Chapter 66 #2
“We want you to confess what you had planned for Bella. What you and Carlos said to make Zeke black out in a fit of rage that night in Miami?”
I can feel Cade tense up beside me, his chest rising like he’s bracing for an impact he already knows is coming. Bella must feel it too because she leans back slowly in her chair and locks eyes with Cade.
“I’m okay, sweetheart,” Cade says, voice low but steady.
She nods once, then looks back at Vince. “Go on.”
He starts mumbling. Rambling nonsense. His eyes flick to the snake, then to the blood drying on his shirt. He’s unraveling. He can’t focus on anything other than Celeste wrapping around Bella’s shoulder.
“Lex, baby.”
“Yes?” I answer, already stepping forward.
“Hold Celeste for me.”
I reach down and take the snake from her shoulders. She coils around my arm like she knows me. Like she recognizes the fury boiling beneath my skin. The kind of rage that doesn’t come with shouting, but with silence. Precision.
Bella crouches low again, knife dragging up the inside of Vince’s thigh. Slow and intentional as her voice turns into velvet-coated steel.
“Go on, Vincent.”
“I was… I was…” he stutters.
Tex growls and grips his shoulders tighter. “Today, dumbass.”
“Fine, you want to know what I was going to do to the little bitch?” Vince spits, voice shaking. “I was going to make the mutt watch me fuck her right in front of him. Watch while his little sister broke in half around my cock.”
He laughs, a wet, broken sound. “Then I was gonna take her home. Chain her up. Fuck her until she forgot her own name. Sell her if she bored me. Maybe kill her. Maybe not.”
His eyes flare, madness bleeding through. “All I know is that bitch right there is fucking mine. Bought and paid for. Signed on the dotted line. Mine.”
Silence. No one breathes. Cade’s jaw locks so hard I swear I hear it crack. I don’t even feel Celeste on my arm anymore. All I see is pure red-hot rage.
Sabine steps forward, eyes narrowed and unflinching, as she gently lifts the snake from my arm. “Here, l’ombre,” she says softly. “Let me hold her. I have a feeling you’re going to want your hands free for this next part.”
I nod. Because she’s right. Hearing Vince call Bella his. Hearing his plans for her. I’m done. He’s fucking dead.
Bella stands slowly. Calm and unshaken. She steps between us and Vince and stares him down like she’s already counted the seconds left in his life.
“Mine? You say that word like it means something. But you see, Vincent, I think the two of them might have a difference of opinion on who I actually belong to.”
She looks at me. I’m fuming. Barely holding it together. But I won’t touch him. Not until she tells me I can.
Bella nods at me, and my voice cuts through the room like a goddamn blade, low, dangerous, final.
“You never owned a fucking thing, Vince. Least of all her.” I take a step closer. “She’s not yours. Never fucking was.” Another step. “You didn’t earn her. You didn’t touch her. You didn’t even get close.”
My chest heaves, breath sharp. “You know why?” I tilt my head, eyes locked on the bastard who thought he could claim her. “Because she got out and she chose us.”
I let that hang in the air, heavy enough to crack bone. “That’s what kills you, isn’t it? The fact that you had to buy what we were given.” I laugh once, dark and humorless. “Fuck, looking at you now, I bet you’ve had to pay for every piece of ass you ever got.”
Then quieter, deadlier. “But Bella? She picked Cade. She picked me.”
I tap my chest, voice rough. “She looked at everything we are, all the wreckage and all the rage, and said yes.”
A pause. A slow exhale. “That’s love, motherfucker.” I lean in, eyes cold and sure. “That’s real.”
Sabine lets out a low, throaty laugh from beside me.
The kind that coils around your spine. “Mmm, baby,” she says, eyes gleaming with something between reverence and thrill.
“That right there? That’s the kind of love women pray for in dark corners and forgotten churches.
The kind they write spells for. Bleed for.
The kind that don’t break when the fire comes, it rises with it. Burns with it.”
Bella nods, satisfied. Then turns to Cade. “Cade?”
“You still don’t get it, Vince,” he says, stepping forward. “All you ever did was circle her light, trying to find a way to smother it. You thought fear could make her small, that you could break her. You thought ownership could make her yours.”
He shakes his head, slow. “But she doesn’t break that way. She never did. You didn’t destroy her, Vince. You defined her. Every threat you made just showed her how to become stronger. Showed her exactly what she doesn’t want in this world.”
A breath. Quiet. Controlled. Then he looks at me, at Bella, back to Vince. “Bella chose us, and we’ll spend every breath proving she made the right choice.”
He takes another step, close enough for Vince to see the conviction in his hazel eyes. “Lex and I will be right here. Every. Damn. Day. Making sure your name stays buried in the dark where it belongs. Making sure your shadow never even grazes her light again.”
Cade pauses, voice low but certain. “You wanted power. You wanted to own her. But the only thing you’ll ever be remembered for is failing to touch the kind of woman even gods envy.”
His words settle over the room like a slow-burn spell. The air itself seems to hold its breath. Even Vince finally shuts the hell up.
Next to me, Celeste lifts her head, tongue flicking toward Cade like she’s tasting the air around him. Sabine watches with a slow, knowing smile. “Ahh, this one loves true. Not with fire, but with root. Deep, old, and hard to kill. That’s the kind that holds you when the storm won’t pass.”
Cade doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. But I swear, he looks at Bella like he already knew that and just needed the universe to say it out loud.
Sabine steps closer, Celeste still curled around her shoulders like a crown of serpents and looks at me… then at Cade. “She’s blessed to have y’all. And you? You’re blessed ‘cause she chose you. Don’t let the gods forget it.”
Bella turns back to Vince, smiling like this is just a game she’s already won. “I am theirs, Vincent. In every way that matters. And definitely not yours. Never was. Never will be. No matter how much you paid or what you signed on Carlos’s pathetic little dotted line.”
She leans in close, her voice a whisper sharpened to a blade. “But you know what I will be?” A pause. “I’ll be the last face you ever see, Vincent.”
She straightens, eyes flicking to me, then Cade. “That is… after I let the loves of my life have a little fun with you first.”
The second she gives the word, something in me snaps.
There’s no more holding back. No more breathing through the rage.
Tex clamps his hands on Vince’s shoulders like he knew I was about to explode.
And thank fuck he does, because if Vince were loose right now, I’d tear his spine out through his throat.
I move in, fast, fists already flying. The first hit lands square on his jaw. The second, his ribs. I hear something crack. Good.
“You think she belonged to you?” I spit, my voice hoarse with hate. “You think that you bought her? Claimed her?”
I grab him by the throat, slam him back against the chair, and keep swinging.
“No. You don’t get to say her name. You don’t even have the right to breathe her air.”
Vince is coughing blood now, spitting teeth between screams. And I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. One more punch. One more crack.
Behind me, I hear Cade, his breath uneven. He’s not ready yet. Still processing. Still on the edge of the dark. But I live here in the darkness, here in the abyss with Bella.
Tex lets out a laugh. “Damn, Barinov. Looks like you got some demons to exorcise.”
“Yeah,” I growl. “And this fucker just volunteered to be my altar.”
“That’ll do, Lex.” Bella’s voice slices through the red haze in my head, soft but absolute.
My fist freezes mid-air. I step back, chest heaving, blood dripping from my knuckles.
Vince’s face is unrecognizable now—swollen, broken, a portrait of everything he’s done finally coming back to bury his ass.
Bella steps forward, calm as ever as Tex straightens behind Vince and claps a hand on his ruined shoulder.
“Well Bells,” he drawls, “final judgment?”
Bella tilts her head. Her smile is ice. “Oh, he’s guilty, alright.”
Tex laughs. Bella laughs. And it’s terrifying. The sound of two wolves finding joy in the slaughter. She turns to Sabine and nods once.
Sabine just raises a single finger. “Jacques,” she says coolly.
The door creaks open and Jacques walks in, quiet, casual, like this is just business. He’s carrying a red container and a silver lighter.
Bella takes a step back. I move to her left, Cade to her right. We’re a wall now, final and unshakable. Sabine and Celeste stand beside me, Celeste hissing low, like she knows what’s coming. Tex falls in next to Cade, eyes fixed on the scene like he’s watching a sermon.
Jacques doesn’t speak. Just uncaps the can and starts pouring it over Vince’s slumped body. The bastard twitches. Groans. But he doesn’t beg. He knows it’s over. Gasoline splashes across his shirt, his hair, the concrete floor beneath him.
Then the click of the lighter.
A spark.
A flame.
And then—whoosh.
Fire consumes him. He screams. The sound is music to my ears.
I don’t look away. Not once. I just reach over and take my girl’s hand, squeezing tight, anchoring her to the moment she’s been chasing for years. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t look away either. And then I feel it, Cade reaching across her, wrapping his fingers through hers from the other side.
No words. Just heat and silence and the sound of everything finally burning.
And I know what’s coming. I know I’ll have to pick up the pieces of her that will shatter the moment we get home. The moment it all hits her, but I don’t care. She got her vengeance. She got her revenge.
For Dylan.
For Zeke.
For her.