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“Shut up,” I hissed, pressing him against the railing and letting him get his balance. He wasn’t injured enough that he couldn’t stand. I doubted I’d broken anything too important, minus the missing digits.
This retribution was nothing compared to what he’d done, what he’d taken.
My hands balled as fresh rage poured through me. “You made the biggest mistake of your life touching her,” I seethed. “And the fact that you think you’ll walk away from that...” I grinned.
He gulped and looked at Neri skippering the boat. With raw, feral panic, he went to scream for help. To scream for help from the very same girl who’d no doubt screamed that word, over and over again, as he bound her, stripped her, took her.
That sickening red mist was back.
I embraced it.
Sank into it.
Primal savagery rushed up my throat, and I clamped my hand over his mouth. “Scream and I’ll gut you right here. You’ll slip on your innards as they splash at your motherfucking feet.”
He went white.
Silent.
Still.
While cloaked in that misty icy detachment, I dropped my hand, wiped my blood-sticky palm on his hideous shirt, and turned to face Neri.
She narrowed her eyes at us, suspicious and wary. Ethan clung to the railing, his back to the sea, his hands behind him as he kept all his focus on me. “What do you want? Money? I-I have some. I can—”
“Quiet,” I whispered, never taking my gaze away from the girl who would always own me, body and soul.
I mouthed the words, “I love you.”
Neri flinched as if what I’d done here tonight had opened her eyes to what I truly was.
And then...with strength and power that hummed in my tarnished blood, I round-housed the motherfucker in the upper chest. “Scream all you want. Scream where no one can hear you.”
His breath exploded.
His face crumpled.
He tumbled backward and vanished overboard.
His splash was entirely satisfying.
His disappearance into the depths totally justified.
Neri cut the engine.
The Fluke groaned as it sank back into the sea, swallowed up by the very waves it’d just been surfing. We rocked and rolled as our wake caught up to us.
On bare feet with her father’s hoodie hanging to her mid-thighs, Neri bolted toward me and looked over the railing.
Nothing.
No sound of gasping. No splash of swimming.
If Ethan survived the fall, he’d have to fight to survive.
His blood would ring the dinner bell; the scent of his suffering bringing predators slinking from the deep.
Neri’s eyes searched the moon-glowing ocean. Her shoulders slouched as she turned toward me. “Why?”
I shrugged. “There was no other way.”
“But I asked you—”
“To kill him. You only changed your mind because you didn’t want me to wear that sin. You didn’t want me to carry what I did. You were thinking of me, Neri...not yourself.”
“But you’d already hurt him so much—”
“Does that sicken you? Seeing what I’m capable of?”
She didn’t answer.
It killed me that she didn’t answer.
Her voice was quiet as she asked another question. “What if he drowns?”
“What if he survives?”
Stepping into her, I placed my stained hands over her shoulders.
She flinched.
My heart spasmed.
“Are you afraid of me, Neri?” I breathed. “Do you hate me now?”
It took an endless moment before the tension in her spine faded and she sucked on her bottom lip. “I’m not afraid of you, Aslan.”
“Are you sure? Do I repulse you? Standing here, covered in blood, struggling to remember how to be a man and not a monster?”
Her hand came up and cupped my cheek, shaking a little. “I love that man...and that monster.”
A guttural groan of stark relief escaped me. My chin dipped to my chest; my forehead kissed hers. “I’m so sorry, Neri. For all of it. For what he did...and for what I did in return.”
The fear in her eyes faded, burning up in the fire of surviving. “Thank you. For coming for me.”
“Always.” I nudged her nose with mine. “I’ll always come for you. I’m just so sorry I was too late.” Running my thumbs over the delicate lines of her collarbones, I murmured, “I hope he dies tonight. I hope his flesh is torn from his bones by a thousand hungry teeth, but at least this way...his fate isn’t up to us to decide.” I pulled away a little, staring into her crystal eyes. “It’s the sea’s.”
“The sea might choose to save him,” she whispered.
“It could. Just like it saved me and devoured my family.” My voice hardened. “The ocean claimed good, honest people and left me alone, all when it should’ve been me in their place instead.”
“What—?”
“The sea looked into my heart and mocked me by keeping me alive. Ethan can pass the same test. He merely has to swim to shore.”
“But he’s hurt.”
“He is. But so was I. I was broken and bleeding when you found me.”
Her eyes welled with tears. “I was always going to find you.”
