20. Ghost
The silence of the hotel room is absolute, broken only by the rhythmic, shallow sighs of Angel sleeping against my chest. Her body is a dead weight, exhausted by the flight, the wedding, and the sheer terror that ripped through her only an hour ago.
I am a monster.
I stare at the ceiling. Every time she twitches in her sleep, every time a soft, broken whimper escapes her throat, a fresh wave of self-loathing crashes over me.
I should have known better. And yet, I let my own hunger, my own desperate need to claim her, blind me to the reality of what she’s been through.
I scared her. I felt her pulse spike against my skin, felt her muscles lock into that rigid, paralyzed state of a prey animal.
I made her feel like she was back in that room, and that knowledge is a hot coal sitting in the center of my gut.
She is the most precious thing in this world, the only light I’ve ever been allowed to hold, and I nearly snuffed it out because I wanted to feel her under me.
I didn’t torture him enough.
The thought is a dark, jagged refrain in my mind.
The rage I feel for Brian isn’t a flash of heat; it’s a permanent, sub-zero cold that has settled into my marrow.
I wish I’d had weeks. I wish I’d been on home turf, in the basement of the clubhouse where the screams are swallowed by the salt air and the concrete floors never give up their secrets.
If I’d had him in California, he would still be alive right now.
He would be praying for a death I wouldn’t grant him for a month.
I would have taken him apart piece by piece—not just his body, but his mind.
I would have made him feel every ounce of the suffocation, every bit of the terror he forced on my Angel.
But we were in London. We were operating on borrowed time and a stranger’s map. We had to be efficient. We had to be invisible.
The air in the abandoned warehouse near the Thames was thick with the scent of damp rot and stagnant river water.
Brian was strapped to a rusted metal chair, the kind with sharp edges that bit into the skin.
He looked pathetic—his designer shirt was torn, his face a mess of snot and tears.
He kept trying to talk, kept trying to offer us money, as if he could buy his way out of a Halo’s debt.
Shade stood in the shadows, his arms crossed, his face a mask of cold fury. Oliver was a few feet away, looking nauseous, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He looked like he didn’t belong here, but he refused to leave.
I stepped into the light, the flickering overhead bulb casting long, distorted shadows across my tattoos. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t need to. I just pulled a pair of heavy pliers from the kit Oliver had helped us procure.
“Wait—please! I didn’t know who she was!” Brian shrieked, his voice echoing off the corrugated tin walls.
“That’s your mistake,” I said, my voice coming from a place deep and hollow. “You didn’t need to know who she was. You just needed to know that she said ‘no’.”
I didn’t go for the kill. Not yet. I started with his fingers. I wanted him to understand that his hands—the hands he used to squeeze her throat—were a liability. The sound of the first knuckle snapping was a wet, sickening pop. He screamed, a high-pitched, warbling sound that grated on my nerves.
I leaned in close, my face inches from his. “She couldn’t breathe, Brian. Do you remember that? Do you remember the way her eyes rolled back?”
I clamped the pliers onto his thumb and twisted. He buckled in the chair, his heels drumming a frantic rhythm on the concrete.
I moved to his throat. I used my hands. I wanted him to feel the specific, crushing weight of a man who intended to take everything.
I squeezed just enough to make his eyes bulge, just enough to turn his face a mottled, terrifying purple.
I let him get to the very edge of the black—the same void he’d sent Angel into—before I let go and watched him gasp, a pathetic, wheezing sound.
I stepped back, nodding to Shade. My brother-in-law didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward and delivered a series of gut-punching blows that left Brian coughing up blood. Then, unexpectedly, Oliver moved.
The med student stepped out of the dark. His face was set in a grimace of pure loathing. He didn’t have our technique, but he had the rage. He wound up and threw a heavy, uncoordinated punch that landed square on Brian’s jaw. The chair groaned as Brian’s head snapped back.
I looked at the boy. He was a healer, but for Angel, he’d found the killer inside himself. I respected that.
I stepped back in, my shadow swallowing Brian whole.
I didn’t use a gun. I wanted it to be intimate.
I wanted the last thing he felt to be the physical presence of the man who was taking his life in the name of the woman he’d almost destroyed.
By the time we walked out of that warehouse, leaving a silent, broken heap behind us, the London rain felt like it was trying to wash the sin off my skin. It didn’t work.
I shift slightly, the memory fading into the sound of the Pacific. My knuckles still ache from the work I did in that warehouse, but the satisfaction is hollow. No matter how much I hurt him, it doesn’t un-scare her. It doesn’t take back the scream she let out tonight.
I look down at her. In the moonlight, the yellowing bruises on her neck look like a collar. I hate them. I hate that I can’t just rub them away with my thumb.
“I’m sorry, Angel,” I whisper into the darkness of the room. “I’m going to do better. I’m going to be the man you deserve.”
I won’t push her again. I don’t care if I never feel her that way again; as long as she’s in my arms, as long as she knows she is safe and cherished, I can live with the hunger. I’ll be her shield.
I pull her a little closer, careful not to wake her, and bury my face in the crook of her shoulder.
The scent of her finally starts to quiet the static in my brain.
The rage for Brian is still there, a banked fire in the corner of my soul, but the love for the girl in my arms is the sun that drowns it out.
We’re home. We’re married. And soon, we face the music. But tonight, there is just the ocean, the silence, and the heartbeat of the only woman I have ever loved.
Slowly, the exhaustion of the last week finally drags me under. I succumb to a heavy, dreamless sleep, my arms locked around my wife like a vow.