CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SERAFINA
I had been asleep for maybe two hours, maybe less, when something in my subconscious screamed at me to wake up.
It wasn’t a loud sound that reached me. It wasn’t anything in particular that should have woken me up; it was barely perceptible, a shift in the darkness.
I lay perfectly still, my heart a frantic beat against my ribs. A cold tremor sliced through me, my spine tingling with awareness. Every nerve inside me vibrated with a frenzy; every inch of my flesh came alive, goosebumps peppering my body.
It was almost a whisper in the air, the softest creak of weight shifting on the carpet, a sound that my body had somewhat recognized before my brain could catch up.
I wasn’t alone in my hotel room.
The presence was thick and overwhelming.
I inhaled, my chest rising with the breath I took. I expected my husband’s familiar scent to fill my nose, but instead it was lemon, cigar, and something else entirely… everything about it was unfamiliar.
My eyes snapped open.
A shape, massive and dark, filled the space above me, blotting out what little light existed in the room. I knew it was a man before anything else could register.
He was impossibly tall and broad-shouldered, his features swallowed by shadow except for the pale gleam of his eyes that were flat, fixed on me in a way that wasn’t entirely human.
I didn’t think… I didn’t allow myself to before my hand reached toward the nightstand. Toward my gun.
His hands moved faster.
He was on me before I’d fully processed the threat, one moment at the foot of the bed, the next bearing down on me with a speed that should have defied the physics of a body that large. The mattress dipped violently under his weight, and I felt the sickening heat of him before he was on top of me.
My eyes widened; my lungs caved. Breathless, awful terror slammed through me.
My mouth parted, and I screamed.
The sound tore from my throat raw and ragged, but his hand was already there, clamping over my mouth before the scream could fully form.
His palm, enormous and calloused, swallowed my scream as he pressed it hard against my lips.
My teeth cut into the inside of my cheek, the taste of copper flooding my mouth.
My body erupted, my need for survival kicking in. I bucked and twisted, driving my knee upward, and it connected with something solid. He grunted low, but his grip didn’t loosen.
His other hand found my throat, fingers spread wide, the threat of what was coming more terrifying than the act itself.
God, no… I wasn’t going to die tonight. I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
Unshed tears burned my eyes as I fought him, this nameless man trying to kill me.
My hands clawed at his wrist, nails raking across skin. I scratched deep enough to draw blood; I felt it beneath my fingernails, warm and slick, but he didn’t react. He didn’t release me.
I bit his hand, my teeth sinking into the meat of his palm and grinding down until I tasted his blood this time, metallic and thick.
His grip on my throat tightened in response, fingers pressing into the tendons on either side of my neck with enough force to make my vision swim.
The bones of my jaw compressed, the invisible weight on my chest growing even more suffocating.
I fought him.
Again and again.
I wasn’t going to die tonight…
With all the twisting and bucking, the edge of the bed eventually came beneath my shoulder, and I used it to my leverage, rolling hard to my right.
My weight shifted, and his hand slipped from my mouth for half a second, long enough for me to scream again, a broken, desperate sound that echoed off the walls of the small room.
His fist came down. I felt it graze my temple, and the impact sent white light exploding behind my eyes.
The world tilted and I was falling…
My body crashed onto the carpet, the impact forcing the air from my lungs in a painful, soundless rush.
Run. Fight. Save yourself.
The words screamed through my mind as I scrambled to my hands and knees, my fingers frantically brushing the edge of the nightstand.
My gun was there. I needed my gun.
His hand closed around my ankle.
The grip was crushing. His fingers wrapped around my leg like iron bands, and he pulled. I was dragged backward across the carpet, my nightgown riding up.
Wild, senseless fear slithered through my veins, my body almost convulsing with it.
I kicked with my free foot, and my heel caught something hard. It didn’t matter what body part it was; he made a sound that might have been pain, but it was vanished before I could be sure.
I twisted onto my back, both hands gripping his wrist, trying to pry his fingers loose from my ankle. His skin was slick with sweat or blood; I couldn’t tell which, and my fingers kept slipping.
I reached up blindly, and my hand found the lamp on the nightstand.
I swung it.
The ceramic base connected with the side of his head and shattered, and for one terrible, hopeful moment, I thought I had done it. I thought he would drop.
I turned my head to the side, my eyes finding the door. It was right there, just a few feet away. I could make it. I could—
He didn’t drop though. He didn’t stop.
No.
A broken sob escaped me as he kept pulling.
No.
I was on my back now, staring up at him, and I could see his face for the first time. The man who was sent to kill me.
He was younger than I expected, and his eyes were…wrong. Flat. Dead. The eyes of a man who had been trained not to feel anything.
He released my ankle only to lunge forward, both hands coming for my throat again.
NO.
I don’t know where the strength came from. Some desperate, adrenalized part of me that I didn’t know I possessed. My fist connected with the bridge of his nose, and I felt the sickening crunch of cartilage shattering.
A spray of hot blood hit my face.
It was in my eyes, my mouth, coating my lips, staining me with its filth.
He should have stopped.
Any normal person would have stopped. The pain of a broken nose was supposed to be debilitating; it was supposed to send a person reeling. He was supposed to clutch his face and give me the small seconds I needed to run.
But nothing… no amount of pain stopped him.
He didn’t even slow down.
This time, when his hands found my throat again, his grip was absolute. His fingers closed around my neck like a vise, thumbs pressing into the hollow of my throat.
He’d done this before.
My heart hammered at the realization.
He had done this before…
… many times, to many people.
My stomach twisted violently with cold, grotesque horror.
I was just one of those people on his list.
A thin wheeze escaped me, barely a breath as he strangled me with his bare hands.
I clawed at his wrists, desperately… hopelessly.
My nails raked through skin and muscle, but his hands only tightened.
My rib cage curved inward toward my lungs as I fought to breathe, but I couldn’t…
I… couldn’t…
My vision blurred.
I can’t… breathe.
Each slowed pulse sent a fresh wave of terror through my body. Each stuttering beat of my heart was a horrifying, cruel feeling in my chest.
And I did the last thing I could, the last thing my mind begged me to try…
My hands came up and I drove my thumbs into his eyes.
It was the only thing left.
The last desperate act of a body that had run out of options.
I pressed my thumbs deep into the soft tissue of his sockets, feeling the wet resistance of the eyeball beneath.
I pushed harder, twisting, trying to blind him, trying to make him feel something—anything—that would make him stop.
He. Didn’t. Stop.
The wheeze in my throat became a soundless rattle. He wasn’t human, he couldn’t be. Humans felt pain. Humans reacted to pain. This thing was crazed, frenzied and utterly maniacal.
I was going to…die.
My lungs burned in my chest, my body screaming for oxygen that his hands would not allow.
So, this was what dying felt like.
I was…going to die, right now, on this carpet, in this random hotel room in Lisbon.
My arms grew heavy, my fingers slipping from his eyes, all my strength leaving my muscles. My legs stopped kicking.
I…was…going…to…die.
My eyes closed.
Death was ugly, I couldn’t bear to see it.
My heart slowed.
Death was painful, I couldn’t bear to feel it.
My body surrendered.
Death was soundless, I couldn’t bear to hear it.
My mind succumbed to the inevitable, recognizing with slow cruelty that I had been defeated.
And then the weight was gone.
Wrenched away with a force so violent I barely had the time to feel it.
One moment I was pinned beneath him, the next his crushing hands had vanished from my throat.
My mouth opened with a gasp. My body convulsed furiously with the first breath I took.
Ragged, shuddering breaths tore through my damaged windpipe like broken glass. The air hit my lungs and I choked on it, coughing violently.
My hands flew to my neck, fingers pressing against the bruised flesh, feeling the pulse beneath. Wild and erratic, but there. Still there. Still beating.
My body curled inward as it tried to remember how to function.
Another sound filled the room.
A sound that wasn’t coming from me.
It was the resonance of violence—brutal, vicious, and utterly without mercy.
The wet, meaty impact of fist meeting bone, over and over, a rhythm so relentless it sounded almost poetic.
I heard something crack. Multiple cracks.
I heard the splatter of blood against the wall, against the carpet.
I couldn’t see.
My vision was still blurred, the darkness receding slowly, reluctantly. But I could hear. And what I heard was the…complete and absolute annihilation of a man.
The punching didn’t stop.
It went on for what felt like hours, blow after blow after blow. Each one landed with the same devastating force, the same terrible precision.
There were no words. No curses, no threats, no demands for information.
Just the sound of a fragile body being dismantled by someone who had no intention of stopping until the thing beneath him was no longer capable of being called a body.
I pressed my palms against the carpet and pushed myself backward, dragging my body across the floor until my shoulders hit the wall.
I dragged myself upright, half sitting, half slouching against the wall.
My vision cleared in fragments.
First the ceiling and then the room itself. I saw the shattered lamp, the dark spray of blood across the beige wallpaper.
And then my gaze landed on two figures.
Adrian.
My husband’s back was to me, one knee planted on the man’s chest, his shoulders heaving with each blow, his arms moving with relentless cadence as they unwinded through violence. His fists were dark, covered in blood, the knuckles split and raw. They rose and fell in that same terrible rhythm.
The man beneath him was no longer fighting.
He hadn’t been fighting for a while.
His arms lay at his sides, fingers curled loosely.
His face was unrecognizable, a ruin of broken bone and torn flesh, the features rearranged into something that bore no resemblance to a human face.
The blood pooling beneath his head had spread across the carpet in a dark, awful stain.
Still, Adrian didn’t stop.
He hit him. Again. And again. And again.
My stomach heaved.
My throat closed around the taste of vomit filling my mouth.
I couldn’t stop looking.
I should have, but I couldn’t.
The violence was almost…hypnotic.
My face itched and I brought my hands up, feeling the wetness on my cheeks. It was his blood. My attacker’s blood that had sprayed across my skin when I’d broken his nose.
Adrian’s fist rose one final time and came down.
The impact was a dull, final sound.
Thud.
His arm hung in the air for a moment, trembling, the muscles in his forearm corded and rigid. Then it dropped to his side.
The only sound left in the room was my ragged breathing as I wheezed, each inhale a battle against the swelling in my throat.
Adrian didn’t move.
He knelt over the body, his head bowed, his shoulders rising and falling with deep, controlled breaths. His hands rested on his thighs, blood dripping from his knuckles onto the carpet in slow, deliberate drops.
Then he turned to face me.
Thud. Thud.
His face had transformed. That careful, controlled mask he wore like an armor was gone, shattered, exposing what was raw and feral beneath it. Something that had always been there, lurking beneath measured words and calculated gestures, waiting for the moment to break free.
A restrained animal. A caged monster. A shackled beast.
His eyes were wild, the dark irises locked onto me with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
Blood covered him. His hands, his forearms, the front of his shirt. It was in his hair, along his jaw, a streak of it running from his temple to the corner of his mouth like war paint.
For the first time, I wasn’t looking at the man who always had himself under control, even when he was fighting in The Pit.
Because he was always in control.
Not now. Not tonight.
I was truly looking at the monster beneath the expensive suit and arrogant smirk.
Our gazes met and his expression cracked.
The pure, unadulterated rage remained but I saw something else. Genuine, crippling fear. The mindless terror of a man who had arrived a little too late.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
His hand reached for me.
It moved slowly, palm up, fingers extended, carefully, gently toward me. His hand was broken and bloodied. It was the hand that had just beaten a man to death.
I flinched.
The movement was involuntary, a full-body recoil that pressed me harder against the wall, my legs drawing up toward my chest.
Adrian paused. His hand hung in the air between us, fingers still extended, blood dripping from the split skin of his knuckles onto the carpet between us.
“Serafina,” he breathed, my name a tender caress on his tongue.
My chest tightened.
Uncontrollable tears slid down my cheeks.
I was going to die…
I believed I would…
A broken sob escaped my damaged throat. Panic bled through my veins, the aftermath settling into my body with sickening horror.
My body shuddered. With a breath. With life