Chapter Forty
Valhalla
The rage that poured off me was suffocating. It wasn’t just rage, though, was it? It was a festering knot of betrayal, a poisoned chalice I’d drained willingly, believing it was honor. And now, the bitter dregs were surfacing, tasting like failure and regret.
It wasn’t true. I refused to believe that after everything I endured, everything I did for that piece of shit, after trusting that motherfucker with my very soul, he allowed the bitch to deliver not one but two fucking brats.
“NO!” My shriek was a raw, primal sound that ripped through the air like a jagged shard of glass.
He’d played me. He used me to blackmail August into his own sadistic game, and when he was done with me, he threw me away in that fucked-up place. He never cared about me at all.
I was nothing but a means to an end.
My eyes, no longer holding even a pretense of normalcy, now blazed with furious disbelief as I stared at the photograph.
Dakota, his own face a mask of annoyance, snatched it from my grasp, his knuckles white as he stared at the image of the whore, radiant and full of life, clutching two small children.
“You’re losing it.” Dakota’s voice was a low growl, laced with a disgust that stung more than any of George’s lies.
And he was right. I was losing it. This all-consuming fury was a path I’d sworn I would never tread, a descent into the very savagery I’d fought so hard to escape, the kind of savagery that branded my past and threatened to consume my future.
But what choice did I have? To accept this was to accept my own utter annihilation, my entire existence a charade built on a foundation of deceit.
To lash out, to destroy, felt like the only way to reclaim something, anything, of myself.
And the terrifying part was that even as a piece of me screamed against it, another, darker part, relished the thought.
It was a twisted kind of catharsis, a promise of oblivion that felt terrifyingly like freedom.
Dakota growled, his voice raw, dangerous as he advanced on me. His eyes, twin pools of malice, promised a swift and brutal end as he raised his hand, backhanding me hard across my face. “I had the little bastard, and my fucking father let him leave!”
My own fury erupted, a tempest mirroring Dakota’s.
“You fool! You absolute imbecile!” I shrieked, lunging at him, as my nails raked his face.
“He played you! He played us both!” I screamed, snatching the photograph back from him.
My eyes, wide with a manic gleam, scanned the smiling faces of that bitch and her two children, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Two? She had two children. All this time...”
I could see the wheels turning in Dakota’s mind, the realization dawning that he had been played too, that his meticulously crafted plan had unraveled because of his father’s desire to play games.
I was a whirlwind of destructive energy; my earlier composure now completely shattered.
“He knows where to find them, Dakota,” I spat, my voice laced with a desperate hope, my eyes darting back to the man on the floor. “Sinclair knows. He knows everything!”
Dakota’s rage, momentarily diverted, now settled back on Sinclair with renewed intensity. He grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, his eyes blazing. “You will tell me where they are, or I swear to fucking God, I will rip out every last tooth in your head and make you eat them.”
“Fuck you,” Sinclair seethed, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth as I stared at the photo. A cruel smile played on my lips, a reflex honed by years of manipulation, but beneath the surface, a tremor of something else, something unfamiliar and unwelcome, was stirring.
It was the image of her. The girl I’d painstakingly been, now reduced to a mere object of leverage.
My mind raced, a familiar thrill of expected victory warring with a gnawing unease.
Could I truly go through with this? Shatter the last innocent vestige of the person I once was.
My laughter, when it finally broke free, felt brittle, a sharp shard of ice in the charged silence.
Both men turned to stare at me as if I’d lost my mind.
Maybe I have. The thought flickered, a terrifying whisper that I quickly shoved down.
This was no time for introspection.
This was the moment of truth, the culmination of everything.
But as I raised the photo, my hand trembling slightly—a betrayal I refused to acknowledge—a wave of self-loathing washed over me.
This wasn’t the calculated move I’d envisioned.
This was desperate, ugly. I saw not just leverage, but the shattered innocence in familiar eyes I saved years ago, the trust she’d placed in me.
And I was about to capitalize on it, to twist it into a weapon.
It was a path I’d always sworn I’d never take, a line I’d promised myself I’d never cross, even in pursuit of my own warped justice.
Yet, here I was, with the taste of bile in my mouth, the realization dawning with sickening clarity.
I smiled, or rather, my face contorted into a semblance of one.
“Did you think I wouldn’t recognize her?
I raised her!” My words were out, sharp and cold, and in that instant, I knew I’d made a choice I would carry, a scar that would never fully fade.
The unfolding drama I’d craved now felt like a precipice, and I was falling, knowing I’d just pushed myself.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dakota seethed, shoving Sinclair away as he landed back on the floor.
Waving the photograph in the air, I grinned. “The girl. It’s Kytten.”
“Who?”
“Kytten. A member of my club. I found her living on the streets when she was little. Some stupid child-fucker was trying to get his hands on her. I killed him and took her. She’s been mine ever since.” I smirked as I remembered something else. “And I fucking know where her brother is too.”
“Where?”
“They are both in Diamond Creek, Nebraska.”
“That’s Silver Shadows’ territory.”
“Exactly.” I grinned as my brain started thinking fast. “More importantly, Kytten’s loyal, Dakota. Do you know what that means?”
“It means she can be swayed.”
“Exactly.” I nodded. “I get Kytten, and her brother will follow. He’s protective.”
“I will take care of that.” Dakota smiled, then turned, pointing to Sinclair lying on the floor. “What about him?”
Grinning a savage, predatory grin that stretched my jaw tight, I advanced. The stink of fear filled my nostrils as I loomed over his crumpled form on the floor. His defiant eyes threatened retribution, and I welcomed it. For too long, I allowed my fear of this bastard to overrule my life.
No more.
With a guttural snarl that tore from my throat, I brought my foot down, and a sickening crack echoed as my boot connected with his ribs.
I unleased years of torment and fear as I beat, punched, and kicked at Sinclair, desperately trying to eviscerate him from my existence.
The sickening crunch of bone against bone was music to my ears, a symphony of broken promises and shattered defiance.
Sinclair’s gasps of pain were a balm to the festering wound of my humiliation.
I had endured years of George Stone’s carefully orchestrated games, his subtle manipulations, all while he believed he was the puppet master.
But he was dead, and I was the one now holding all the cards.
“You think you can play me, Sinclair?” I snarled, my boot connecting with his jaw, sending him sprawling back onto the floor.
“You think you’re so smart. That you’re the only one who holds all the cards. ”
My gaze flickered to the photograph in my hand, a chilling realization dawning.
Kytten. My Kytten. This entire twisted charade, this elaborate dance of deception, was all for a child I’d plucked from the gutters.
“She is mine,” I spat, my voice raspy with exertion and a growing, terrifying clarity.
The raw, untamed fury that had been building inside me for years finally found its release, a primal scream clawing its way from my gut.
The power, the control I’d craved for so long, was finally within my grasp.
Sinclair’s groans of agony were a testament to my rising dominance.
This was not just about revenge anymore; it was about reclaiming what was rightfully mine, about rewriting the narrative, and about ensuring that everyone who dared to cross me paid the ultimate price.
“Dakota,” I said, my voice suddenly smooth, a chilling calm settling over the tempest of warring impulses deep inside my mind. It was a calm that felt unnatural, like a predator’s stillness before the pounce, a stillness I wasn’t sure I recognized as my own. “Give me your knife.”
Dakota smiled, a fleeting, almost pitying expression that I couldn’t quite decipher, and he plucked a wicked-looking blade from his boot before throwing it to me. Catching it with practiced ease, the cold steel a stark contrast to the frantic pulse thrumming in my veins, I looked down at Sinclair.
And there it was, the true horror: nothing.
Not a flicker of remorse, not a whisper of the outrage I expected to feel, not even a hint of the justice I’d convinced myself I was seeking. This void, this utter lack of emotional resonance, was more terrifying than any surge of rage could ever be.
It meant I was already lost.
Coughing up blood, Sinclair gasped, his eyes wide with a desperate plea that twisted something deep within me—a faint, flickering ember of the person I used to be, the person I was now actively extinguishing. He clutched his ribs, his body a fragile cage of pain. “What about Dante?”
His question hung in the air, heavy with implication, a loaded gun aimed squarely at my burgeoning darkness.
Dante.
The thought of him, of his innocent trust, of the life we were supposed to build, was a shard of ice in the growing inferno of my resolve. I was meant to protect him. Yet, the path I was on demanded something more.
Something definitive.
Something final. To turn back now would be to condemn myself to a different kind of death, a death by a thousand regrets and an eternity of “what-ifs.”
Leaning forward, my words tasted like victory as I whispered, “You said it yourself, Crispin. He’s yours,” as I slid the knife deep into his gut.
The resistance was sickeningly soft, a violation that resonated not in triumph, but in a profound, soul-deep ache.
“But don’t worry,” I continued, the words a venomous bloom in my chest. “I’ll take care of him too.
I’ll take care of them both.” The realization of my words, cold and sharp as the knife in my hand, struck me with the force of a physical blow.
I had just signed my own damnation.