Chapter 24 #2
“I want to ask him why? How? How could he do that to a young girl? His niece? How could he be so sick and twisted and disgusting? What made him think he could get away with that?”
I want to take those incriminating photographs to the police—get him locked up for good.
When Fiero doesn’t reply, I storm toward the bedroom door and yank it open.
In a beat, he’s in front of me, holding my arms. When I try to push him away, he grips my wrists tightly, holding them to his heart.
“Pfeiffer, stop. Listen to me.”
“Listen to what?” I cry. “You’re not saying anything!”
“You can’t see him.”
“Yes I can. I have to,” I hiss. “I just need to get to my car.”
“No!” His voice booms around the apartment, snapping my mouth shut. “You can’t see him Pfeiffer.”
All the hurt and anger and revulsion I’ve kept bottled up for nearly fifteen years explodes in a throat-curdling scream. “WHY?”
“Because he’s dead.”
Oxygen leaves my body limp for the second time in several hours and I stagger backward, his tight grip the only reason I stay upright.
“W-what?”
“He’s dead,” Fiero repeats firmly.
My heart stutters. After all these years, I’ve finally got the courage to tell Callum exactly what I think of him, make him pay for what he did, and… he’s dead?
“H-how?”
Fiero doesn’t hesitate. “I killed him.”
I sway against his hands. “You killed him?”
His grip loosens slightly. “Yes.”
I feel like a thread come loose, unraveling at the seams, no end in sight. Rage explodes in my chest, turning the room red, obliterating my vision.
“How COULD you?” I scream.
Yanking my wrists from his grip, I pummel him with everything I’ve got.
My curled fists batter his chest, my knuckles digging into the hard muscle. My limbs lash, coming down on him in a shower of uncoordinated beatings.
And he just takes it.
His body doesn’t budge an inch as I punch into him as hard and as fast as I can.
Tears streak over my eyelids until all I can see is a blur of fists and a wall of bruising skin. My screams rattle the windows, dark shadows flying out of my soul as I realize with every blow I will never get the chance to face my abuser again.
I’ll never get the closure I need because Fiero took it from me.
I must have been flying fists at him for a good few minutes when he wraps his arms around me, burying my face in his chest. Tears flood from my eyes and I weaken in his embrace, my knees buckling.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs gently into my crown. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
My wails eventually turn to sobs, then to anguished whimpers, and he holds me through them all.
When I lean slightly away from his chest, I notice the purpling skin beneath the glistening ink. I’ve saturated him with my tears and knuckle marks and he looks all the more deadly for it.
When I lift my lashes, there’s a fullness to his gaze that I feel between my legs. And from the way his eyes tick at the corners, he can see it.
“Can I see him?” I whisper, my voice steadier now.
His full lips move surely. “No. His body has gone.”
Gone? I don’t want to know what that means.
“But I took a photograph of my own.”
My heart thumps. “Let me see it.”
He releases me slowly and walks to where his jacket has been tossed over a chair. Reaching inside, he pulls out a phone and swipes it open, then he returns, holding it out to me. I take it and peer at the screen.
I thought that if I ever saw a picture of a human, not just dead, but dismembered, in bits, recognizable parts of them swimming in a pool of their own blood, I’d be, at the very least, moved. But I feel nothing in this moment but pride.
I study the image as Fiero leaves the room, fully absorbed by the sight of slick red flesh, a disembodied head, familiar orange-hued hair matted with fresh blood. Adrenaline floods through my system, searching rabidly for an outlet. I grow hot and clammy and restless.
I feel Fiero’s heat when he comes back into the room and I turn to see him silhouetted in the doorway holding something heavy in his hand.
My gaze drops to it. The shape is alarming.
When he steps closer, the moonlight catches the silver blade. It looks like a medieval weapon, deathly sharp and harshly contoured.
“What is that?” My voice sounds faraway and just a little curious.
“The machete I used to kill your uncle.”
I swallow, raking my gaze over the phallic-shaped smooth wooden handle and the long, curved blade glistening with strips of moonlight.
My hands fist at my sides in an attempt to contain more of the violent energy coursing through my veins.
I lick my lips and Fiero’s slow, confident strides bring him into my space.
“You want closure, right?”
I glance up at him and nod.
He jerks his head toward the chair he tossed his jacket onto, and issues a blunt command. “Face that and bend over.”
My heart climbs up my throat but I do as he says. Fiero has only ever made me feel good—never bad. I trust he knows what he’s doing, and that whatever he has planned is going to bring me some kind of release.
The chair seat faces me so I lean forward, bracing my hands on the edge of the upholstered arms.
I hear Fiero’s footsteps but my brain doesn’t process them until he’s standing behind me, kicking my feet apart.
I gasp when he crawls between them, then turns to rest his back against the seat of the chair, his face level with my pussy.
My breaths come thick and fast—I have no idea what he’s about to do, but having his mouth hover so close to that intimate part of me is driving me crazy with need.
His lashes flick up, locking his gaze onto mine as he leans forward and licks haltingly over my clit.
Heat rolls right up my torso and my upper body buckles. I’m appalled at how turned on I am already. I’ve just been discussing my uncle’s brutal murder with his murderer, and I’m so wet.
He does it again, even more slowly this time, then sucks my clit into his mouth, pulling gently on it before letting it slip free.