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“Merde, you okay, Ward?”
Ward.
The name on my falsified birth certificate but not my true name.
My true name I’d only just found out, and under no circumstances could it be uttered around this scum.
Cursing under my breath, I glanced at the man beside me.
The man I’d painstakingly stalked, befriended, and done whatever it took to gain his trust. Six months it’d taken. Six months to slime my way into his inner circle when I should’ve run in the opposite direction.
He was the type of human I did my utmost to avoid because he represented who I truly was at my core. Each time I hung out with him—slowly evolving from shared drinks with acquaintances to watching dark-web porn in his den—I came face to face with the monster inside me.
It clawed and snarled. It thirsted for things not normal. It howled for things not sane. My dreams were full of despicable deeds, and my body hardened at the foulest images. The first time I’d been invited to his house to watch some sick shit he subscribed to, I’d had to run to the bathroom to throw up.
Just because I had urges didn’t mean I would ever, fucking ever, give in.
I’d walked away when I’d wanted to keep going. I still had a shred of decency…unlike the animals in those movies.
But, little by little, video clip by video clip, I shut down the parts of me that I’d clung to all my life. I turned my back on the last embers of light and embraced the disturbing darkness within me.
That choice had gotten me this far.
But at what cost?
My fucking soul, that’s what.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I muttered, snatching a serviette from the holder on the bar, watching with morbid satisfaction as the pristine white soaked a vibrant red with my blood.
I shuddered as I imagined someone else’s blood. A nameless woman with her eyes wet and legs spread—
Fuck.
Clenching my teeth, I scrubbed at the wound.
I was so fucking twisted.
I should’ve just killed myself when I had the chance—done myself a favour instead of being weak and reaching out to my half-brother. A sibling I hadn’t even known existed until my mother told me on her deathbed four months ago. I’d thought my father was a deadbeat who’d knocked her up, then left her with nothing and no one.
Turned out, my origins were far, far worse.
“Looks deep, man.” Roland grabbed my wrist and inspected my wound. My skin crawled where he touched me, but I kept a perfectly schooled grimace on my face. It would not help my case if he learned how many murdering fantasies I’d had since entering this nightclub with him.
He was lucky I hadn’t grabbed the velvet rope stands of the queue outside and bludgeoned him around the head. Incredibly lucky I hadn’t shoved a microphone down his throat from the awful singing DJ or smashed a bottle of expensive Johnnie Walker and stabbed his jugular with glass shards.
My nostrils flared as his fingers tightened around me, then fell away.
Keep it together, asshole.
I only had one chance at this.
One.
If I succeeded in doing what my half-brother demanded of me, I would have a family for the first time in my godforsaken life. But if I failed…that family I wanted so desperately would slit me from ear to ear and bury me in an unmarked grave. Probably with my heart torn out and cock ripped off, just like he’d promised.
“Ah, merde, he’s here. Mop up that massacre.” Roland chuckled, sending his baguette and chocolate éclair-loving guts jiggling. “Then again, he might like it. Maybe the Master Jeweler will make you bleed tonight instead of some poor girl.”
I kept my lips plastered into a grin instead of reaching for the glass splinters on the ground and driving them into his eyes. For a man who indulged in sexual appetites as much as he, I wasn’t sure how Roland hadn’t burned off the layer of fat he carried.
