Red Dreams (The Reaper Duet #2)

26. Layla

26

LAYLA

Kaden taught me how to kill a man fifteen different ways, but he never mentioned how to stay silent while freezing to death under a dock.

My teeth chatter violently as I crouch in the frigid, murky water. The cold seeps into my bones, my muscles cramping and spasming. I clench my jaw, trying to still the involuntary shudders wracking my body, terrified that even the slightest ripple will give away my position.

Above me, footsteps thud heavily on the weathered wooden planks, sending vibrations through the rotting posts that surround me like a cage. I press myself deeper into the shadows, my back scraping against the algae-slick pilings. The brine stings my eyes and fills my nostrils with its pungent decay.

Through the narrow gaps between the boards, I catch glimpses of tight jeans and a leather jacket—clothes I’ve lent Cassie while we were stuck in a fortress.

A fortress of her doing.

One she always planned to crumble to dust.

She must have followed Kaden and me, allegedly watching his back while waiting for her men to come get her.

My lungs burn as I hold my breath, straining to hear the conversation above.

“You've done well, Cassie.” A man's tone turns appraising. “If he were alive, Morelli would be pleased. You’ve passed his final test to become the rightful heir.”

“I’m so glad I had to let them go when I already had them, then re capture them, all to prove Papa’s posthumous love,” Cassie drawls. “Can we get the rest over with and kill them now? I’d love to sleep in my own bed again instead of a rat-infested lighthouse.”

The man chuckles as if accustomed to Cassie’s prissy behavior. “Where is the Scythe hiding?”

“Not far,” Cassie replies. “He wouldn't stray too far from her. He's gone soft.”

Oh, Kaden . My heart breaks for him.

“We’ll keep our word then, Miss Morelli,” the man says, his voice now directly overhead. “Once we tie up these loose ends, we’re your lieutenants to command.”

“Wonderful,” Cassie says, applauding. “Because I’m tired of Papa’s games and have my own shit to take care of.”

Cassie's betrayal cuts deep even though I never truly trusted her. But the ease with which these men agree to her terms sets off warning bells in my head.

“Now, where exactly is the girl hiding?” the man asks, his tone dripping with false sincerity,

Planks above my head creak as she shifts her weight. “She’s currently cowering like a drowned rat.”

She knows where I am!

I hold my breath, not daring to even blink, as her movements pause. The boots pivot slowly, deliberately, as if she can sense my presence beneath her feet. A shaft of wan sunlight filters through the slats, casting the last bars of illumination across my face. I remain perfectly still.

Suddenly, Cassie drops to a crouch.

I shrink back, pressing my spine against the slimy wood, but it's too late. Her chipped, sapphire eyes lock onto mine through the narrow crack, widening with triumphant malice.

Wicked red lips curve into a smile as cruel as it is beautiful.

“Oh, hey, future stepmom,” she purrs. “Found you.”

I press myself farther into the shadows, my hand closing around the knife strapped to my thigh. Kaden's parting words echo in my mind. “If they corner you, don't hesitate. Strike fast and true. Go for the kill.”

I tighten my grip on the hilt, steeling myself. I may not survive this, but I'll be damned if I go down without a fight.

A hand plunges into the water, grasping for me. I lash out blindly with the knife, feeling it connect with flesh and bone. The man screams, recoiling.

Gunshots explode above me, splintering the wood. I flinch and cry out as shards rain down.

Cassie's voice rises above the onslaught. “I said she was under there, idiots! Don’t kill her yet!”

In the confusion, I seize my chance. Sucking in a breath, I dive under the water, knifing through the murk. I surface on the other side of the dock, gasping for air. It’s just dark enough that maybe I can float to shore without them noticing.

I take one stroke, then another, trying to be silent as I cut through the icy black water. My muscles scream in protest, cramping from the cold, but I grit my teeth and push on. The shoreline beckons, a distant haven shrouded in mist and shadow. If I can just reach it...

Shouts erupt behind me, followed by the thunder of boots on the dock.

“There! In the water!” a man bellows.

My heart leaps into my throat. I don’t dare look back, my strokes becoming frantic and graceless. The water churns around me, choked with seaweed that tangles around my limbs like grasping fingers.

A gunshot cracks the air, the bullet slicing into the water inches from my head. I yelp and dive under, the frigid brine enveloping me. I swim blind, lungs aching, praying I'm heading the right way.

A hand clamps around my ankle like a vise, dragging me backward. I thrash and kick, but more hands grasp at me, seizing my arms, my hair, the back of my vest. They haul me roughly from the water, throwing me onto the dock.

I land hard on the weathered planks, coughing and sputtering. A boot presses into the small of my back, pinning me in place. I struggle weakly, but the man above me just laughs, grinding my stomach into the splintery wood.

“Not so fast, cutie pie,” he sneers. “Miss Morelli wants a word with you before we slit your pretty throat.”

The other men laugh, the ugly sound rolling over the black water. I squeeze my eyes shut, trembling with cold and fear.

Cassie's boots appear in my line of sight. She lowers to her haunches and grabs a fistful of my hair, wrenching my head back.

“Layla, Layla,” she tsks. “You've been a very naughty girl.”

One of the men kicks me in the ribs, sending blinding pain shooting through my body. I curl in on myself as much as I can, gasping.

“Where's your attack dog now?” another taunts.

A knife kisses my throat, biting into my skin under Cassie’s watchful observation.

“Kaden will kill you,” I rasp out. “All of you.”

The men laugh, but there's an uneasy edge to it. They’ve seen the state in which he left the VIP suite.

I say to Cassie, “When he finds out what you’ve done…”

Cassie throws her head back and laughs.

“Oh, that’s precious. You think my father will keep saving you?” She pauses to smile at me, slow and vicious. “News flash, Layla—Daddy’s not the white knight you've built him up to be. He's just as broken and fucked up as I am. And when he finds your body washed up on shore? He'll do what he always does?—”

Cassie cuts herself off when one of the lieutenants uses a meaty hand to grope along my side, undoing my vest and going under my shirt.

“Just like old times with the boss, eh?” he says to Cassie, or maybe the other men. “Teaching bad little girls their place.”

The man's hand starts to wander, his touch invasive and sickeningly familiar. Bile rises in my throat as I realize what he's implying, the horrors Cassie must have endured at Morelli's hands.

I meet her gaze, seeing my own revulsion reflected back at me.

“What did you just say?” Cassie asks him, her voice a deadly whisper.

The man laughs, ugly and unaware. “Come on, Cass. We all know how Morelli liked to break in the new?—”

Cassie moves like a striking viper. One moment, she's poised with her fingers tangled in my hair, and the next, she's on the man, a blur of black leather and fury. She slams him to the dock with a force that rattles the boards.

Savage, animalistic snarls rip from her throat as she straddles his chest, pinning him.

“Don’t you EVER say that again!” she screams.

She snatches a knife from her belt and buries it in his eye with a savage twist. The man's scream cuts off with a wet gurgle as she rips the blade free, a gout of blood and sclera splattering her face.

The other men stand paralyzed, eyes wide with shock and dawning horror. They exchange uncertain glances, hands creeping toward weapons.

Cassie's chin snaps up, those ferocious eyes fixing on them. “None of you move, or I swear to God I'll renovate this dock with your fucking insides.”

They freeze, cowed by the sheer, unhinged savagery in her gaze. She refocuses on the man pinned beneath her, fingers curling into claws.

“You don't know what he did,” she hisses, spittle flying from her lips. “The things he made me...”

She leaps to her feet, and the other men shout in alarm, the last one releasing me as he scrambles for his gun. But Cassie is a hurricane of rage, unstoppable in her onslaught.

Cassie slashes the throat of one man, his blood arcing through the air in a crimson spray. Another shoots at her, but she sidesteps nimbly, hamstringing him with a vicious swipe of her blade. He crumples, howling, and she silences him with a brutal stomp to his windpipe.

Through it all, Cassie screams, a sound of pure anguish torn from the depths of her traumatized psyche. Tears streak her blood-splattered face, her eyes dark and unfocused.

This isn't the calculated violence I've come to expect from her. This is the deranged viciousness of a wounded animal, lashing out at a world that has only ever brought her pain.

Finally, she stops, chest heaving, standing amid the carnage. Her knife clatters to the dock, slick with blood. She stares at her shaking hands, then at me, her eyes wide and lost.

“Cassie,” I whisper, slowly pushing myself upright. Every inch of me throbs, my throat raw from the icy water. “Cassie, it's over.”

The night explodes with the roar of an engine. Tires screech, followed by the slam of a truck’s door. I see Ethan’s pallid face in the back seat before the interior light goes off.

Heavy footsteps pound down the dock, the boards shuddering under their force.

Kaden appears like the harbinger of death, his mask molten silver in the moonlight. In his hand, a gun smokes.

Cassie tenses, her hand twitching toward her fallen knife, but she doesn't move. Even she knows better than to stand in the way of the Scythe's wrath.

Kaden reaches me in a heartbeat, gathering me into his arms.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, his free hand skimming down my body, checking for injuries.

I shake my head, fighting back a sob. His warm touch is grounding, chasing away the god-awful hands that pawed at me.

Cassie makes a disgusted noise. We both look at her. She's glaring at us, her face a mask of blood and contempt.

“I hate that I couldn't let them hurt you,” she spits at me. “I hate that I saved your pathetic life.”

“You,” Kaden growls, the word loaded with threat.

Cassie winces as if he'd struck her but quickly covers it with a sneer. “What? No thank you for saving your most prized kitten?”

Kaden releases me with the utmost care before stalking toward her. She holds her ground, but I catch the way her throat bobs at his approach.

“You led them here,” Kaden snarls, circling her. “You set this up.”

“And I finished it,” Cassie snaps, gesturing to the bodies littering the dock.

“For us? Or for yourself?”

“Fuck you,” she hisses. “You have no idea what I've been through, what I've had to...”

She chokes on the words. Cassie's voice breaks, a strangled sound that's half sob, half snarl. She staggers back from Kaden, nearly slipping in the slick of blood pooling at her feet. Her eyes dart between the carnage she’s wrought and some distant, horrifying point in her past.

She shakes her head violently, sending droplets of blood flying from her ponytail.

“I was just a kid,” she whispers, her voice tiny and fractured. “I thought ... I thought if I was good, if I did what he wanted...”

A shudder wracks her frame, so violent it's almost a convulsion. She falls to her knees.

Tears mix with the blood on her face, cutting tracks through the grime. She looks at Kaden, really looks at him.

“I didn't want this,” she tells him, her voice cracking. “I didn't want to be this. But he made me. He carved out everything good and filled me up with hate. And I can't... I can't get it out.”

She presses a hand to her chest as if she can physically feel the rot inside her. Her breath comes in sharp, painful gasps, each one a struggle.

“I'm sorry,” she chokes out, the words foreign and awkward on her tongue. “I'm sorry I'm not ... I can't be what you wanted. I can't be saved.”

Kaden stares at her, his expression unreadable behind the mask.

Until he takes it off and it drops with a clang at his feet.

Cassie meets his gaze, her own bleak and haunted. “You should’ve put me down the minute you saw I was alive. You knew these ten years wouldn’t have been kind to me. It would’ve been kinder for you to end me.”

He takes a step toward her, then another. Cassie flinches but doesn't retreat, watching him warily. He lowers himself until they’re eye to eye and reaches out as if approaching a wounded animal, until his hand hovers just inches from her blood-streaked face.

Cassie trembles, a full-body shudder that seems to originate from her very core.

“You didn't let them hurt Layla the way you were hurt. That means something, Cassie.”

Cassie's gaze flicks to me, a trace of grief in her eyes. Then she looks back at Kaden, her lower lip trembling.

Kaden's hand finally makes contact, cupping her cheek with a gentleness at odds with the brutality of our surroundings. Cassie stiffens but doesn't pull away, her eyes scrunching closed as if she can't bear to see the tenderness in his gaze.

Kaden's thumb brushes over a small scar on her cheekbone, tracing the remnant of violence. “I see you, Cassie. I see the strength it took to survive what he did to you. I see the light in you, even when you can't see it yourself.”

My vision turns hot. My eyes well up, and I allow the tears to fall because that is exactly the way I feel about him .

Cassie searches his face as if trying to find the lie, the trick, the inevitable betrayal. But there is only open honesty in Kaden's gaze, a vulnerability he so rarely shows.

“I don’t know how to be anything else,” she says. “I don’t know how to be … good.”

Kaden's hand slides to the back of her neck, pulling her forward until she’s pressed against his chest. “Neither do I. But you can start by choosing, every day, to be better than what he made you. And when you can't, when the darkness feels like it's swallowing you whole, you lean on the people who love you. You let me help you.”

Cassie’s hand comes up to clutch his wrist. “You—you still love me? After everything I’ve done?”

“Always,” Kaden says fiercely. “You’re my daughter. Nothing will ever change that.”

A splintered sound escapes her, halfway between a laugh and a breakdown. She buries her face in his chest as great, heaving sobs wrack her body. Kaden's arms come around her, holding her tight as she falls apart.

“I'm sorry,” she gasps out between sobs. “I'm sorry I didn't fight harder, that I let him turn me into this. I'm sorry I hurt you, that I hurt Layla. I'm just ... I'm so sorry, Daddy.”

Kaden's eyes close at the heartsick endearment, a single tear slipping free.

“I forgive you,” he tells her. “You hear me, baby girl? I forgive you. You're not poison; you're not rotten. You're my daughter, and I love you, no matter what.”

Cassie clings to him like a lifeline, like he's the only thing keeping her from shattering.

And maybe he is.