Guillotine E-Book

Delilah S. Dawson

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 251

Beschreibung

The Menu meets Ready or Not in this dark tale of opulent luxury and shocking violence from the New York Times bestselling author of Bloom. Thrift fashionista Dez Lane doesn't want to date Patrick Ruskin; she just wants to meet his mother, the editor-in-chief of Nouveau magazine. When he invites her to his family's big Easter reunion at their ancestral home, she's certain she can put up with his arrogance and fend off his advances long enough to ask Marie Caulfield-Ruskin for an internship someone with her pedigree could never nab through the regular submission route. When they arrive at the enormous island mansion, Dez is floored—she's never witnessed how the 1% lives before in all their ridiculous, unnecessary luxury. But once all the family members are on the island and the ferry has departed, things take a dark turn. For decades, the Ruskins have made their servants sign contracts that are basically indentured servitude, and with nothing to lose, the servants have decided their only route to freedom is to get rid of the Ruskins for good…

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Praise for Guillotine

Also by Delilah S. Dawson

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise for Guillotine:

“Fast, fun, and frightening, Glass Onion meets Saw in this savagely on-point thriller.” T. Kingfisher

“Reading Delilah S. Dawson’s Guillotine is like watching poetry smash a bottle against someone’s face. Fast, stylish, very bloody, and unapologetically brutal, this is a straight razor of a novel that slices to the core of class resentment with power and grace. This novel will leave a slug trail of blood in your brain, and you’ll be happy it did.” Gabino Iglesias

“Deliciously brutal and stiletto sharp. Guillotine is the eat-the-rich horror you’ve been waiting for.” Rory Power

“Gruesome and laced with a delightful sense of humor, Delilah S. Dawson’s Guillotine showcases the author’s brilliant nerve and clever wit. A compelling and intelligently written shocker.” Eric LaRocca

“Guillotine is at once a vicious reckoning of wealth and power, and a feminist fever dream led by a protagonist you can’t help but salivate over. I would follow Dez Lane straight into Hell.” Katrina Monroe

“Murderously cathartic—or perhaps cathartically murderous?—Guillotine continues to prove that Delilah S. Dawson is a must-read must when it comes to sinister, twisted tales. Elegantly constructed, ticks along with thrilling tension, won’t you come take a trip to the island? (Also serves as an interesting companion piece to Bloom, but you didn’t hear it from me.)” Chuck Wendig

“Sometimes the line dividing the Haves from the Have-Nots is as thin as a razorblade or blunt as a sledgehammer, but in Delilah S. Dawson’s cruelly capable hands, rest assured, it’s gonna hurt no matter what. Her taut novella testifies revenge is a dish best served flambéed, or sous vide, or pounded into an absolute pulp. In Guillotine, you gleefully get all three… and then some.” Clay McLeod Chapman

“A pitch-dark, sharp-toothed romp with a rich vein of gallows humour, Guillotine is a gory, uncomfortable treat for anyone who’s ever wanted to eat the rich. Blending the glittering world of The Menu with the disturbing underclass of Us, Delilah S. Dawson’s latest novel is another triumph.” Ally Wilkes

“Guillotine is a tight thrill ride of horror you can’t put down.” V. Castro

Also by Delilah S. Dawson

It Will Only Hurt for a Moment

Bloom

The Violence

THE BLUD SERIES

Wicked as They Come

Wicked as She Wants

Wicked After Midnight

Wicked Ever After

THE HIT SERIES

Hit

Strike

Servants of the Storm

Midnight at the Houdini

Mine

Camp Scare

Star Wars: Phasma

Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire

Star Wars Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade

Disney Mirrorverse: Pure of Heart

The Minecraft Mob Squad Series

THE SHADOW SERIES,WRITTEN AS LILA BOWEN

Wake of Vultures

Conspiracy of Ravens

Malice of Crows

Treason of Hawks

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Guillotine

Print edition ISBN: 9781803368337

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803368344

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: September 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2024 © D. S. Dawson. All rights reserved.

D. S. Dawson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

If you’ve ever cleaned someone else’s dirty toilet…

If you’ve ever been cussed out while working a cash register…

If you’ve ever gotten covered in restaurant trash juice…

This one’s for you.

You deserve a lot more than a book.

CONTENT WARNING

In this book, bad people get what they deserve, and they deserve what they get. There are many unsettling deaths, which I found quite cathartic to write. My publisher has identified the following trigger warnings:

Gore

Graphic depictions of injury

Sexual assault (off-page)

Incest (off-page)

Forced pregnancy (off-page)

Rape (off-page)

Abortion (off-page)

While I have never been in a position similar to Dez, I lived through childhood sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, and rape. When I write about these topics, I do so through the lens of a survivor’s rage. I have also been locked in a toy chest, and I will hold that grudge until I die.

If you’re still in, I sincerely hope you enjoy my little murder book. I very much enjoyed writing it.

1

There is a certain languor in some kinds of work, a pleasant and soporific monotony that quiets the mind and allows it to tune in to an age-old frequency, the timeless buzz of worker bees happily humming. For Dez Lane, 21, this pleasure settles over her whenever she’s sewing things by hand. Today, she’s replacing beads on a flapper dress, bent over her worktable and wearing granny glasses on a long chain, her fingers sore from the intricate and repetitive motions. This dress is part of her senior thesis in Fashion Design, and it has to be perfect.

As she carefully pins down each bead in the fragile old fabric, her mind roams like a bird’s wings skimming over a field and alights on a freshman year lecture with Dr. Bartz. That was the day she learned about the history of beads—that the oldest beads on record have been around for over a hundred thousand years. Cavemen drilled holes in snail shells and fished bits of mother-of-pearl out of the sea. Egyptians turned crushed quartz into faience tubes and draped glittering nets over their dead. Ancient eyes alit on flashing beetle wings and stones, and something deep in their hearts told them, “I want that.”

And that’s what Dez loves about fashion—when she sees some beautiful object, and it clicks into place like the safety harness on a roller coaster, and she thinks, I want that, I need that, I must use that to make something transcendent. She craves this feeling enough to build her future around it, to stake all her hopes on it. She’s going to be a designer with her own house one day, making dresses for the red carpet and pinning swaths of cloth around the surgically enhanced hips of the world’s most glamorous women. She is ambitious, and she will do anything to make her dreams come true. Her mother is counting on her, and once she leaves SCAD, there will be no more scholarships, no more free student housing. One more month, and her entire life is sink or swim.

And that is why this dress must be perfect.

Her phone buzzes, and she uncurls her hunched spine and stretches, moving her massive braid of curly apricot-colored hair to her other shoulder. As soon as she unlocks her phone, her heart jerks in her chest.

This is the email she’s been waiting for—

The one that could change everything.

Dear Desirée Lane, the email begins. We regret to inform you—

And that’s when Dez stops reading.

There is no coming back from We regret to inform you.

If there was any good news at all, any hope, they would’ve led with that.

At least they responded. Most of the jobs she’s applied for don’t even bother with that basic kindness. She wakes up her laptop and pulls up her spreadsheet, clicking the Nope box and filing that dead end away where she can’t see it. The list of possibilities is dwindling. It’s apparently impossible to land an interview at a major fashion house if you’re a broke nobody in Savannah, Georgia, with zero connections.

If only this was the eighties, back when any girl with a side pony could land a job at Sassy magazine by writing her resume on a pair of acid-washed jeans.

Her mother warned her, told her to get a degree in something real that would pay the bills and enjoy fashion on her own time, but Dez would rather die than be a CPA and live a life bounded by numbers. She loves color, excess, feathers, beads, sequins. It’s all her mom’s fault. She used to bring home the forgotten things she found cleaning hotel rooms at the Cosmopolitan in Vegas, and the first time tiny Dez got her hands on a pint-sized pageant gown, it was Game Over for a khaki kind of life.

The happy hum of hand-sewing has turned into the glaring pain of silence, and Dez stares at her spreadsheet. She’s too smart to feel this lost, too resourceful to have so few options. If she can’t get a job in high fashion in the traditional way, she has to move sideways. That’s what you do when you grew up poor: You think outside the box.

There’s one avenue she hasn’t fully explored because…

Well, because she’s too proud. And because she knows it won’t be fun.

But it’s been sitting in the back of her mind, waiting like a wad of grimy twenties under the mattress for a moment of true desperation.

With a determined exhale, she scrolls through her phone contacts until she gets to Patrick Ruskin Yucky Yucky Ick Ick Ick. There’s just one message. Although everyone at school knows him or knows of him, Dez met Patrick for the first time at a bar last week. He slid the phone from her unwilling hand and texted himself so that he’d have her number, and she was too surprised to stop him. She danced with her girlfriends until she forgot about this transgression, and the next day he sent one missive.

Let me take you out and spoil you. I’ll be good, I promise.

The fact that he texts with full grammar and punctuation is not the only thing that makes Patrick abhorrent. He’s arrogant, judgmental, sexist, and worst of all, doesn’t know how to take no for an answer, hence that last text. But there are two things about Patrick that might be handy for Dez’s situation. For one thing, he’s rich. For another thing, his mother is Marie Caulfield-Ruskin, editor-in-chief of Nouveau magazine, one of the only fashion magazines still standing—and thriving. Nouveau makes waifs into It girls, struggling writers into columnists, unknown designers into household names. Nouveau is the reigning queen of fashion, an outlier, an anomaly, a golden ziggurat lording it over a sea of once-proud magazines that have now become fly-by-night infotainment websites.

And Dez wants a piece of that pyramid, just one gold brick.

So what if Patrick grabbed her butt at that bar? And so what if he basically forced her to give him her number? So what if he caught her elbow hard enough to bruise, just so she had to stop and talk to him on the way to the bathroom?

All she has to do is fend him off long enough to get an in with his mom. She can blink her fake eyelashes at him and laugh at his jokes and dress up in her slinkiest dresses and stuff herself with crab at the nicest restaurants in the city and make him fall in love with her. Women have done worse for less return on investment. It’s the way of the world.

Aw, that’s sweet, she texts back. What did you have in mind?

She’s not surprised when he responds with, Who is this?

Dez from the bar. Long red hair, short silver dress?

She chooses the things she thinks he’s most likely to remember.

After a moment, he texts back.

Elizabeth’s, 7pm tonight. Where do I pick you up?

Dez grins. He’s so easy.

She doesn’t want him to know she’s a scholarship kid still in free student housing as a senior, so she gives him the address of her favorite Victorian downtown.

See you there, he responds, plus a winky face.

She goes to her closet and flips through her dresses. Some she made by hand, some she thrifted and altered, a few she found off the clearance rack and fixed up. It’s pathetic, how scared most shoppers are of a missing button, loose thread, or deodorant skid mark, but Dez loves the thrill of the hunt. Anyone with money can buy something perfect, but there’s a shine to stolen glamour that someone with a black credit card will never understand. There’s a magic to taking something no one else wants and making it something everyone praises.

As she gets dressed that night and does her makeup, she is well aware that she is baiting a hook, choosing just the right fly, the right feathers, the right—whatever Will was doing on Hannibal, back when he had encephalitis and went fishing a lot. Her goal is to make Patrick Ruskin fall in love with her. She can’t be seen as a fling; it has to feel real if she wants in with his family. She will do anything to avoid returning home to Las Vegas, to the couch of her mom’s cramped one-bedroom apartment, to the smog-filled air and breath-stealing desert. She did not come this far, follow her hopes across the country and get her dream degree, just to end up cleaning hotel rooms at the Cosmopolitan and watching her exhausted, overworked, under-insured mom wince every time she bends down to pick up a discarded champagne bottle in a room that costs her entire weekly salary for one night.

She chooses an emerald-green dress, halfway between sexy and classy, and lets her long, wild hair tumble to her waist in a cascade of curls it’s taken her years to master. She knows just the right accessories to set off her beauty, to bring out the seafoam in her blue-green eyes and the unexpectedly golden tones in her skin. She has never known her father, has no idea who he is or what he looks like, but she has been told all her life that she looks exotic, like a little doll, and asked what she is and where she’s from, like she’s some weird breed of dog. She finishes her outfit with her beloved pair of thrifted Jimmy Choos, which she keeps immaculate, the leather always touched up carefully, and an antique purse that she prizes more than any name brand.

When Patrick pulls up to the address she’s given him at 7:15, she steps from the shadows, smiling, welcoming.

The moment she’s in his black Tesla, his hand is on her knee, a heavy gold ring with a family crest shining on his knuckle, and she swallows down her distaste and tells herself that every relationship is, in its way, transactional. From what she’s heard of Patrick, he really only wants one thing, and she is happy to provide that thing, and thus perhaps they can trade. She has found something shiny, and she tells herself, “I want that.” Maybe it’s not Patrick Ruskin, but it’s what he represents. It’s the doors he can open. Much like a dress on the clearance rack, for the sake of her future, she’ll take what she finds—what’s within reach—and make it work.

2

On their first date, Patrick does all the talking, and Dez pretends to hang on his every word. They eat a seven-course prix fixe meal at the nicest restaurant in Savannah with wine pairings, and it would be the best night of her life if she didn’t have to put up with his embarrassing behavior. He’s rude to the waitstaff, and when he tries to play footsie with her, she jerks away and drops her fork because she’s fairly certain he’s dented her shin. At the end of the date, she tilts her face up toward him outside a building in which she dreams of living, and he rams his tongue down her throat with all the passion and elegance of a clumsy dog sticking its snout in a jar of peanut butter.

This is not a man who’s ever given a single second of consideration to another person’s pleasure. He’s never had to. He can have anything he wants. Money tends to do that.

On their second date, he takes her to a loud party in the penthouse of a fancy hotel, steering her around the many rooms of the suite with a protective arm around her waist, taking every chance to use the top of her ass as a handlebar. He brings her glass after glass of champagne, introduces her to a fleet of men who look and dress and act just like him, and their eyes roam hungrily over her body as though she’s a boat they’d like to take for an aggressive spin before buying. No one asks her about herself, her major or her past or her future. She is an object, but a beautiful one. It’s almost a relief when they forget her to argue over football.

On their third date, Patrick orders oysters, slurping the gooey gray blobs from their dinosaur shells while making intense eye contact; he doesn’t seem to understand that oysters are only an aphrodisiac to the person who eats them, and he doesn’t offer a single one to Dez. By the time they pull up to his apartment building, his stomach is making terrible noises, and he pushes her hand off his thigh. On the way up in the elevator, he stares off into space as if troubled by a noise only he can hear. Dez spends the next two hours rubbing his back and murmuring sweetly as he hurls into one of those fancy Japanese toilets that can sing a lullaby while heating your tushy. She brings him ice water, tuts over him like a nursemaid, and kindly ignores the fact that he has obviously shit his slacks. She doesn’t leave until the worst is over and he’s showered and tucked up in a bed bigger than her dorm room, sweating through his navy silk sheets.

After she kisses him gently on the forehead, he reaches for her hand.

“Tonight didn’t go as planned,” he croaks.

“Poor baby,” she says. “Let me know if you need me.”

When he texts her the next day asking for ginger ale and Saltines, she magically appears in his apartment to make toast and heat up soup and coo over what a rough night he had. He doesn’t thank her, but he does say she’d make a good nurse. The lust is back in his eyes again, so he must be feeling better. When he jams his tongue down her throat, she is certain she tastes the sea.

On their fourth date, they go on a carriage ride downtown, which isn’t as romantic as it seems unless you’re really into the smell of manure and the ramblings of an old man dressed like a pirate who is more interested in pointing out ghost sightings than in letting a couple canoodle. Dez is grateful to the pirate; she doesn’t want Patrick pawing at her in front of the tourists, with her crotch at eyeball height. At least they’re not eating spoiled seafood this time, she tells herself.

In the car on the way back to the place he thinks is her home, his firm fingers roam so far up the hem of her tight dress that his clunky ring catches on the fabric. When he yanks it free, they both hear the cloth rip.

“I’ll have my mother’s people send something over,” Patrick says in what should be an apology but isn’t. “Just text me your size later.” The hand goes right back to business, but the dress is too tight to give him much room to maneuver up her thigh while driving the narrow, cobbled streets.

“Are you going to invite me in?” he says, car idling.

Dez blushes and looks down, feigning shyness and modesty that she doesn’t actually feel. “It’s only our fifth date,” she tells him. “And my place is a mess. I wasn’t sure what to wear and had to try everything on to get it right.”

He’s disappointed, but Dez knows that if she gives him what he wants now, he’ll discard her like an old toy. He leans over to kiss her, and he tastes of beer and barbecue sliders and the certainty that even if she seems out of reach now, nothing ever eludes him for long. She returns the kiss as best she can, allows his hand to roam over her chest, but pulls away a bit as it slips inside her dress.

“I’m going away for Easter,” he tells her, sensually wiping his thumb over her upper lip like something he saw in a porno once. “My family does a big thing every year at the beach house. So I won’t be around for a week or so.”

When Dez gasps, it’s very real, but it’s not because she’s on fire to see him again. It’s because where his family goes, his mother will be.

“You have a beach house? That’s so romantic,” she breathes, chest heaving prettily. “Is it nearby?”

A car honks behind them, and Patrick looks back over his shoulder with annoyance but doesn’t move the car. “Yeah, on a private island south of Tybee. My family’s been there for generations. It’s where I grew up. We spend the summer there. Holidays, too.”

“It sounds gorgeous.” She turns toward him, giving his hand just a little more space to creep up her short dress. “I’ve never been to the beach. Can you believe that? Four years here, and it just somehow never happened. I bet I would love the ocean.”

Patrick’s nose flares like a predator scenting prey. He’s handsome—there’s no question about that, with his thick, perfectly tousled, sandy hair, and his soulful blue-gray eyes under expressive eyebrows. He’s tall enough, fit, strong, and well on his way to a future as a cinematographer, which probably means he just wants free rein to bang actresses and yell at the crew. People like him get to become whatever they want. But he’s not particularly clever, and he’s definitely not creative. If he’s ever been played before, Dez thinks, he wasn’t aware of it. He probably believes every woman he encounters is lucky to be with him—or a frigid prude if she turns down his advances.

“I mean, I haven’t used my bikini this whole time. Not even a pool.” She moves her hair back, revealing the curve of her neck and bare shoulder. His eyes twitch back and forth like a cat following the movement of prey.

“You could join me,” he finally says. “I have my own suite. But…” He pauses, and she pouts, sticking out her lower lip. “Some things are just for the family, you know? You wouldn’t be invited to some of the events. Like, Easter morning croquet is just for us. And brunch on the yacht. But whenever I’m busy, you could lay out by the pool, work on your tan. My brothers bring their wives.”

Her response is not acting; she really is ecstatic. “Oh, my God, Patrick, really? That would be like a dream come true! I would love to!” She leans in and kisses him on the cheek, one hand on his shoulder, one on his thigh. He hums to himself, satisfied, and pulls into the nearest dark alley, where he unbuckles and resettles himself, spreading his knees as far as the car will allow.

Dez flicks her long hair to the side, letting it cascade over his lap as she leans down. She decided a long time ago that she would do anything to make her dreams come true and escape her mother’s reality, and at least he finishes quickly.

3

When Patrick picks her up for the trip, Dez is dressed like a screen siren, her lips painted bright matte red, her cat-eye sunglasses down, and a scarf jauntily tied around her hair. She spent far too much time choosing what to wear, knowing that she has to make an immediate positive impact on Marie Caulfield-Ruskin. She’s wearing a vintage gingham dress she expertly rehabilitated, redesigned, and tailored to her measurements, plus wedge sandals with a wicker purse, and her suitcase is a stunning leather relic from the fifties, the sort of thing they just don’t make anymore. She looks like Barbie, if Barbie was five-foot-three and had curly strawberry blond hair.

“We could pull over first,” Patrick says after stowing her bags in the trunk and looking her up and down. He really is like a dog: generally in a good mood, assumes everyone loves him, has a one-track mind centered on his own selfish hunger that assumes he has a right to whatever he finds, becomes suddenly cruel when provoked. He inclines his head toward his favorite alley.

“I can’t meet your family after doing… that.” She playfully slaps his shoulder.

They’ve had three more dates, and they still haven’t actually had sex, but Dez knows how to keep him coming back for more. It doesn’t take much work, at least; he’s a simple man and not overendowed. As someone accustomed to unpleasant labor, she’s able to compartmentalize and uses that time to plan her outfits for the week. On their last date, he brought her a garment bag, and the dress inside was couture, a sample from Prada with one picked thread, now her prized possession. She brought it along for the trip—after making a few adjustments. Patrick is disappointing in many ways, but at least he’s a man of his word. He can tear as many of her dresses as he likes with his gaudy ring, if this is how he makes up for it.

“Then maybe you can do that after meeting my family,” he says, waggling his eyebrows with the optimism of a golden retriever.

He pulls into traffic and navigates out of downtown, and Dez settles back and watches the scenery. Once they’re out on the open road, she asks, “So tell me about your family. What should I expect?”

She has already done an internet search on every relative she could find online, but she wants him to think that she is an innocent, sexy idiot. She is curious to see who will be there, and what he’ll say about them. The Ruskins only seem to have sons, and even then, they don’t all marry, so it’s mostly men and their successful trophy wives. There was no information whatsoever on the family home they’ll be visiting, and that, too, is curious. Aren’t most families proud of their palatial estates?

“Well, Mother and Father will be there, of course,” he says, weaving in and out of traffic. “Grandfather and Grandmother live there all the time, and the uncles will be there. My oldest brother William works in finance and philanthropy, and then my brother Anthony works with Mother at the magazine, in the accounting department.”

She nods. “Does your family get along?”

He glances at her like this is an odd question. “As well as anyone can. When you’re part of this sort of dynasty, you’re taught certain rules from an early age, and you either toe the line or you get…” He pauses, searching for the word. “Not just disinherited but kicked out of the family. It happened to my brother Luke, and he basically disappeared. Haven’t seen him for two years.” He looks at her so long that she is suddenly terrified they’ll be in an accident, but then she notices that the Tesla is in self-driving mode, not that it makes her feel any safer.

“You’ll have to sign a non-disclosure agreement to enter the property,” he tells her. “I hope that won’t be a problem.”

Her teeth briefly grind as she smiles. “Of course not. That makes total sense.”

Dez hasn’t been this far out of Savannah; she wasn’t lying about never seeing the beach. The claustrophobic streets of downtown have given way to a highway she didn’t even know existed, rising up over the swamp and driving directly into the sky. She wishes he had a convertible for this part of the journey so that she could feel some true measure of joy, some moment of infinite possibility and abandon. Instead, bounded by the smooth, impersonal lines of a space-age car and breathing in recycled air mixed with his breath, she is all too aware that every part of this experience is a construct. A construct that serves her, certainly, but she wishes for a life that allowed for more authenticity. She’s never had a long-term boyfriend, never found a comfortable happiness that she could live with. She’s too focused on her work, on her dream. And too unwilling to settle for anything less than perfection. There is nothing she would rather do on a Friday night than listen to old Tori Amos records while hemming a sleeve, and most guys only find that adorable and quirky for the first few weeks. She was only in the bar where Patrick borderline assaulted her because she was hoping to net some contacts from a returning alumnus after a lecture.