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Losing Micah is. When he finds out that I’ve been holding his mother’s life in the palm of my hand all this time, that I could have freed him from Romano’s grip with just a few words, all those beautiful feelings he has for me will morph into hatred. All that readiness to take on hell to keep me safe will turn into wrath, and he will spill it on me with a vengeance.
But then Romano bursts into laughter, ready to play his last card, and I just can’t let it happen. Not when the shadow of despair falls over my lover’s face. He and I are connected at such deep levels that his misery cracks my bones, and it kills me on the inside. He barely remembers his mother, so he never had the chance to love her, which is why he feels he owes her all the more.
He grabs Romano’s shirt, and the sound rips through the air as he tears it open, the buttons popping. It reveals a pale, hairy chest covered in sweat, the contours of once brutally trained muscles beneath swirls of hair. Micah places the tip of his stake on the man’s stomach, the blood-streaked muscles of his arm snaking under his skin as he pushes.
“Wait,” I call out, holding out my hand. “I know where she is! I know where your mother is!”
Micah’s eyes snap up to me, shock lighting up the gunpowder in his irises. Romano curses under his breath and takes the chance to shove Micah off him, but he doesn’t have enough strength left, and winds up with his forearms trapped under my lover’s knees. When his eyes meet mine again, the betrayal in them stabs me in the heart.
He doesn’t need to say the words for me to feel them—How could you?
This information could have set him free a long time ago, yet despite all the love I gave him, I couldn’t give him this.
“I’ve only known for six months,” I blurt out. “My sister, Goldie, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was only five. She’s been in the same facility as your mother for years, but I didn’t know.” I shake my head to emphasize that point. “Six months ago, Romano and I met there. He took a suspicious interest in Goldie, and I couldn’t get him off my back. He twisted my arm into working for him and becoming his link to the Morningstars. Every time we met we were preparing for tonight, but the plan changed so often I didn’t know what role I was playing anymore. First, I was supposed to plant mics in hotel rooms, then I had to wait for his phone calls, then I had to act as a human means of transportation for their bombs.”
I start crawling on all fours toward him, not even minding the red slickness on my hands and knees anymore. “I wanted to tell you, Micah. All this time, I really did! But Romano assured me he could have Goldie killed the second the words left my mouth, and I believed him. How the hell could I have not? He’s a King.”
“And you can bet that whorish cunt of yours that your sister will die as soon as the news of my death reaches the sanatorium,” Romano spits out hatefully through his bloodied teeth.
“This is the first safe chance I got to come clean, Micah,” I keep pleading, my eyes hanging on his. “Now, when there’s no bomb he can detonate. Now, when I or you or Sade or Justine can reach the sanatorium before the news of his death does. Sade and the others tracked all the explosives.”
“You fucking whore,” Romano hisses, but Micah rams his fist into his face, sending blood spluttering out of this mouth. He grabs his jaw and brings his face close to the villain’s while the other is choking on his own blood. “Call her that one more time, and I’ll make your death even slower and more painful than what I’ve already got planned. Talk about her cunt again, and I’m gonna fuck you with this stake in the ass until I rip you apart from the inside. I’m the only one who takes Eva Brannan’s cunt in his mouth, in any way, shape or form.” The cruelty that seeps out of his mouth along with those words sends cold splashes down my back.
“Micah, for the love of God,” I plead faintly, but his aura darkens this entire bloody room, and there’s no chance for the other Kings to barge in and stop it. Demons are rising inside Micah, about to wreak havoc.
His eyes find mine as he lowers the stake back to Romano’s stomach, swirling with diabolism.
“This is for you, Professor,” he says as the jagged tip of his stake runs down Romano’s abdomen line before he pushes in right at his belly button. I stiffen when the tip pierces the man’s flesh, and dark blood swells out.
I inhale sharply, but Micah’s voice stops me from shutting my eyes.
“Don’t you dare look away,” he commands. “Don’t you dare disrespect my gift to you. This bloody offering is for what he did to you and your sister.”
I could have prevented all this. If I’d opened my mouth, I could have avoided this entire bloodbath, not just the hellscape now unfolding in front of me.
I’m forced to watch Micah eviscerate Romano, spilling his guts while keeping him alive through it all with chilling expertise. The hatred with which he does it, it will all be directed at me as soon as he’s done with the man who wronged him most, and yet instead of fear, all I feel is pain.
“You destroyed my life,” he tells Romano while the jagged wooden stake tears through Romano’s flesh, not bothered in the least by the man’s screams. He’s enjoying his archenemy’s blood-curdling agony.
It’s a mystery how Micah can inflict such violence with his wound bleeding from the knife embedded in his flesh, his skin so white and drained of life that it makes an insane contrast to the murderous darkness of his eyes. His strength is inhuman, and it turns out so is his soul when he twists the stake into Romano’s insides.
The sound is beyond sickening, sending vomit up my throat. And when the smell of sulfur from pierced guts fills the air, I can’t help doubling over and retching, but nothing comes out, since I haven’t been able to eat anything all day. Romano’s screams are beyond haunting. Blood gurgles in his mouth as he tries forming last words, his despair palpable in the air, but Micah twists harder, forcing one last breath out of him. As his body slackens, Micah bends down, staring into his eyes, while all I can feel is relief that the screams have stopped.
“Until we meet again, daddy dearest. May you burn in hell. ”
One last twist of his stake, and Romano is gone.
Stillness rises, unnatural and scary.
Micah keeps staring down at his dead stepfather, his naked, blood-streaked chest rising and falling as he breathes. A killer. Kneeling over the body of his victim and taking in the splendor of his work. Because there’s no doubt that’s what he feels this is. I can see it in his dark eyes that seem so much more alive than the rest of his pale body as he finally lifts them to meet mine.
A boulder falls from my chest—the weight of Romano’s terror—but the sensation is short-lived. It’s replaced by the pressure of Micah’s attention.
I’m trapped with him in a bloody room full of corpses, reeking of death.
A smile lifts the corners of his mouth. God, how can a pathological killer be so insanely beautiful?
“Micah, I—” I babble. “I know I kept from you the one truth that could have set you free, but believe me, I would have told you if I could. He could have poisoned Goldie! Hell, he could have made her swallow a bomb!”
