Chapter 5
Chapter Five
T he best way to prevent betrayal was to never let anyone get too close.
In my twenty-seven years, I’d been betrayed enough by the people closest to me to last me a lifetime. And despite my papà’s betrayal being unintentional, he’d failed in keeping his wife and her wrath away from Dante and me. I’d forgiven him for the most part, but I didn’t think I could ever forget.
So now I lived my life refusing to give anyone a chance to fuck me over—family or not.
I’d seen what caring too much did to people. First with Basilio, then with Dante. Even Emory was teetering on the edge, playing with fire when it came to Killian Brennan.
I vowed to never fall victim to those circumstances.
Yet there was one person who kept getting under my skin, determined to see the filth beneath my carefully curated facade.
I’d be willing to bet everything I owned that she’d change her mind real quick if she saw me now, standing in a pool of blood. I wondered if this would be enough to prove that I was beyond redemption.
The frail arms I had tied to a chair in the basement of this abandoned warehouse, knuckles stained red, belonged to the only witness of my deprived bloodthirst.
“Should have really cleaned yourself up,” I sneered, looking at the one person I despised beyond all else.
“You can’t keep me in this filth forever.”
The face that still came to me in my nightmares was almost unrecognizable. A monster, no less.
“It’s the only thing suitable for someone like you,” I drawled, reaching for a cigarette. I shoved it between my lips and lit it. I only smoked when surrounded by the ghosts of my past, and I worried this half-empty pack wouldn’t get me through the night.
“How much longer do you plan on keeping me here?”
“You know the answer to that stupid question.”
“ Tell me .” The scream echoed, bouncing against the sharp stone walls. Do it. Shout until your lungs give out; there isn’t a soul around for a hundred miles .
“Until your dying breath,” I said simply. “So you better get used to it.”
My prisoner stared at me with bulging eyes while silence enveloped us. How many times had the roles been reversed? How many times had I stared this monster in the eye and prayed that I’d be saved?
Years . My entire childhood. Dante’s, too.
It was destroyed—stolen—thanks to the evil in front of me. The evil that nobody knew was still alive. It was the one secret I had kept from everyone.
There was one other person who deserved a similar punishment, but the church was hiding them. Untouchable. No matter. I was a patient man, and I would get my revenge before I left this earth.
“Please, Christian.”
A soft murmur, but it was all I needed. My legal name from her mouth was my trigger. In a flash, I reached for my knife, cigarette still dangling between my lips, and sliced a finger, the sound of crunching bones lost between the buzzing in my ears.
“May the Holy Spirit free you from this miserable life and your sins swallow you whole.” I added the severed finger to a rope where it joined a number of other body parts. “Amen.”