31. Zane
THIRTY-ONE
ZANE
Incandescent fury rages inside of me as I stare at the scene in front of me.
I assess it quickly, my fingers flexing around the gun in my hand, but there’s no way I can risk taking a shot while Keith’s gun is in Hyacinth’s mouth. I still train the gun on him.
“Take the gun out of his mouth. Slowly,” I tell him. “If anything happens to Hyacinth, I’ll make sure you live just long enough to regret it.”
But I have no real leverage here. As long as he keeps the gun right there, I can’t shoot, and we both know it.
Still, he can’t do it forever.
The scent of Hyacinth’s blood hangs heavy in the air.
My vision is tinged red, and it’s all I can do not to squeeze the trigger and watch Keith’s brains explode.
Keith smirks at me, but his index finger remains on the trigger of his own weapon. “Maybe I should thank you. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even have realized Hyacinth was in town again.”
Hyacinth’s free hand clutches the sheet of the bed.
His eyes are calm, even with his lips stretched wide around the barrel of the gun.
I’m not calm at all.
I fight the urge to snarl like a wild animal.
Losing my shit isn’t going to help.
But I’m so close to it anyway.
“Take the gun out of his fucking mouth,” I repeat.
He’s not going to. He’s going to drag this out as long as he can. He knows that the second Hyacinth is free, he’s dead.
So what do I do about this standstill?
Rip him to pieces.
Acid isn’t good enough for him.
“He looks so good with it, though.” Keith glances down at Hyacinth. “Nobody else could pull this look off the way you do.”
And still, Hyacinth’s eyes are calm.
It doesn’t bother him at all.
Or he’s used to it.
Hyacinth stares up at Keith, and Keith meets his gaze with a sadistic smile. Hyacinth makes a noise, one that could be a moan or a half-swallowed word.
Keith frowns. “I told you not to make noise.”
Hyacinth groans louder, and Keith shifts his body to push the gun deeper into his mouth. “Shut up,” he growls.
This is the distraction I need. I ignore Keith’s finger on the trigger; I ignore the possibility of missing.
I won’t miss.
I can’t miss.
The shot rings out, and Keith whips his head up in time for the bullet to hit him in the shoulder.
He cries out, and Hyacinth pulls off the gun and pushes Keith’s arm away.
Relief and rage war inside of me.
Keith still has a gun in his hand; he’s still dangerous. I have to stay calm until he’s incapacitated.
Rip. Him. Apart.
The voice howls inside of me, nearly deafening, and I train the gun on Keith again. “You should’ve known when to quit,” I tell him. “You had a perfect life. Your perfect little partner, your perfect little political campaign. But no. You had to go and get greedy.”
“You took what’s mine!” Keith shouts, his voice ragged from pain. He points his gun at Hyacinth again. “Kill Zane Vilani. Wasn’t that your job?”
Hyacinth crouches on the bed. His bleeding arm hangs loosely at his shoulder, and he must be in agony, but he grins through it. “I already told my cousin, I quit. And you’re outnumbered now, Keith. You have no hope of winning against both of us.” He nods while his body tenses.
I have to trust that he can take care of himself.
I pull the trigger again, and the bullet lodges itself in Keith’s other shoulder. He screams in pain, and the gun clatters to the floor.
I race forward, kicking the gun as far away from him as I can.
“Fuck!” Keith shouts.
I turn to aim my gun at him again, to finally shoot him through the skull and watch his brains decorate this room.
Hyacinth lunges forward and drives a spike through Keith’s throat.
Where the hell did he get the spike from?
His eyes are wide and wild, and his grin stretches from ear to ear. “Oh, Keith. You were always so happy to use me as an assassin. Why did you think I’d have trouble killing you?”
Keith’s mouth parts in a voiceless scream. He grabs for Hyacinth’s arms, but Hyacinth keeps the spike steady.
“We could kill you right here,” Hyacinth says conversationally. “But you were so descriptive in what you wanted to do to me. Maybe Zane and I should return the favor first.” He glances over at me, and his expression softens. “If you want.”
Now that Keith has been neutralized, I can actually think.
“I don’t want him as a fucktoy,” I tell him with all the derision I can manage. “You couldn’t pay me enough to touch him. But maybe he does need to feel what it’s like to be that helpless before he dies.”
I don’t have the proper tools for an amputation.
That doesn’t make me want to do it any less.
Torture seems too easy for Keith, but I don’t want an easy death. He doesn’t deserve it.
“Are you all right?” I ask Hyacinth, keeping the gun trained on Keith even though Hyacinth seems to have a solid grasp of him.
“Perfectly fine,” Hyacinth says. “The bullet will need removing soon, but I have enough energy to eviscerate him.” He wiggles the spike up and down. “Do you think if I remove this, he’ll breathe through the new hole in his throat?”
I snort, but the amusement is distant, still buried beneath the rage.
And the panic.
“I think he’ll bleed out before I’m ready to watch the life drain from his eyes,” I say. I holster the gun and pull a knife out of a sheath. “Let’s make sure he really feels it before he leaves this world, shall we?”
Keith gurgles and lifts his arm uselessly.
Hyacinth rolls his eyes and pulls the spike out of Keith’s throat, allowing Keith to drop to the floor. Keith cries out, the sound wet and ragged.
“Why are you making noise?” Hyacinth mocks Keith. “You can’t handle this tiny bit of pain?”
Blood starts to pour from the wound in Keith’s throat.
I don’t have much time to make him suffer, but I’ll use what I have.
I crouch down beside him, stabbing him in the gut then pulling the knife through his skin, tearing a long hole across his stomach until I can see his innards.
“He deserves so much more than this,” I mutter.
Keith keeps crying out in inhuman, guttural noises.
Hyacinth turns the spike around to reveal a hook on the other end. He drops it into the hole I made in Keith’s stomach and hooks it around the intestines to pull a chunk of it up.
“Wow. Keith, you should do a better job protecting your soft bits.” Hyacinth starts laughing to himself. “I’ll keep it safe for you.”
Keith’s death isn’t satisfying, but then, no amount of pain would make it good enough for me. Not after he’d taken Hyacinth, not after he’d…
“What did he do to you?” I ask sharply.
It’s too late to interrogate Keith, who’s incoherent in the throes of death.
But I need to know what he did to Hyacinth, what my Hyacinth had had to face.
It’s another thing to punish myself for, that I hadn’t been there to protect him.
I don’t think guilt will ever stop being a close companion.
Hyacinth shrugs. “The cane, a few cuts. He fucked me, of course, but that’s barely worth talking about. The bullet in my arm is going to put me out of commission for a few weeks though.”
He fucked me, of course.
I snarl, turning back to Keith and stabbing him again for good measure. It doesn’t matter; he’s not conscious enough to even register the pain.
It doesn’t make me feel any better, either.
“He touched you,” I hiss. “And you’re mine.”
If I could, I’d bring him back to full awareness so I could gut him all over again.
Maybe I’d shove that hook into his hole and see what he’d think of being fucked.
But there’s no sense in it, despite what my rage is dictating.
Hyacinth goes still. “Yes,” he whispers. “Yes. I’m yours.” His hair obscures his face. The ends of it are dyed red from all the blood in the room.
I reach out and tilt Hyacinth’s face up, heedless of the bloody prints I leave on his skin.
“You are mine,” I reiterate. “And if anyone else touches you again, they’ll face worse than this before they die.
” I stare down at Keith with barely restrained fury clawing beneath my skin.
“But they won’t dare. Not when we’re finished setting an example.
Because I’m done letting others think I’m weak. ”
Hyacinth’s eyes widen with something vulnerable. Then he smiles and moves to kiss my palm. “You aren’t weak. You’re the strongest. I’ll cut down anyone who dares oppose you. Everybody will fear you.”
What I’d done to Richard had been a good first step, but I have more ground to cover before I get the reaction I want.
But I do know that fear can only go so far, and it can lead to more issues in the long run.
I need their respect as much as I need their fear.
I’ll have both.
I pull Hyacinth into a kiss over Keith’s body, blood on both our lips. He sighs against me. I drive my tongue into him to erase any taste of the gun—and of Keith.
My lips are the only ones he’ll ever taste again.
I kiss him until the blood is faint. When I pull back, he seems dazed.
“My men know about you,” I tell him. “And Richard is dead.”
Hyacinth stares. “They know about me?”
I nod, running my bloody fingers through his tangled hair, then chuckle. “They do. I’m not keeping you a secret. You’re too important for that.”
For once, Hyacinth seems completely speechless.
Then he nods, and he presses his head against my shoulder.
“It shouldn’t matter,” he whispers. “I’m an assassin.
I’m invisible. But I’m… I’m so… Happy? That might be the word.
” He laughs, much more nervously this time.
“Fuck. I don’t know if it’s the joy or the blood loss. ”
Right, his injuries. I get up and carefully help Hyacinth up, too. I direct him back onto the bed even though its sheets are as filthy as everything else in the room. Once he’s lying down, I join him, pressing kisses to his forehead and jaw.
“You don’t get to die on me here,” I say fiercely. “I expect you to stay at my side for the rest of our lives.”
Hyacinth laughs and curls into me. “Aren’t you moving a bit fast? Murdering a man together is barely first base. Anyway, I’m not dying. It’s just a scratch.”
“I think we’ve gone beyond first base,” I tell him. “Murder is… fourth base.”
Murder is forever.
We need to get out of here, but I’m exhausted. I hold Hyacinth close, contemplating drifting off despite the situation, when we hear footsteps rushing down the hall.
Hyacinth tenses.
“Boss,” Stefan says as he enters the room. “The men and I cleared the other…” He trails off when he sees me with Hyacinth. “Oh. You found him.”
“He did,” Hyacinth says. He sighs and sits up, not caring about his nudity. “Do you have a cleanup service? We need a large pest removed.” He points to Keith.
I wish Keith had been alive to be devoured by alligators, or that I could’ve left him out in the elements to have insects and other creatures find his injured body. I can’t, and I have other things to worry about.
Keith’s disappearance is going to cause a few issues.
But I can’t say I give a shit about it right now.
I get up from the bed. “You really need to get better about your habit of losing all your clothes like this,” I say when a precursory search of the room doesn’t turn up any of his belongings. “Stefan, see if you can find a first aid kit.”
Keith had to have left one around somewhere.
“Cabinet in the bathroom next door, probably.” Hyacinth gets up and picks up a discarded sheet. He wraps it around himself and knots it into place. “Discreet doctor, too.”
The next step Hyacinth takes falters, but I’m right there to catch him.
“Shit,” Hyacinth hisses. “Give me a second. I’ll help with the body when I catch my breath.”
“You’ll sit the fuck down and wait until we get your wound cleaned,” I retort. I push him back down. “I’ll text my doctor on the way out and get him to meet us at my house.”
The blood loss has me concerned, but it’s not like I can take Hyacinth to the hospital.
It’s fine.
No matter what happens, I’ll make sure he’s fixed up until he’s as good as new.
He’s mine, and I’ll take care of him.
Forever.