Not once.
No sweat. No tremor. No flicker of satisfaction or disgust. Just cold, absolute focus.
I can’t look away.
I don’t want to. That’s what terrifies me most.
Because deep in my chest there’s a dark, vicious satisfaction, hot and ugly, watching Paul scream the way she must have screamed. Watching him bleed the way she bled. Watching him break piece by piece.
And at the same time, something colder coils tighter. Because this isn’t rage. This is something else.
Something precise. Unstoppable. Without mercy or limit. Something that is being born right here, in this room, while I watch.
By the time Elijah steps back, Paul is barely recognizable.
His body is a ruin of deliberate wounds, skin peeled, muscle exposed, blood pooled thick beneath the chair in a dark, spreading lake. His chest rises in shallow, wet hitches. His eyes are open but glassy, fixed on nothing. The only sound left is a faint, bubbling whimper that fades into silence.
Elijah sets the knife down with careful precision, like it matters how it lies on the tray.
Blood drips steadily from his fingertips onto the concrete, soft, rhythmic plops.
His expression is unchanged. Complete.
Christian steps forward beside us, voice low.
“There’s no going back from this.”
I don’t look at him. I’m still watching Elijah.
“That man is fully Bellandi now,” Christian says. “And he’s never going to be anything else again.”
The words sink in heavy.
“If anything threatens her,” he adds, tone sharpening, “he will act like this. Without hesitation. Without thought. Even if that threat comes from you.”
That hits harder than any punch tonight.
I swallow. Slowly.
“You need to decide now,” Christian says, “if you can stand beside that. Because that’s what standing beside him means.”
I watch Elijah.
The way he stands there, still, blood-streaked, unshaken. The way everything in him seems forged into something final. A flicker moves through my chest, not quite fear, but close enough to taste it.
Then I think of her.
Lying in that bed, still not waking up.
The blood.
The stillness.
What he did to her.
The flicker burns away.
“There’s nothing that would stop me from standing next to her,” I say. My voice is steady again.
