Chapter 52
CHAPTER 52
Silas
She stares at them like she’s seeing two ghosts, and my, oh my, that fucking fear riddling her face is a sight to behold. God, it really gets me going.
I pull the stuffed rag from one of those fucker’s mouths. “Go on, tell them what you told me.”
The guy keeps his bloodshot eyes locked on her. “Please, help me.”
Her lip begins to quiver. “Why? Why are they here?”
“I found them snooping around your home … looking for money … and you.” I tilt my head and watch her reaction, then grab my bat and smack it into the fucker’s knees.
He cries out in pain.
“Stop! Fuck, it hurts!” he shrieks.
I laugh. “You think this hurts? I could cut off all your fingers and your dick and make you eat them.”
“Please, no.” Sweat runs down his forehead. “Have mercy.”
“Why were you in her apartment?” Max asks.
I point my bat at the guy’s face. “Tell her who sent you.”
Ivy shakes her head.
“Stefano sent me.”
The mere mention of his name makes her pupils dilate and fill with rage.
There it is. That’s what I was looking for.
“Shut up,” she hisses.
“Why? Is he reminding you of something you don’t want to remember?” Heath asks, looking at her with a stone-cold face.
“Who’s Stefano?” Max asks.
“No one,” she hisses. “No one you ever need to know about.”
“But that’s just it, little thief … I do. I want to know.” I approach her slowly, sliding my fingers across the headboard. “I want to know more than anything.” I bring my bloodied fingers to her forehead. “What makes you tick.” And I tap. Once. Twice.
She swats away my hand when I attempt it for a third time, and it brings a wicked smile to my face.
“I told you, it’s none of your fucking business.”
“Is it? Or is it just because you don’t want to admit to whatever you did that made you piss off these fuckers?” Heath asks, his face still emotionless and deadly like he’s lost all will to care.
I smirk. “You stole from them, didn’t you?”
She lifts her fist, but I grab it just in time. “You’re taking your anger out on the wrong dude.”
I force the palm of her hand open and shove the bat inside.
“You hate them, don’t you?”
She seems confused, then apprehensive, at first, as I step aside and point at the guys.
“Go on … give it your best shot.”
She clutches the bat tighter, and the determination suddenly flickering in her eyes makes me so goddamn hard I nearly come right there and then.
“I told you I had a gift for you …” I whisper into her ear as she hovers closer and closer to the two guys I have strapped to the bed. “So take it.”
“Ivy, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Max says, but she’s not even listening anymore. I can tell from the way her eyes have glossed over.
“Wait! You can’t do this to me. I’m—”
She lifts the bat and swings …
Right into the fucker’s face.
His jaw dislodges and knocks sideways, teeth flinging left and right. Blood spatters everywhere, and I’m on the verge of pronouncing my fucking undying devotion to this fucking girl. This girl who is every bit as fucked up as I am.
“You fucking thought you could come to my house and take Cora?!” she screams, and she hits him again, this time straight in the nuts, blood splattering onto the bed, and the other guy, his screeches fill the room like a crescendo of madness.
I made her a monster.
My own vicious little monster.
And I am so fucking proud.
She drops the bat on the floor and steps back to witness the onslaught she just created like a dazed animal headed straight for the lights. But I grab her face with bloodied hands and make her focus on me.
“This is what you needed. This is what you deserved. Revenge.” I plant my forehead against hers, smearing the blood all over us both. “You’re such a fucking good girl for me, aren’t you? Now help me take care of the other one.”
“No, no, no, please!” the guy begs.
I look up, grinning at how badly he’s already soiled his pants from the thought of being callously murdered by the girl they thought they could chase.
But she is all mine.
Mine to hunt.
Mine to catch, taint, and devour.
My delicious little prey.
And I will cheer her on while she wreaks havoc on these fuckers like it’s a blood rain day from hell.
“Please, Ivy, it’s too late. Ivan already gave the order.”
She stops in her tracks even though she was about ready to swing.
“The dealer,” Heath mutters to himself.
Ivy’s eyes twitch as she looks up at him. “You know Ivan?”
Heath lowers his gaze and starts to disengage emotionally. “I know more than you think.”
Well, this is getting interesting.
Ivy suddenly grabs the guy on the bed by the throat. “What order?”
The guy’s eyes flicker between all of us, settling for a few seconds on Heath before he circles back to Ivy … and laughs. “There’s no more time left. This is all your fault. You can blame anyone you want, but this is on you. You should’ve paid him, kid.”
My eye begins to twitch.
Is that what she’s been doing?
Paying off a debt to some guy with our money?
She raises the bat again.
“Please, it’s not my fault,” the guy cries. “I was just doing what I was told. Please, have mercy.”
“Like you had on us?” she barks. “You know your fucking friends came for me.”
“We were doing what we were told.”
“You know damn well why you were told to do it!” she yells back. “You deserve the same pain I had to endure.”
She lifts the bat high.
The man begins to laugh. “Killing me won’t help you now. It’s too late for you and your little Cora.”
She pauses midair. “What?”
“Check my phone if you don’t believe me. Ivan already told him everything he needs to know … Stefano is coming.”
Her whole face turns white as snow.
THWACK!
She hits him right in the head, knocking him out.
THWACK!
THWACK!
Blood oozes from his ears, but she keeps hitting him over and over until nothing is left except her anger slowly flooding out of her like the blood leaving her victims.
Her breathing comes out in ragged breaths when she stops, her clothes completely soaked through with blood as she chucks the bat aside.
Fuck.
Yes.
This is the one.
The one thing that can make my dead heart tick.
Ivy
Two people, gone within an instant.
Wiped off this planet with the strength of my own two hands.
I stare at their mangled bodies and the onslaught I left behind.
I swore I would do anything to protect her, and I did.
Honest to the devil … a murderer of his making.
My darkened eyes find Silas’s lethal eyes from across the room, the red hue of annihilation flickering behind them, finally feeling familiar.
So this is what it’s like to become a monster.
I wipe the blood off my face with the back of my hand. “Happy now?”
A proud fire rages in his eyes. “Well done.”
“Is this what you wanted? To turn her into a fucking killer?” Max grits, as he barges at Silas and grabs his shirt. “You had no right.”
Silas jerks free from his grip with ease. “She wanted this.”
Maybe I did.
But could I ever say it out loud like he so proudly does?
“Bullshit,” Max growls. “You did this for you.”
Silas laughs in his face. “So what if I did? I do what I want, when I want. No one controls me.”
Max shoves Silas forward, clearly upset he put me in this position.
But Max doesn’t understand the visceral brutality hiding beneath these layers of endurance I’ve been forced to wear.
Max doesn’t feel the need to blow up and destroy, but Silas does.
“Max is right,” Heath says, stepping in. “What was the point of all this? You could’ve just killed them yourself.”
“No. This was what she needed,” Silas says, tilting his head at me like he’s waiting for me to admit it.
But all I can do is stare at the two bodies like I’m waiting for them to come back to life just so I can kill them again.
He’s right. I did need this.
Desperately.
More than any one of these guys could ever understand.
“She was being chased by a debt, and I took care of it,” Silas adds.
But that’s just it.
Killing these two didn’t change anything.
The second they stopped me from looting the Phantom House, it was already over.
These fuckers know we were hiding at the Skull and Serpent Society.
Ivan knew … because of them .
“No,” I mutter, and everyone looks at me. “It only made it worse.” I throw a damning glance at Heath. “You … you know Ivan. You told him about my location.”
“I did not,” Heath growls back. “But you didn’t tell us the truth about Cora.”
What?
My eyes flicker with unseen rage while I glare at Heath, the tension like crackling lightning.
Heath picks up the bloodied bat, gazing at it with intent before his eyes fixate on mine. “She’s not yours, is she?”
Fuck.
That’s it.
That’s the one thing I told myself that would make me want to pull the trigger and blow up the whole thing.
For the first time since I met him, Silas genuinely looks shocked.
“W-What?” Max stutters. “You aren’t her mom?”
“She’s not going to give you the answer, Max,” Heath says.
A kind of darkness that makes me shiver has fallen over Silas’s face. “Once a liar, always a liar.”
Fine.
He wanted me to break?
Force me to reveal the truth?
They can have it … after they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
A deadly but disappointed smile forms on my face before I turn around and run.