AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sergey is weeping too hard to form words. There’s none that could save him, anyway.
I grab his ruined left hand and splay it wide. . The stumps of his fingers have stopped bleeding, but they’re red and throbbing. When I stomp on it again, though, the blood starts running anew.
“Where was Ryder when you had your hands under her dress?” I hiss, twisting his left wrist until it snaps.
He’s screaming so loud he can’t hear me. It’s fine. I don’t care anymore.
“Ryder wasn’t there when you punched her in the face and forced her against a wall. Did you use this hand?” I ask, picking up his right hand.
Before he can answer, I jam my gun to his palm and pull the trigger.
Gunpowder and flesh explode in the small space. The smell of burning skin fills the air.
Between the gunshot and Sergey’s screaming, one of his neighbors might have called the cops. Or, given the neighborhood, maybe not.
Either way, I’m done with him.
His mouth is forming around what would be his final words, but I press the gun to his head. With one final shot, Sergey slumps to the floor, finally rendered into the useless bag of flesh I always knew he was.
I look down at Sergey’s broken body, but the beast in my chest doesn’t go back to its cage. It curls tighter around my heart, filling my lungs. It grows bigger, wanting more.
Wanting her.
But I already gave myself over to that. I took that path and it led us here.
I won’t follow it again.
57
LUNA
I stand by the window in Yakov’s room and watch lights move up the driveway.
Nikandr and Mariya got back half an hour ago. I could hear their muffled voices in the kitchen, so I stayed in my room.
You’ve done enough.
I can’t get Yakov’s voice out of my head. He looked at me like I was as bad as Sergey. Like I handed Mariya to Sergey and his friend on a silver platter.
In some ways, I might as well have.
That’s the last time I take Mariya’s word for anything. Whatever she tells me is going to be double- and triple-confirmed next time.
If there is a next time.
I shove that thought aside as I watch Yakov climb out of his car and storm in. The front door slams open and the screaming begins immediately. Whatever Yakov has been up to for the last thirty minutes, it didn’t do a thing to calm him down.
“Just listen to me!” Mariya yells.
But Yakov doesn’t take orders from anyone. “I saved your ass tonight, Mariya. I have a fucking price on my head, but I was out there saving you. Both of us could have been killed.”
He has a price on his head? Someone is trying to kill him?
This is news to me, but Mariya seems to blow right past it. “Creepy guys exist everywhere. Am I supposed to stay in some isolated bubble because men are perverted?”
“You’re supposed to have a guard with you at all times,” Nik interjects. “Someone is supposed to know where you are so we can stop things before you’re getting groped on some pedophile’s couch!”
“Fuck the guards,” Yakov barks. “You’re going to be locked up so tight you’ll wish you were in a bubble. Your phone is gone, your laptop is gone, anything you could use to reach anyone outside of this house is gone.”
