Page 125 of Taint My Soul

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

MASON

“Saint, I thought you—” the word clog in my throat. Fear consumes me in an instant, and I stagger backward as the man standing before me lowers his hoodie.

I try to bolt past him, but he grips my arm and shoves me backward. A yelp escapes my lips when my back collides against the marble vanity.

“Elio.” The cold, rough voice rips through the silence. “Don’t try to run. The party’s over. Saint left, and no one’s coming here to save you.”

An icy feeling twists through my spine. The room stretches and thins like it’s being pulled away from me. The floor feels unreal beneath my feet, weightless and heavy all at once.

He’s here.

He’s fucking here.

The world crashes around me. I thought I’d finally escaped him, but I’m back again at the beginning.

“I don’t know how you did it, but maybe sleeping with the fucker helped save your life after all.”

“Fuck you!” I snap at him. The air is too thick, impossible to pull in. My lips move, and a rough, restrained voice rises through my vocal cords. Tremors run up my arms. My foot taps against the marble floor as I straighten up. Memories flood me in an unbearable collision.

He steps closer, and I edge backwards.

“You chased me through the woods. You’ve tried to kill me multiple times.”

“I’m not here to kill you. I owed a debt, and your commitment to whatever Vincent wanted would have set me free.”

“You picked me as your fucking punching bag.” I grit. It beats me that after all these years, he randomly woke up one day and chose me again.

What is it about me that makes him see me as a weakling?

“Your parents poked the tiger’s tail and had to face the consequences.”

I’m at loss with his words. How does everything he’s done to me tied to my parents?

All my thoughts freeze. My heart hammers against my chest at the realization of what he might mean. “You know what happened to my parents?”

As he inches toward me, I don’t dare to move. I stay still until he’s barely a breath away from me.

He leans closer, breath against my skin as he whispers, “I killed them.” I gasp. A silent scream rises through my throat and stops in my mouth, trapped by the intensity of the tension around us. “Them or me? I chose them. I butchered them.”

“That’s not true.” It can’t be. I can’t be living with my parents’ killers for the past seventeen years.

“I don’t have a reason to lie.”

I face him as anger overcomes me in an uncontrollable wave. “Your days of being my captor, of torturing me, of emotionally manipulating me are over.” I fight through the cold, invasive panic that crawls over my skin as each word leaves my lips one after the other.

I see the mindless monster in his eyes.

The thing I’m afraid of becoming.

He stands there, looking at me emotionlessly.

I was ten when I walked into that room and asked him about his brother. He knew what happened to them. Matter of fact, he had killed them himself. And he lied. He lied to me.

Beyond his features, I see the blood of my parents marked across his face. My brain plays a scene it never saw on a loop. Sharp blade, severing their bare throats, blood soaking their skin. Eyes wide in shock as life slips away from their fingers. Knife guts. Brutalizes repeatedly. Blood smears across the devil’s face as he takes and takes until there’s nothing left.

I never wanted revenge. But watching this shell of a man stand in front of me and confess to his crimes, I want to do more than just kill him. He took away my family and glued himself to my side for seventeen years.