KELSI

His Trophy Wife, The Apex Predator

Eydie Pfefferle

My husband of three years, Arthur Vanderbilt, came home smelling of his mistress's perfume and threw divorce papers on our marble kitchen island. He demanded I sign away all rights to our assets for a five-million-dollar "severance," calling me a leech his family picked up from the suburbs to solve a temporary PR crisis. When I refused and demanded my four percent equity in the Vanderbilt Group, he and his mistress, Serena, launched a vicious smear campaign. They planted false stories on Wall Street forums, accusing me of laundering money for an Eastern European crime syndicate. They tried to force my hand with a check for five hundred million, which I tore up and threw in his face. To them, I was just a trophy wife they could easily discard. They had no idea that the "leech" they so despised was the anonymous investor who had secretly bailed out their entire company three years ago, saving them from bankruptcy. Their final move was to hire an actress to publicly accuse me of fraud in the lobby of the most powerful law firm in Manhattan. They didn't realize I was there to retain the firm's most ruthless lawyer. After security threw them out, I looked my replacement in the eye and made her a promise. "Prepare for an FBI probe into perjury and corporate defamation."

Modern Revenge

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"Breathe. Just breathe, Teryn..."

I chanted that in my mind. Not more than a few feet away, I could hear the wet sucking sounds as the monster drank from the girl beside me. His neck was nestled against her throat, pale white hands holding her still.

The girl whimpered but she did not scream. She knew better than that. She knew it would do her no good.

We had been in the cabin of the boat crammed together like sardines in a can, for what I thought was three days. I was only aware of the passing of time because of the light coming through the cabin's only window that was above my right shoulder.

During moments like these, I would stare out that window and pretend that I was an entire galaxy away. The sounds of the waves lapping against the side of the boat took me away and the cries of the gulls over head always distracted me. But there was nothing to see now; just the empty blackness, cut only by a thin stream of silver moonlight. The waves made no sound. There were no seagulls flying above us. Just the sound of the girl dying next to me.

One feeble hand brushed against my feet and before I could stop myself I turned to look at her. I regretted it immediately. The look in her eyes broke me.

I knew that she had blond hair but I couldn't see it in the darkness. The feeble light only illuminated her dark brown eyes and there was so much fear in them. All I could see of our captor was his pale hands gripping her shoulders and his short, dark hair.

There had been sixteen of us; sixteen girls originally at the bottom of this boat three days ago but the monster, the vampire had an insatiable hunger. He came down here in the middle of the night to feed. The first girl he fed from, Tiffany I believe her name was, with bright red curls, screamed so loudly when he bit her that it woke the rest of us up. He crushed her ribs with a single blow to her chest, collapsing her lungs instantly and she couldn't scream anymore. He drank Lily, the brunette sitting next to Tiffany, dry when he was done with the red head. None of the girls ever screamed again after that. After Tiffany and Lily, he came for another brunette name Clarice and then a raven haired girl name Opal.

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