Chapter 18
Eighteen
Theo
“You want to show yourself to her first, or should I?” I asked Connor, wiping a splatter of blood from my forehead as I tried to calm my breathing.
We were standing at the side of the car my sister sat in, both catching our breaths, running internal checks to make sure we’d got out unscathed even though it had been a piece of piss. Too fucking easy.
The driver and bodyguards were dead, killed with a gunshot wound each to the head.
But my sister remained in the back of the car, screaming and whimpering, varying between the two at quite an impressive rate.
From anger and rage to fear and a pathetic indignation she and my mother understood so well.
Something Vi and Amaryllis had never mastered.
With no one to tell her what to do, she just sat there and raved.
No attempt to escape, to run. Connor and I were in shadow still, hesitating though we had little time.
But I wasn’t sure if our faces would make it better or worse.
She cried. She screamed. But she remained there.
Just waiting for death. For her fate. Fucking idiot.
“Shit, man, I think that should be on you,” I said to him.
“Might be less of a shock. I’m not exactly popular with the family at the moment…
” Who knows what they’d been told about me, what my father had deigned to share with them.
I’d informed him about what I’d been doing with Violet, after all, but in a much more disgusting way. What we had was fucking beautiful.
Connor snorted and rolled his eyes, leaning his face against the glass with his hands cupped so he could peer in.
While he looked in on Margaret, making her scream louder, I turned to look for Violet, expecting to spot her silhouette amongst the trees, awaiting my instruction. I hoped anyway. Lord knows with her. It itched at me when I couldn’t see her.
I knew it had been a bad idea to lock her in the car; it had my bones on fire the moment she wasn’t visible anymore. It’s why I’d been on my way back to get her, second guessing my plan, leave her or bring her, the entire time.
When she’d popped up in the trees, for a moment I’d been so scared. What if she’d got lost? Wandered the wrong way? She was too damn precious to be left alone. But I’d done it again.
My brow furrowed when I didn’t spot her right away.
“Shit, she smacked the glass,” Connor said with an uncharacteristic yelp as he jumped back, returning my attention to the pressing issue.
Margaret knew who we were now, and started yelling profanities, demanding we take her to Rafael’s compound like the good little brainwashed minion she was.
I saw her angry face pressed against the glass as she glared at me, before sloping back into the darkness enclosing her.
“Come on, we’ve gotta hurry,” I huffed, moving to the other side of the car to block Margaret’s other exit. Not that I thought she’d run.
There had been so many variables to this plan, it was risky as shit, and we had no idea how much longer we’d be alone on this road.
Margaret’s car might have been in front.
There might have been an innocent car too close by.
But it had gone okay. So far, so good. Though my eyes lingered on that first car, not knowing who was inside was annoying me…
Christian said he couldn’t be certain, told me to ignore it.
“You know who was in that other car?” I asked. “Did you see?”
Connor shook his head, but I saw a glimmer of something there. Guilt, maybe? Did he know?
Then Margaret slammed her door open, the metal hitting my hip, and tried to shove me out of the way as she climbed out. I let her, stepping back and out of her space.
She glared at me, brushing her clothing down with a huff.
“What on earth are you playing at, Theodore?” she asked me, scolding me like she was my mother, channeling that haughtiness only an upper class Brit could muster.
It made me shiver. “What could you possibly be doing here on the side of the road in the middle of the night?”
“Saving you,” I replied, saluting her with my gun, already pissed off with her superior-than-thou attitude. Like Charlie, she always felt the happiest with her lot in life, always the most willing to live in this shit heap. “So get the fuck off the road.”
“Theodore…” Margaret whispered, then looked towards the other car, frowned at the chaos. Did I detect a moment of doubt? But for what? To come with me or to try to leave with them?
“You know the life they intend for you, yeah? Violet ran to get away from it.”
Margaret pursed her lips, looking so much like our mother it was painful. I could see the evil in her, the bitterness. Her nose turned up, her chin raised high with a lot more dignity than the moment allowed. “I don’t want to come with you.”
“Well, tough shit,” Connor said, sauntered around the car, his eyes still swiveling. “We’re going.”
“You can go over my shoulder or you can use your legs,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “They’ll kill you, Mag, don’t be stupid.”
With a dramatic sigh, she gestured for me to lead the way. What a bitch. Why Violet was so desperate to rescue her…
“Vi?” I said, my eyebrows dropping. Fuck.
I hadn’t seen her, had I? Idiot. My flesh roiled with sudden panic.
Needed to head back into the tree line to hunt that woman down.
My gut lurched, reaching through my skin to find her, to get close to her and make sure each hair on her scalp was where it should be.
“Violet’s here?” Margaret asked, sneering in disgust before shaking her head. “No. No, I don’t want to go. I won’t go. Not with that traitor.”
Margaret turned and tried to get away from us, fighting and struggling as both Connor and I subdued her without hurting her, pinning her limbs while she kicked and squirmed. The urge to wallop her over the head was almost unbearable. It would make this so much easier…
She continued to fight as we lifted her from the ground and dragged her into the trees to our car. She struggled and shouted, so Connor put his hand over her mouth. Together, we both cursed the decision to save her. Ungrateful brat.
With each step I took towards the car, I expected Violet to appear. She’d gone back to the car; she must have. She wasn’t where I left her, watching from the safety of the trees. Of course she’d be in the car; she didn’t have a death wish. She wasn’t stupid.
It was only when the car came back empty that the panic in me grew to cloying at my throat. “Oh, shit.” Where was she? No, this was wrong. She should be right fucking here.
“Violet?” Connor called, his voice low but carrying. We had mere fucking minutes until we were out of time. We needed to get away. Now. But Violet wasn’t here. If she’d… fuck.
I told Connor to get Margaret into the car, give it a few minutes, then leave.
Vi and I would walk through the woods and contact him when we could.
I needed to find her. Releasing Margaret, I didn’t even turn back as I raced towards the road again, following the path of destruction to the first car.
I had a feeling that’s where she’d have gone, just to see…
Bodies I didn’t recognize, of men who must belong to Rafael, lay bloody in the seats. And the rear passenger door was open, clear signs of something big dragged from it, wide tracks in the debris. We were banking on Rafael covering this mess up, intending to leave it for him to discover.
I let myself calm, think, track. The dragging marks were blood and glass and dirt, black dust from the car wheels underfoot.
Shit shit shit. Where was she? What had she done?
I heard a deep-rooted, anguished scream as I stepped into the woods to follow the tracks. A sobbing, shrieking sound full of terror and rage. Violet. I’d recognize her anywhere. Oh fuck.
My feet picked up, and I ran. For no more than a few minutes, I raced as fast as I could, my pulse pounding in my ears as I followed the dragging tracks and tried not to let panic overwhelm me. Then the trees cleared away. Sudden, shocking and making me stumble to a stop.
The scene before me in the small clearing, lit only with a smattering of starlight, made my heart skip a few beats.
Violet was straddling a body, screaming as she drove my knife into its stomach over and over. She was in a fugue state, panting and yelling as she shoved the blade in again and again. And the body, the body was covered in mud, mouth, ears, nose, all stuffed. Eyes looked weird.
Almost unrecognizable. Almost.
Father.
Oh, damn.
“Vi,” I muttered, stepping closer to her, trying to not look too close at the mangled form of our father. Trying and failing. “Violet, honey. He’s dead.”
He was clearly dead, glassy, open eyes and broken capillaries all over his muddy, purple face. Despite that, she kept stabbing.
“He can’t stay, Theo,” she cried. “He has to go. Theo, he… he started this… it was him… He needs to be dead. Dead dead dead.”
I took careful steps closer, my hands raised like I was coming to a wild animal that might spook any second and bite my face off.
“Vi, stop,” I told her again. “He is dead.”
“How can you be sure?” she asked, whipping her untamed gaze to me, the knife braced mid-air. “He’s in here. He started this.”
“Chop off his head,” I said, making her eyes widen. “Then you’ll know for sure. We can take it with us, throw it in a fucking river or feed it to some pigs. Then you’ll know.”
“I…” she said, turning back from me to our dead father lying prone on the floor, her thighs straddling his. He was a bloody mess, his stomach and genitals only gore. She’d stuffed mud into his mouth to suffocate on. It looked a disgusting, horrible death.
I only wished I’d witnessed it.
“Chop off his head,” I told her again, falling to my knees beside her. “Then you’ll understand.”
“Help me,” she whispered, questioning.
And I did it. Without flinching, I wrapped my hand around hers and moved the blade from his stomach to his neck. The first slice was easy, skin and fat giving way to muscle and cartilage.
It was the last cuts, sawing through the bone with an unserrated knife, the squeaking, the way it caught in the white, snagged and fought with us, but we pushed and sawed, letting his blood wash over our hands and ooze onto the mud.
Me and the devil, we were together. Violet and I, with our shared demon destroyed.
Father’s head pulled free with a sickening wet tug, and I grabbed it, yanking it from his body with my fingers in his hair.
I stood before Violet, and she looked up at me, still on her knees, like in worship. Gaze heavy, chest heaving.
“What do you want to do with it?” I asked, and her eyes fell to the gormless head of our father. He was dead. She could see that now. A man couldn’t survive without a head.
A smile spread across her face, her chest rising and falling fast, her body covered in blood and mud and scratches. Again, that rage in her slipped away, a soft state, a satisfaction overcoming her.
“What do you need?” I asked, a little worried she was just going to curl up and fall asleep. There was space for that later, not now.
But without a word, her hands came to my belt. She lowered my zipper and pulled my cock out like it belonged to her. Which, of course, it fucking did. It was half-hard from watching her and continued to thicken as she brought it to her mouth. Shock didn’t win out over lust, and I didn’t stop her.
She sucked on me while I held the decapitated head of our father, while she used him as a seat to brace herself.
Her moans were vibrant, her body almost writhing with the pleasure release of it, the tension she was letting go.
There was little to no chance she wasn’t going to conk out here and now once this was done.
I came down her throat fast and sudden, dropping Father’s head into the mud so I could grasp hers as zaps of electricity shot up my spine and I poured hot cum into her belly.
“Violet,” I said with a breathy moan as my orgasm receded and my vision cleared. That was probably the most fucked up thing we’d ever done.
She said my name back, and I helped her climb off his dead body, her legs like Bambi as she straightened up. I expected a kiss, for her to push for more contact, for me to make her come as hard as she’d made me.
But she sank her head onto my chest, and the dam holding off her tears burst.