Chapter 18 The Present #2
“You killed me to get rid of the problem. A quiet little solution. No witness. All the money to yourself. You could even blame your mafia connections on your escapist wife if it came to that.”
Mark tries to speak. The strap makes sure he does it slow. “You don’t—”
Talon barks out a single laugh. “Buddy, she remembers the stitching on the pillowcase,” he says. “Just tell the goddamn truth. Don’t provoke us.”
Cassian rubs his palm once. The room changes temperature, and Mark’s eyes flinch to track it. His gaze drags over our little constellation. That’s when Nathaniel snaps his nitrile glove into place.
“Say it,” he suggests, voice mild. “Before your adrenaline drops and the truth gets harder to find.”
Mark stares at the phone, then at me. Sweat beads bright along his hairline. His throat jumps. “You’re asking me to confess—what? A hallucination? You’re not even—”
I lean into Cassian’s hand. My laugh is small and real.
“Pain, come out,” I say into the hum of the generator.
The light over the basement door seethes once, twice, and the air dips a few degrees. Pain steps from the shadow like a ghost that’s decided it finally wants to be seen.
Mark flinches. He cannot see him, but he can feel him. The wrongness of the moment.
“Do you want to give him a show?” Pain murmurs, looking at me.
“I’m done being considered weak.”
Pain tips his head, listening to the shake in the air. Then he presses his palm to mine. Just a moment. But a moment is enough. Power flares steady through me, more controlled than it has ever been.
“Give him what he deserves,” he says, and nods once.
I turn back to Mark.
“Want to know what death feels like, my dear ex-husband?”
The generator hum drops. The bulb overhead flickers again and again.
Power… It really is a heady thing.
“Breathe in,” I say.
The strap at Mark’s throat creaks. He tries. Nothing comes.
I curl my invisible hand around his airway.
“Death is a cold, cold thing,” I whisper.
I squeeze.
“Everyone’s naked in front of it.”
Harder.
He bucks once against the leather. The chair groans. He can’t scrabble free from the pressure.
“I’ve felt it. I became it,” I say. “Can you feel its icy kiss upon you?”
His chest stutters. The strap translates his panic into a small, ugly sound. I hold the pressure a heartbeat longer, then another. When I loosen it, air returns raw and punishing.
His lungs tear for it.
I don’t want to kill him. Not yet. But it would be so easy to just let his soul wither and leave his body. I could just… squeeze his throat a beat longer, to crush an artery, to stop his heart. I could ruin him here, now.
What’s stopping me?
I don’t notice my hands shaking until Talon’s fingers lace with mine and anchor them. He’s grinning, mischief on the outside, but there’s reverence glistening in his eyes.
“You’re magnificent,” he murmurs. It’s an obscene worship that makes my pulse thrum against his knuckles. Then, softer still, meant only for me: “Remember to release all that pain. Don’t drown in it.”
The emptiness in my chest shudders.
Then fills in all at once, to the fullest.
He’s right.
I’m not doing this to ease my pain.
I’m doing it to cut it out.
Nathaniel closes the leather binder with a precise click and steps in front of Mark.
“Say her name. And what you did.”
Mark’s gaze flinches everywhere but toward me. The generator, concrete floor, the straps locking him down.
“I—don’t—”
The light above the door stutters. I tighten my grip on him again. I would be fine with doing this the easy way, but I demand him to acknowledge me.
I hurt because of him.
My heart still aches because of him.
I became nothing because of him.
“Use your words,” I say.
His eyes finally meet mine, and I watch the precise second he understands there are no exits that don’t go through me.
“Skye,” he rasps. “I… left you. With him.”
Talon’s jaw ticks. Nathaniel’s eyes sharpen. Cassian’s grip at my waist hardens.
“And after?” I ask. “Say it clean.”
Mark swallows like it cuts him open.
“I… killed you. So there’d be no witness.” His gaze flicks to the strap at his throat. “So it wouldn’t… spread.”
“You mean so your crimes wouldn’t spread,” Nathaniel corrects.
“Yes,” Mark breathes.
“Look at her,” Talon tells him. “Look at the woman you tried to erase.”
I don’t know how he manages to sound both lethal and worshipful, but he does. There’s this feral devotion wrapped in amusement and hunger in his voice. It’s like air to my lungs.
Cassian feels it too. His fingers tighten at my waist, then climb up slowly, until his palm settles beneath my ribs, the heel of his hand braced right under my heart.
“Eyes on her,” he orders Mark. “Don’t even blink.”
And Mark obeys, because terror breeds obedience, especially in men who only understand hierarchy when they’re beneath it. His pupils blow wide. He tries to swallow and fails.
Talon lets the crowbar slip to the floor with a soft metallic kiss, then takes up position at Mark’s shoulder like a devil roosting on the worst part of his conscience. Nathaniel remains at a calm remove, still cloning the evidence.
Cassian’s palm stays braced beneath my heart; the other settles at my hip as he draws me back a step, into him, until his chest is at my spine and his breath lives in my hair. Then he inhales deep.
“You wanted her small,” he tells Mark. “You wanted her quiet.”
His hand skims my ribs, unhurried enough to count sins. I let my head tip to his shoulder and keep my eyes on Mark.
He flinches at the intimacy like it’s a slap.
“You didn’t know what a diamond you had in your hands,” Talon murmurs. “Too bad for you. Good for us.”
I turn my cheek; Cassian is already there, mouth waiting. He bites my lower lip, and I smile against it while watching Mark watch us. It’s ugly and sweet at the same time, like rotted justice wrapped in honey.
“Language lesson,” Nathaniel says, almost gentle, not looking up from the phone. “This is what power looks like when it isn’t pretending to be benevolence.”
Mark’s breath turns ragged.
He’s never seen me like this—wanted, unafraid, choosing.
In control.
Cassian’s hand climbs my throat. My breath catches because I want it there, because wanting in front of the man who starved me of wanting is a sacrament.
Mark can’t look away. He wouldn’t know how.
“Say her name again,” Talon tells him softly, almost kind. “Say it right this time.”
“Skye,” Mark rasps. I hold his stare until he drowns in it.
“Good boy,” Talon purrs.
Cassian turns me, settling me against his chest, bracketing me in warmth and unshakeable possession. His hand slips beneath the hem of my shirt, palm closing over my breast. My breath breaks on a hitch. I don’t even bother hiding it.
“Look,” Cassian tells him. “Look at this beauty.”
He drags his mouth along my jaw. I don’t close my eyes.
“You closed the door on me,” I tell Mark. “You didn’t want to watch me with Duvall. How about you watch me now?”
The thought of letting my men take me apart in front of Mark should feel deranged. Maybe it is. But after death, deranged loses its meaning.
I want Mark to see. To live with the memory the way I lived with the grave he gave me. He might never understand what I am now, or what these men can do, but he feels it.
Fear is its own proof.
Seeing is believing.
“What do you say, boys?” I ask, not looking away from Mark. “Should we find a little fun in murder?”
The answer is written in the heat behind me.
No one has to say a word.