Chapter 31
PINK
I’d worn a fun hot-pink pleated skirt with my combat boots and tucked in a new T-shirt of the Wicked Witch of the West to walk through the little fun house Rafe, Ezra, and Bane had put together for me that night.
I decided my villains sometimes were the heroes, and I loved the witch specifically for that reason.
I loved what my very own villain heroes had done for me that day even more though. They’d put together a fun house, telling everyone that it was a request of the bride before the wedding rehearsal and I watched as they shut it down right when Ivan entered.
No one was allowed in as they came to ask me if I wanted to walk through it with them after they finished what needed to be done to the man beforehand.
I saw the look of murder in Bane’s eyes but told him I wanted Ivan at the end for me to confront, that I wanted to walk through the fun house alone to face him down at the end.
I knew Bane didn’t want to agree but he gritted his teeth and nodded. Bane was planning and orchestrating fast just for me, no one else today. He was giving me exactly how I would have wanted someone’s death to be.
It was the way Bane had made me face the fear of the closets. I wanted to face down the man who’d taken so much from me and decide what to do then.
I knew who I was now, knew I needed the exposure, knew that, for me, I might never heal but closure could come at this cost tonight. I’d face him down and say what I wanted to, would give myself the voice he didn’t give me that night.
When I stepped into the fun house, I got to hear his screams. They were guttural and begging. Over a speaker, they sounded, and I smiled because I knew right away Bane planned every single thing. It was the perfect present to me.
A way for him to redeem what he thought he needed to.
He didn’t, but I still loved that he wanted to.
The blood on the walls seemed real, smelled real, and made me think they’d dragged him through here just to add a bit of ambience for me.
I smiled the whole way through at all the décor that had been added, at the fact they’d put up a damn fun house within hours while I’d sat in my room, staring out the window as I watched them. They’d practically locked me in there anyway and told me to wait and let them work.
Was it sadistic and corrupt that I smiled the whole time and allowed it? Probably, but I didn’t care.
I turned the last corner in the fun house, and there in the middle of a mirrored room was a man, arms and legs zip tied to a chair, his face so bloodied that it looked like one of the masked men I’d encountered over the years.
The smell of burning flesh was present too, and I could only guess what part of him they’d burned.
I saw the outline of an iron at his crotch though, and it brought me a warped kind of giddiness.
“You,” Ivan whispered through his cracked mouth. His eyes were almost swollen shut, his lip bleeding, and his cheeks cut up from whatever blunt force he’d had to endure. His nails were gone too, dripping from the tips of them as they hung loosely at his side. “She’s why I’ve been tortured?”
His question wasn’t even directed at me. Bane eyed him in disgust. “Why else?”
“That… you’ll… my father will kill you all. He’ll rip apart your whole—”
“You think I care? I’d start a world war for her and burn it all to the ground.” It looked like Ivan was going to try to continue but Bane held up a hand, “Don’t talk or I’ll sew your lips shut.”
I tsked at Bane. “He can talk if he wants. I’d love to hear what he has to say.”
“What did you tell them?” Ivan asked, trying to see me through the one eye he could open.
I glanced at my pink manicure and sighed. “Not really sure I remember exactly what I said … kind of like how I don’t really remember our whole night together, Ivan.”
“You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you?”
I eyed Bane when he took a step because I wanted my moment with this man, just me and him. Bane froze and nodded at me even though I saw how his muscles coiled.
“Fine, Pink. He’s yours to do what you want with.
But I’d slash him here.” He pointed at Ivan’s stomach.
“Here.” He motioned at Ivan’s thigh. “And here.” He waved at his face like I could choose.
“He’ll bleed out enough that he may die, or maybe he’ll live and we’ll get to bleed him out every year for what he’s done to you. ”
God, I loved his plans and structure in his violence—the math to the madness.
It wasn’t random. It was precise, ritualized.
He took cruelty and made it into order. The sight of him, so wound up and so exact in his ruthlessness, made something low and hot move through me.
I’d wanted my monster, and he gave it to me, delivering pain to this man like a symphony of devastation.
I loved the devil in him probably even more than I loved how he cared for me.
Ivan didn’t. He scoffed and then spit blood from his mouth before he grumbled, “You better thnk real hard about what you do to me, Bianca.”
“Oh, I’m not Bianca.” I smiled and then skipped up to him, literally skipped, and when I was just inches from his face, I grabbed a fistful of his matted blond hair and yanked him up to look directly at me.
“But I am a real piece of work now that all my friends call me Pink. And I think it’s partially because you raped the hell out of me and made me think I wasn’t worthy of love from the one person I cared about.
You took years from him and me. Do you know how mad that makes me? ”
“Who? Him? Bane Black?” He shook his head in disgust. “Is that why you wanted the mask? I couldn’t believe Angela had been right about that. It was only supposed to be a little fun, Bianca. I thought you—”
I jammed the knife into his cheek, slicing through it so that his mouth was exposed and his scream curdled through the mirrors of the funhouse.
I thought it would make me a bit sick, but the rush of power did the opposite. My skin tingled, my heart sped up, my blood surged through me in delight.
I accepted that I was twisted and that I loved it right then.
I glanced at Bane and smiled. “I don’t especially like a man blaming a woman and telling her what he thought, as if our feelings aren’t valid.
Make note of that and make note of the fact that his sister, Angela, needs to be paid a visit. ”
“Noted.” Bane nodded and rocked back on heels.
“Please.” Ivan’s begging was garbled by the blood and the hanging flesh from his face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I lived with the guilt and I felt—”
I stabbed into his thigh then, hopefully hitting the artery that would make him bleed out. “I don’t like men acting like the victim either after they made us into survivors.”
“Also noted.” Bane responded again. “Can a man tell you you’re beautiful, though? Absolutely flawless when you’re vicious and merciless like you should always be, Pink.”
“If he intends to continue telling me it for the rest of my life.” I smirked at him, hinting at the very thing I would need after this, and then I turned back to Ivan.
Poor Ivan seemed to be in shock that I’d stabbed him, but his true colors came out then. “You bitch! You stupid, psychotic bitch. You wanted it. You wanted me to—"
The fury that whipped out of me was so cathartic and forceful that when my hand smacked across his face, he teetered to the floor where his blood was pooling around him.
I didn’t waste time as I got on my hands and knees right next to him so I was close enough to his face to whisper, “You wouldn’t be able to tell if a girl ever wanted it from you, Ivan, because every single one of them has been forced to fuck you or faked their orgasm with you. ”
I could see even through his swollen features that I’d hit a mark. He blubbered loudly, “You don’t know.”
“Really?” I waited a moment, and it dawned on me what I could do.
“Want me to show you?” And then I glanced over my shoulder at Bane and slowly brought one of the bloodied hands of mine under my skirt to lower the thong I had on as I met his gaze.
I bit my lip at how his eyes immediately darkened. “Bane?”
“Fuuuck, Pink.” I knew he had a perfect view of what was under my skirt as I arched my back and he didn’t deny me for one second. He came up behind me and dropped onto his knees to undo his slacks. “You going to regret me fucking you in his blood?”
I shook my head no, but he immediately grabbed a fistful of my hair and commanded, “Say you want me to fuck you next to him while he bleeds out, Pink. That you want him to die beside you as you come. I want to hear it.”
I leaned down to look Ivan straight in the eyes and said, “I want him to die while he hears what a woman’s real orgasm sounds like for the first time, Bane. Fuck me rough right in front of him while he bleeds out.”
Bane’s cock was up against my pussy immediately, his head circling and circling my opening just the way I liked. “I hope he dies while you scream my name, baby girl.”
And then he thrust in and I got to feel that delicious bite of my walls stretching to fit him. He pulled out and rocked into me again.
The rhythm was fast and mean enough that I moved against the ground, getting more and more of his blood on me. The man whimpered for mercy while I moaned in ecstasy and Bane growled in delight.
Then he smacked my ass, “Scream my name while you come, Pink. Let him hear a real orgasm before he dies.”
I screamed loud as his next thrust had me hitting the high I needed, the high I always got when I was with Bane and Bane alone. He emptied himself into me just a moment after and we collapsed in the crimson liquid surrounding us now.
Ivan wasn’t moving. I don’t think he was breathing either.
I didn’t care.
“I loved screwing in his blood, knowing he watched, tipped over in a chair he couldn’t escape from.”
“I want his skull on your shelf.” Bane murmured as he rolled off me but pulled me close.
“Only if I get to stay in the same house as those skulls and that shelf of yours.”
“That’s not exactly the plan considering we’ve gathered for your wedding.”
“And yet you’re going to veer off the plan for once for me, Bane. And after the fun house, you’re going to walk out of there and tell everyone including your brother what you truly want.”
“What’s that?”
“Me.” My smile might have looked maniacal reflecting back thousands of times over in the mirror at us, but I didn’t care. “Because you need my mess as much as I need your order. And we’ll never survive if we don’t get to do all that we do together.”
Were we toxic? Sure. Broken by life? Of course. Obsessive? Undeniably. But the truth was I didn’t want to love that was pure and simple: I wanted it messy and complicated and so epic that it fucking hurt, too.
If our love was poison, at least we ate away at the world together.
“I told Ez and Rafe already while we were setting this up.”
“Told them what?” I frowned, knowing it was going to cause some sort of drama in the family.
“That I’m violently, catastrophically in love with you, and I intend to kill both of them if they try to move forward with having Rafe marry you.”
My lips parted as his words stole my breath before I rushed him to devour his mouth. It wasn’t a sweet kiss but a primal one, wild with my untethered love for the man.
“I love you too.” I pulled back to hold his face in my hands. “So much so that it actually hurts.” I sniffled as I realized tears were streaming down my face, and then I chuckled as he wiped them away immediately.
“Are we going to cause problems?” I eyed the pahkan’s son on the ground, dead.
“You’ve already caused a war’s worth of problems, Pink. And I’ll take another war in a heartbeat just to keep you happy.”
I bit my lip, trying not to jump his bones again. “What did Rafe say when you told him all this?”
“He didn’t even blink. He laughed in my face and said ‘Finally. Took you long enough. I was concerned I was going to have to kiss her.’ As if I would have let that happen.”
“So you’re all good?”
“Minus the Russian war that’s about to happen? Yeah.”
“Great.” I clapped my hands together. “When are we getting a home? I want out of the resort.”
“You gonna let me collect more skulls in one?”
“Only if they wrong you, me, or our family.” I hooked my arms around his shoulders and brushed my lips against his.
He nipped my bottom lip and asked for clarification. “That include your friends?”
I chuckled at the way he was pushing for more vengeance even when it hadn’t happened yet. “Of course. Your friends are the family at this point … and famiglia prima, sempre. Also, you know our family’s going to get bigger soon too? I expect about five of your replicas as fast as we can make them.”
“Me?”
“Replicas of me would be scary.” He played with a tendril of my hair.
“Or perfectly diabolical, just the way I like them.” I smiled and then sighed, knowing I had to remind him. “I’m not sure I can have kids after my miscarriage.”
He hummed. “I can research about a million different options from surrogates to adopting. You’ll have kids, baby girl. I’ll make sure of it.” And then he moved between my legs. “The plan is to start trying immediately.”
I wiggled beneath him. “You plan to get me pregnant, you better plan to give me a Halloween wedding with about a hundred masked men.”
“None of which will be allowed to go near you, Pink.”
“Just one then.”
THE END