotted in burn marks, from the splash of pushing his forearm in and out of the pot repeatedly. The rest of his body was glistening wet, in either sweat or steam, she couldn't tell.

The kitchen windows and the ceramic backsplash were fogged up, with condensation dripping down like stripes. They had been doing this for a while.

"Eric!" Olivia managed to speak, louder than her ribs approved. It was only then the two vampires made note of her.

Pam rolled her eyes and paid no attention to her, Eric gave her a sly smile. "Well, good evening."

"I need to speak to you."

Eric nodded to Pam, who groaned and let the man go. His body immediately plopped down to the floor, leaning against the oven door, looking at what was left of his disfigured hands. She could see his face clearly now, blood tears running down his face, fangs out and mouth gaping in silent horror. He sobbed quietly, almost ashamed to be crying at all. At least he was a vampire, so he wouldn't die from his wounds. She wondered if his hands would grow back to normal.

"What's up?" Eric asked, tossing the kitchen towel from his shoulder to the kitchen island's countertop.

She wasn't sure if she should be sharing this kind of information in the presence of… Guests. "In… Private."

He told Pam something to her in a language she didn't know, something Scandinavian. Pamela nodded with an evil grin on her face.

Eric washed his hands with soap in the kitchen sink and dried them off with a clean fluffy towel that hung on a cabinet door. He then gently escorted Olivia out of her kitchen and into a study off the dining room. She followed him as quickly as she could, trying to keep her spine completely still and not wobble at all. The Advil had not taken effect yet, and the needle pressed against her back with anger.

The room he took her to was dark and elegant, filled with books all the way up to the ceiling on custom-made shelves, and expensive-looking furniture. The black leather Chesterfield couch in the middle of the room was probably more expensive than all the furniture in her house put together. Eric was wearing his usual: black jeans and a tight black t-shirt. He looked perfectly normal and completely unphased, but Olivia could still taste puke in her mouth.

"I don't like bringing work home, but with construction happening at all hours in Fangtasia I've had to… Adapt."

"You don't have to explain."

"What's wrong with you?" He asked, closing the study's door.

The smell wasn't as strong here, and the classical music blaring out front was almost completely muffled. These walls were thicker than they looked.

"Nothing's wrong with me. But we may have a problem with the website."

She put the computer down on his large wooden desk. For a vampire, he had an awful amount of wood around. Liv quickly typed in her password, and before she could ask for the Wi-Fi password, she noticed an Ethernet cord attached to Eric's own sleek Macbook Air laying on his desk. It would be fair to give him the benefit of the doubt for having a cord wired in for safety and speed purposes, and not because he was too old to figure out Wi-Fi. Olivia quickly disconnected the cord and plugged it into her own laptop. When she refreshed the page, she gasped a little. Her back stabbed itself in the process.

Eric's eyes watched her shiver, but he said nothing.

"Look," Olivia turned the screen at him.

His brows frowned and he clenched his jaw as his eyes scanned the orders page. Eric looked somehow hotter every time she saw him. Have you ever seen someone so hot it physically hurts? If her life wasn't on the line and her back wasn't broken, she didn't know if she could suppress the urge of pushing everything off his desk and-

"I have no idea what I'm looking at," he finally spoke, looking up from the computer and at her.

"These," she scrolled down the list. "Are all the orders Lafayette has to fill. And right down here, is the amount of money we've made in the past two hours since we've gone live."

She refreshed the page again and the number changed again. The two of them stood a little closer. Eric looked at her again, with that same familiar but unknown look he showed her sometimes. "99 thousand and 960 dollars?"

Olivia nodded, trying to contain her smile. She was proud, but not out of the woods just yet.

"That's… 833 dollars a minute."

"Now go the other way."

"1.2 million dollars a day."

Olivia nodded again. "But Lafayette doesn't have that kind of inventory."

"I'll reallocate the suppliers of the newly retired dealers to Lafayette. Tell him to expect visitors. Olivia, how the hell are you going to launder all this money? That's over 8 million dollars a week."

"I don't know yet. But I've made it this far, haven't I?"

Eric closed the laptop gently and showered her with a devious smile. "You surprise me, Olivia. That's a rare quality in a breather."

Suddenly the whole room was very hot. She was equal parts disgusted, in pain and aroused. Her body was at war with itself, but she wasn't going to waste the moment. "Well, you can appreciate my qualities by calling off your tail."

His smile did not vanish. "You don't get to make demands, my darling."

My darling made her twitch again. Ow- "I'm serious, Eric. Reward system, remember?"

"I could watch you personally if you wish."

She rolled her eyes, leaned slightly to pick up her laptop and almost let out a groan when her back spasmed. Clearly, she didn't hold back enough because he noticed it.

"Seriously, what the hell happened to you?"

"I told you I'm fine! I'm just…" In horrible, terrible, excruciating pain. "Nauseous."

He closed his face, looking disgusted. "You aren't pregnant with Alcide's-"

"No!" She yelled angrily.

First of all, Olivia vowed to never, ever have children and pass on the telepathic gene. This generational curse was going to end finally with her. Secondly, it deeply and truly irritated her whenever someone asked that question. It's like women weren't allowed to feel ever ill without the accusation of being knocked up. Plus that's not even how pregnancies worked, she slept with Alcide 3 nights ago and pregnancy sickness didn't happen until like, two months in? Something like that? She never bothered to remember, as she would never have anything to do with pregnancy or motherhood. Three cheers for her IUD.

Eric raised his brows at her defensiveness, so she had to switch to offence. "Just- I don't know how often one has to boil people alive to not be able to smell it anymore, but I'm not sick and twisted like you."

"Ah, yes, him. Area 5 has grown quite a bit in the past years, so when I need to send a message, it needs to be… A little louder."

Her stomach did another flip when she thought of the man's hands disintegrating in the pot like stew. Olivia knew she shouldn't ask, but for whatever reason, she did anyway. "What message?"

Eric's smile turned to a grin. "I'll tell you if we play a little game," oh no. With movement faster than her eyes could follow, he took her laptop away from her and held it up high, above his head. "Grab it back and I'll tell you."

She frowned, every muscle in her body tensing which almost made her wince again. How could such a small knot be so fucking painful?! "I don't want to play a game, just give it back to me, I have a shitload of work to-"

"Come on, it's right here," he waved the laptop lightly. "Just raise your arm and get it."

The two stared at each other in the stupidest game of chicken. She didn't know how he knew, but Eric was absolutely correct in his theory that her body absolutely did not allow her to raise her arm the mere two feet above her head. Her scapula was tied down tight.

"You know what? It's none of my business anyway."

"Oh, no?" He looked rather pleased for getting under her skin. He took far too much pleasure in taunting her. "I'll raise the stakes then. Take it and I'll call off your tail."

For fuck's sakes. She closed her eyes trying to breathe past the pain. Her laptop was right there. But she knew she couldn't. "Eric, I have way too much bullshit on my plate right to play your dumb games! I have to find a way to launder a year's worth of money in a week or else I will literally die a horrible, painful-"

Eric let down her computer on the desk beside them but before she could reach for it, his arms grabbed her whole body. His surrender had been a trap. Her feet were suddenly far off the floor, and he squeezed her so tight against his hard chest she couldn't move. For a split second, she thought his fangs were going to sink on her neck, and her eyes closed shut, waiting for the worse. In an unexpected jerk, he pulled his forearms up against her back, pushing her rib back in place with a loud popping crack.

Her body let out an involuntary and rather embarrassing moan. The pain had immediately melted away, washing her in sweet, merciful relief. Without wanting anything in return, other than maybe mocking her, he released her from the hell cage she fell into. Eric gently lowered her feet back down to the floor and she finally took a full, deep inhale without pain. How he knew exactly where the source of her pain was and how to fix it. It was nothing short of impressive. And perhaps a little scary.

"It won't be horrible, and it won't be painful. I would never hurt you, Olivia, and not because I'm contractually obliged to do so."

You may as well have smacked Olivia right in the face, his words hit her with the same force. Eric's hands caressed her hair gently, letting the strands run between his fingers. The wave of relief and nirvana continued. From the kitchen, Pam yelled for Eric in the same ugly unknown language they often spoke with. The vampire sighed at the door, rolling his eyes.

"Goddammit, Pamela. I told her not to start on his feet until I returned," he muttered, sticking his hand in his pocket.

Before she did something stupid, her nausea came back at once. She took it as her cue. "I have to go."

Actively avoiding his icy blue eyes, Olivia grabbed her laptop and dashed out of the office at her regular speed. When her hand touched the large brass front doorknob, she heard his voice echo from behind her.

"He raped someone if it makes you feel any better."

She looked at the dashing Viking standing at the opposite end of the Foyer, hand resting on the swing door and ready to resume his torturing activities. He looked at her how he always did, while she looked back at him with the same cold and stoic look she always gave whenever she was frozen in fear.

What he told her should have made her feel better. It partially worked - she now found it difficult to feel bad for the vampire rapist being slowly cooked to death on the other side of that door. But there was another ripple in the water, one that washed her soul like a devastating tsunami. Eric was still the same tempting, deceptive creature she had always known. The same monster who tore men apart, who liked painting the night red; the barbarian who knew how to skillfully inflict pain like his professional duty. The same demon who wanted to have her, drink her, own her.

The twenty feet between them was not enough. She was a time bomb quickly approaching zero. Her heartbeat was ringing in her ears, was absolutely terrified in a new way she never felt before. Olivia tugged on the door with unexplainable hurry and stepped out, running down the steps and across the garden towards the Escalade waiting for her. Over the majestic violin strings of the music, she could hear faint screams coming from the house.

The real reason that she ran out so fast wasn't her sudden lack of empathy. It wasn't her own perturbed feelings towards Eric - despite him being the same narcissistic, manipulative, lying asshole; that he was a monster.

What really fucking scared her to her core was the possibility that maybe,

He wasn't.

A.N:

HELLO everybody!

An important correction: As I reading the past couple of chapters for reference I noticed FFnet censored the name of a popular cryptocurrency brand(?) and it may have made things a little confusing. Out of ALL things to censor I really wasn't expecting THAT to be it, but okay. So now it's fixed, I just have to write Bit coin with a space in the middle.

Thank you so much for all your *extremely* helpful input on the direction of the story. You guys are truly incredible, thank you for your trust in my creative vision. Now, for the chapter commentary:

IS IT HAPPENING?! Is Olivia, perhaps, maybe, possibly seeing Eric for who he really is, and not who he pretends to be?! IS IT?!

This was another super fun chapter to write, even though it was kind of disgusting (sorry, I watched Hemlock Grove all week and got inspired). Also, I'm not an accountant, I can't drive stick or do 98% of what Olivia does in this story, but I actually *am* a pole dancer (fun fact), and her little accident was written from real-life personal experience (0/10 would not recommend). Except no sexy vampire set my rib back, it was just my physio :(

ANYWHO I'm rambling, til next chapter

Love u