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He uses his fingernail to click the tiny silver button with a bloody grin on his face.
Life freezes in my veins.
“But you know what? I agree, we do need to finish this once and for all. Neither of us can go on living while the other one still breathes. I sure found it very hard to tolerate when you and Sade came back alive from the missions I sent you on. So, Micah? How about we make it all go away? All the pain, all the frustration, all the rage?” When Micah doesn’t reply, he grins wider. “I know that you’re tempted. So what’s holding you back? Oh wait, I see.” He looks at me, his face a vision from hell with the ugly bruises spreading on his cheeks and jaw, his split lips and that abnormal grin. And the shine in his eyes....If I didn’t know better, I’d bet the asshole has a hard-on.
It’s not unusual for the threat of death and arousal to go hand in hand, but this is another level of fucked-up.
“What is it exactly that you feel for the beautiful professor? It can’t be love because you’re not capable of that. You were born out of a gang bang, after all. Yet you would do anything for her, even sacrifice your own life. Now, that is fascinating.” He cocks his head at Micah, who just stares down at him with the patience of a snake. His face grows paler by the second as more blood soaks his shirt, yet some kind of supernatural, demonic power seems to be feeding energy into his body.
He desperately needs medical attention, and I have to get him out of here, no matter what it costs. For that, I need to use these moments in which Romano is distracted. But I’ve pushed myself too far from Rufus’ body, and even if I do manage to sneak my way over to him, I won’t be able to search his pockets without Romano noticing.
Anxiety clogs my throat as I realize there’s no escape. With this room as insulated as a bunker, that bomb would probably blow up everything in here without affecting the rest of the house. All three of us would explode into pieces, though. Our only chance is the remote detonator, which could be anything from a physical detonator to an app on a phone, to deactivate the fucking thing.
“How about I make you a deal?” Romano tells Micah, his grin stretching almost to his ears. I realize this is his true face. He’s a creature of hell, not dead but undead on the inside, not bothered by pain. If anything, he thrives on agony. Micah might be holding the wooden stake, but the bastard will raise the entirety of hell before he goes down. “Satisfy my curiosity. Describe to me how you feel about her and I’ll let her go. There’s no escape for you or me, but her life doesn’t have to end this way. She doesn’t have to die here with us.”
Micah’s jaw tics, and my insides knot so hard, I’m afraid I’ll throw up. Romano chuckles.
“Just imagine. Your body exploding all over the walls, and your lover falling to her knees, wailing, her fingers clawing the door. But she’ll be on the outside, and she’ll be breathing. Oh, how she’ll mourn you for a while. Months, maybe even years—after all, you’re not an easy man to forget. But sooner or later, she will heal, and you’ll become nothing more than a bitter, painful memory. Then, you will turn into nothing but the ashes of time. After a while, another cock will be pounding that pussy you lost your head for. Because that’s what happened, isn’t it? Her pussy is crack to you.”
Every one of his words raises the tension in my body, anguish growing to alarming levels, because if I’m gonna get to Rufus, I have to do it fast. But Micah remains unfazed, his knee firmly planted on Romano’s chest, his face now pale as death. His breathing is heavier too, the soaking black stain on his shirt now swallowing half of it. My eyes flick to the knife embedded in his shoulder, only a strip of metal visible where the hilt juts out. The wound is deep, and it’s bleeding heavily, even though the knife should act as a blockage. My breathing stutters as a possibility sears my heart. What if the blade touched a vital organ? If a nicked or severed vein is causing this. Every second matters. He could bleed to death.
Romano’s malicious focus on Micah is all the distraction I’ll get, so I start slowly feeling my way on all fours toward Rufus, eyes on them. Micah doesn’t even glance at me, but something tells me he’s aware of what I’m doing when he leans down so his chest is parallel to Romano’s, and his face hovers over his stepfather’s.
“You’re right. I can’t feel love, not like most people do. I was probably born an emotional cripple. As you often pointed out while I grew up, I was born out of a gang bang. My genetic legacy is most probably a cocktail made in hell. You wanted to punish Annabelle for her posh provenance, so you debased her in all the ways you could.”
Romano lets loose a laugh that quickly turns into a gurgling cough, but he still manages to speak. “Yet she ended up giving birth to a fucking hellspawn.”
Micah cocks his head in that predatorial way Kings do when they mean bloody business. “Sometimes I think she fantasized about this. You and me, dying together. The monster who tortured her soul, and the freak she was forced to breed. And given that you destroyed her life so thoroughly and completely, the higher powers of the universe decided to make it come true.”
“I’m willing to accept that and go down with it. But you’re still not giving me what I want—your feelings.” He wiggles the bomb device in demonstration of the power he still holds. I inch closer to the body.
“What you’re willing to accept or not means shit to me.” Micah brings the chipped wooden stake an inch from Romano’s face. “I will kill you tonight, and it won’t be quick or painless.”
“Oh, I believe it will.” Romano waves the small device again, placing his fingernail on the silver button with uncanny precision for someone in his situation. “But it depends on you if your pretty professor gets blown into pieces along with us, or not. That remains an option, you know? If you decide you can’t die knowing that another cock will fuck her after all...”
I slink closer to Rufus. Micah does nothing to betray that he’s aware of my actions, and I finally understand why he’s stalling. We’re only alive as long as Romano is curious, and he’s buying me time. He’s now white as a ghost. The contrast between his blanched skin and his gunpowder eyes is out of this world. He’s a demon channeling into this world through a dying body, kept alive only through sheer, hellish power of will. For a moment, I think he’d still be able to function, even if all his blood drained from him, but that’s not a possibility I want to entertain.
So I move closer to Rufus, a little too fast, because Romano’s head shifts. All he needs to do is look over, and he’ll catch me crawling toward the Morningstar boss. But Micah’s face shoots closer to his, snatching back his attention.
“Possession,” he hisses in his stepfather’s abused face. “What I feel for Eva Brannan is a deep, gnawing need to possess her. But, no matter what I do, I don’t seem to penetrate her deep enough. No matter how hard I fuck her, I can’t seem to reach her murkiest depths, and my hunger for her only grows.”
Romano groans as if the story turns him on. It makes my blood curdle, but it doesn’t seem to upset Micah. On the contrary, he finds the strength to smirk and bend closer.
“But lately, another feeling has been creeping into my very fucking veins. One I didn’t have a name for in the beginning. All the nights I spent with her curled up in my arms, drinking in the sight of her face, peeling away layer after layer of her beauty down to the brilliant core inside, they branded themselves into me. Her light found its way to the hell from where my demons poured, and sent them all screeching and wailing back to where they came.” I hold my breath, sensing that he’s burning to look at me. But he doesn’t move his eyes away from Romano, trapping all of his stepfather’s attention. Allowing him to get high on it, to get horny for all it’s worth.
My chest tightens as I realize this is his declaration of love to me, the first and last one he’ll make before he dies. Because he’s sure that’s what’s going to happen. He’s already come to terms with it, the same way he came to terms with the fact that he’ll never be able to save his mother. In his mind, the only one he can save is me, and he’ll stop at nothing to do it. He’s ready to sacrifice himself for that, and it breaks my heart. I can literally feel it shatter inside my chest, and it’s all I can do not to fold in on myself. If I want to give him a chance to survive this, I have to keep moving.
“And you’re right,” Micah continues, his voice heartbreaking as I try to focus on Rufus despite the stinging tears. “I can’t feel love, if only for psychiatric reasons. People are stuck with the range of emotions they experience until the age of seven, and all I ever felt was fear, rage, defiance, and all of their versions which the hellhole in my chest spewed out. So what I feel for Eva can’t be love. It’s a desperate yearning that has me holding on to her for dear life. That black hole I have instead of a heart thirsts for the bright light of her attention, for the comfort she wraps me in like a magic blanket. She soothes my pain and fires up my senses. She drives all of my instincts wild. She’s a storm that awakened the vestiges of my soul.”
I wipe my eyes with the backs of my hands. My heart is too raw now, and my entire being so taken with saving Micah that I would touch Rufus’ dead body even if it was infested with cockroaches.
I shift into position so that I’m kneeling between the wall and Rufus, facing his head, which allows me to keep an eye on Micah and Romano, too. Every time I glance at them while quickly patting Rufus’ clothes and searching his pockets, they’re a disturbing sight.
“Fascinating.” Romano’s whisper travels through the death-riddled room. This is a place infested with blood and the smell of death. I kneel too close to the pool of blood spreading out from underneath Rufus, and every time I touch him my skin crawls. I almost expect him to twitch. I have to keep my wits about me and make sure I don’t shriek if that happens. I can’t draw Romano’s attention.
“And you know why, Micah?” he goes on. “Do you know why you’re the only one whose intimate experiences interest me?”
“Because deep down, you’re a sadist and a pedophile?” Micah replies, sounding almost inviting, hypnotizing, keeping Romano’s attention on him.
