Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ariana
I woke with a jolt, my heart punching against my ribs like it was trying to escape. The room was dark. Too dark. The sheets were cold beside me, the emptiness so sharp it felt like a knife sliding along my skin. Something felt…off.
Wrong.
I told myself it was just because Henry wasn’t here. The uneasiness creeping along my spine. The pressure in my chest. The way my breath wouldn’t settle. That was all this was.
Nothing more.
I tossed the covers off and grabbed my robe, slipping it on as I padded across the room, needing some water to quench the dryness in my mouth.
Rubbing my eyes, I opened the door and stepped into the hallway.
I immediately froze.
A silhouette filled the darkened space.
Tall.
Broad.
But not Henry.
My pulse stuttered, my stomach dropping as I peered into two dark eyes I prayed I’d never see again.
Victor.
His lips curved into a slow, sinister smile that made all the tiny hairs on my body stand on end.
“Hello, wife. Happy to see me?”
“What are you doing here?” I whispered, backing up as he stalked toward me until my spine slammed into the far wall.
“I’m here to take back what’s mine.” He gripped my hair so hard tears blurred my vision. “And make no mistake, Ariana. You are mine.”
He flung me across the room and onto the bed like I weighed nothing. The mattress thudded beneath me, adrenaline causing my movements to be jerky and unsteady.
I tried to remember what Henry had taught me. Tried to remain calm. But around Victor, it was a losing battle. Still, I attempted to scramble off the bed, but he was on top of me before I could, pinning me down.
“Seems like you need a reminder of who you belong to.”
He pulled out a knife I’d become quite familiar with and pushed my t-shirt up, exposing my stomach. Exposing the word he’d carved into me over and over until I believed it.
I tried to buck him off like Henry had trained me to do, but my muscles felt heavy. Like they were filled with wet sand. My head was foggy, my surroundings blurry.
Was I drugged?
It didn’t matter. I needed to fight. Needed to get away from Victor. Get to one of the many guns Henry had stashed around the house. But my arms wouldn’t move correctly. My fingers slipped uselessly against his wrist. Like some unknown force was keeping me pinned here.
“Ariana,” Victor purred, dragging the knife along my skin, “you should have known you’d never get away.”
His smile widened, becoming even more wicked, as I fought to lift an arm. Anything.
I couldn’t. All I could do was stare in horror as he plunged the knife deep into my stomach.
A blood-curling scream echoed through the room, and I finally managed to move, bolting upright in bed.
But the room was empty.
No Victor. No knife. No hands pinning me down. Just shadows and moonlight and the harsh rasp of my breathing.
I looked down at my stomach. No blood. No fresh scars.
“It was just a dream,” I whispered to myself. “It was just a dream.”
But my body didn’t get the message. Sweat soaked through my t-shirt. My hands trembled. My legs felt weak.
I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, repeating it was just a dream over and over, sucking in deep breath after deep breath.
It still didn’t make me feel any better.
I should have taken my mother up on her offer to stay here tonight. Or spent the night with her and Cato in the guest house.
After that dream, I didn’t want to be alone, so I changed out of my sweat-soaked pajamas, slipped on a pair of sneakers, and crept toward the door.
As I reached for the knob, I hesitated, the memory of Victor’s face flashing in my mind, causing fear to snake up my spine.
But it was just a dream. He had no way of knowing where I was. Henry repeatedly assured me I was safe. That Victor couldn’t get to me here.
And I trusted Henry.
I turned the knob slowly, blowing out a relieved breath when I was met with nothing but emptiness.
I slipped down the hall, one hand gliding along the railing as I descended the stairs, my legs still unsteady from the nightmare clinging to me like a second skin.
The house was dim and quiet, the only light a soft glow from the kitchen.
I headed that way, intending to grab a bottle of water and the flashlight Henry kept hidden in the junk drawer.
But I only made it a few steps before a shape emerged from the shadows, solid and unmistakably human.
My breath froze.
I blinked, once, twice, harder, convinced my mind was still tangled in the dream. “It’s only a dream,” I whispered. “Just a dream.”
Victor’s laugh slithered through the dark, cold enough to ice my blood.
“If this is only a dream,” he murmured, “would you feel this?”
He closed the distance with a swift, practiced motion and fisted a hand in my hair, yanking my head back.
Unlike when he did this in my nightmare, pain exploded, making me realize this was real.
Victor exposed my throat as he secured me against him, his front to my back, the cold edge of a knife kissing my skin.
The same knife that had carved me into someone else.
The same knife that had turned my skin into maps of pain.
The same knife I’d seen in my nightmare minutes ago.
Before Henry, that knife had defined me.
Before he made me feel beautiful.
Before he made me feel loved.
I refused to let this knife turn me back into the woman I used to be.
My eyes darted across the kitchen. Henry had shown me every place he’d hidden a gun before he left. At the time, I’d thought he was being paranoid.
Now I was grateful.
All I had to do was get to the drawer at the far end of the counter. Then I could end this.
End him.
Victor’s lips brushed my ear, his voice low and smug. “I bet you’re wondering how I found you.”
“How?” I asked, not because I wanted to know, but because I needed to stall.
I could just picture the grin forming on his lips. He always enjoyed the idea of being the smartest person in the room, even if he wasn’t.
“When I sent my men to retrieve you and someone else answered one of their phones, I knew I’d heard that voice somewhere. Took me a bit to place it, but I always remember people. Especially people who look at my wife in a way I don’t like.”
“I’m not your wife.”
I rammed my elbow into his stomach, desperate and sharp. The blow landed hard enough to make him grunt. He released me, and I stumbled away, sprinting toward the drawer with the gun.
But Victor was faster. Bigger. He snatched my arm and slammed me against the wall.
“Yes,” he snarled, his breath scorching my skin, “you are.”
“If you think I’m going to stay married to you now that I know what kind of monster you truly are, after you tried to have me abducted, you’re crazier than I thought.”
He tilted his head, studying me like a puzzle he thought he’d already solved. “You’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you?”
I didn’t answer. I wouldn’t let him stain Henry with his filth. Henry was kindness and loyalty and fire beneath steel. Victor didn’t deserve so much as to speak his name.
“Well, I hate to tell you this, sweetheart…” Victor’s smile sharpened, and a ball of dread formed in my stomach.
I’d seen this smile before.
It was the way he looked at me whenever he was about to deliver a devastating blow.
“Henry’s dead.”
His statement hit me with the force of a boulder. My lungs seized. A wave of cold swept through me so fast I felt nauseous.
No. He couldn’t be dead. I’d know. I’d feel it.
“You’re lying,” I hissed.
“Once I realized who that voice belonged to when I’d called the man I hired to find you,” Victor continued, almost giddy, “I tracked his movements here. Had someone override his security system. Henry’s not the only computer genius out there.
But I needed to lure him away.” His smile stretched, slow and vile.
“What better way than to let him think he’d found me? ”
My stomach heaved, regret coiling deep inside.
I should have fought harder. Insisted Henry slow down. Stayed by his side. Something, anything, other than letting him leave when I knew what Victor was capable of.
Now I’d have to live with that regret.
“So you see… There’s no reason for you to stay anymore. Time for you to be the obedient wife I trained you to be and come with me.” He shoved me toward the door.
For one disorienting moment, I let him, my grief turning me back into the version of me he’d built. The docile, hollow woman who survived by disappearing inside herself.
But then a single thought broke through like a crack of lightning.
Henry.
Henry, who told me I was brave.
Henry, who made me believe I could fight.
Henry, who laid down his life so I could finally be free.
Was I really going to let Victor drag me back into hell?
Back into being his punching bag?
I couldn’t. Not when Henry gave his life for me.
I planted my feet, my muscles trembling but locked.
Victor jerked back toward me, surprise flickering across his face. Then I slammed an open-palm strike into his nose, the cracking sound echoing around us. He howled, bringing his hand up to his face to stop the flow of blood, disoriented long enough for me to drive my knee straight into his groin.
He folded with a strangled grunt, and I ran toward the side table a few feet away where I knew there was another gun.
“Kitty grew some claws,” Victor sneered from behind, but I didn’t look back. Not when every second counted.
I yanked the drawer open with shaking hands, found the gun, and spun around.
But Victor’s blood-covered hand shot out, knocking the weapon from my unsteady grasp just as I managed to pull the trigger. The gun clattered across the floor, skidding toward the kitchen as the bullet fired upward and shattered the light fixture, glass raining down around us.
“I’ve always liked a woman with a little fight in her,” he drawled, stalking toward me, blood dripping down his face. “Makes it taste even sweeter when I win. And I always win, Ariana.”
I backed up, step by step, toward the kitchen counter. Toward the knife block. Toward the second gun. Toward any chance of survival.
“Is that why you targeted all those women?” I asked, my voice low and steady, even though my heart was thundering. “Because they had fight in them?”
“Women?” He arched a single brow.
“The ones you had sterilized.”
His grin widened. “You think you have it all figured it out. Don’t you?”
I blinked, a hint of doubt creeping in, but I pushed it down. This was what Victor did. Gaslit me. Made me question my own reality.
Not anymore.
“I do. And I also know that’s why you killed Henry’s daughter,” I said, letting his name crack through me. “Sarah. You killed her because she learned the truth, too. Because she outsmarted you.”
His expression flickered for a fraction of a second. Victor hated the idea of anyone outsmarting him, so I knew my statement would hit a nerve.
At least, I thought it would.
Instead, he threw his head back and laughed.
Loud. Wild. Untethered.
When his eyes snapped to mine, something feral lurked there.
“I didn’t kill Sarah,” he explained calmly. “Although she goes by Nova now.”
The world tilted, my heart dropping to the pit of my stomach as my brain struggled to keep up with what he just admitted.
“What do you mean? Is she alive?”
“She is. She was chosen.”
“For what?”
“The same thing you were. So let’s go.”
He reached for me, and I didn’t hesitate.
I spun, grabbed the cast-iron skillet off the stove, and swung at his head.
He stumbled back, and I ran toward the gun on the floor.
But Victor tackled me, slamming me onto my back. Pain exploded up my spine as he wrestled the gun from my fingers and pressed it toward my face.
“I don’t want to kill you, Ariana, so stop fighting,” he hissed. “You won’t win. You should know that by now.”
My arms trembled, muscles screaming, but I pushed back with everything I had.
“Never.” My voice tore from my throat, raw and fierce. “I’ll never stop fighting you.”
His smile slithered across his face as he forced the gun closer.
“Have it your way.”
The barrel hovered inches from my forehead.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
And something strengthened inside me.
Not fear. Not submission.
Something sharp.
Something wild.
Something that felt a hell of a lot like freedom.
I wrenched my body sideways at the same second he fired. The deafening crack detonated beside my ear, splintering the hardwood floor inches from my skull. The recoil rocked him back just enough for me to shove upward, scrambling out from under him as he swore and tried to adjust his grip.
My hands fumbled uselessly against the floorboards until my fingers brushed something cold.
Metal.
His knife.
I lunged for it, my breathing ragged.
But before I could, Victor grabbed my ankle and yanked, sending pain tearing up my leg. I crashed forward, my chin slamming into the floor so hard stars burst across my vision. Still, I refused to give up, my nails scraping wood as I reached for the handle.
“Ariana,” he growled, dragging me back. “Enough.”
But he didn’t understand.
Enough happened years ago.
Enough was the last time he carved the word whore into my skin.
Enough was when he made me believe fighting was pointless.
I twisted, kicking with every ounce of panic-sharpened strength I had, my shoe striking something solid, but it barely slowed him. He launched himself at me, his weight crushing down on my hips, my ribs, pinning me flat on my back.
His breath was hot and furious against my face, his teeth bared, eyes burning with that same look of possession he’d always had.
“I told you,” he panted, his hand moving to my throat. “I always win.”
His fingers tightened.
The pressure was instantaneous. Brutal. A vise around my windpipe.
Air shredded in my lungs, what little was left escaping in an ugly gasp. My back arched, body thrashing on instinct, but he adjusted his grip, cutting off every desperate, clawing attempt at breath.
Black dots obscured my vision like falling ash. I gripped his wrist, nails digging in, trying to pry him off, but he only squeezed harder. My chest burned, every muscle screaming for oxygen I couldn’t reach.
Maybe he did always win.
Until now.
Because even as my vision dimmed, even as the edges of the world blurred and curled inward, I felt something crack open inside me. Something fierce. Something Henry couldn’t teach me, but something he helped me uncover.
I was a warrior.
And warriors didn’t surrender.
My arms fell to the floor, heavy and uncontrollable, fingers fumbling. Searching.
And then I felt it again, the welcome metal of Victor’s knife.
“You may have always won before,” I choked out, my voice strained as I struggled for one last breath. One last second. One last chance. “But not anymore.”
The world narrowed to a pinpoint as darkness threatened to consume me.
And then I wrapped my fingers around the knife.