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“I always thought you were the most beautiful girl in our school,” he mumbled, rubbing his nose against my cheek. The stench of alcohol and cigarettes wrapped itself around me, the familiar panic slowly rising in my chest, and I couldn’t do anything.
Just like before.
I was helpless, at his mercy.
“You were always supposed to be mine, Eve.” Fuck, I was going to be sick. “But you had to go and spread your legs like a fucking whore, letting them take what was mine.”
I wasn’t yours, I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream and cry and do some damage, but I was frozen. My hands were cold at my sides, squeezing the pepper spray, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to use it.
Eddie’s lips pressed down on mine, his teeth clamping painfully on my lower lip, showing me who the boss was. Showing me he owned me. I whimpered, crying out from pain, from the despair coating my insides, but there was no escape.
I should have taken self-defense classes.
I should have done so much more to avoid putting myself in this situation, but now it was too late thinking of all the things I should have done.
I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to leave Cillian and Chris. I didn’t want to leave this world like this.
I pushed down the panic, the fear, and as Eddie dragged his hand over my hair, humming softly, I pressed my finger against the little button on my pepper spray and within seconds had it lifted up, straight in front of him.
Closing my eyes, I sprayed it right in his face, reveling in the grunts and screams erupting from him. I didn’t think before opening my eyes and running away from him, rushing toward freedom. My chest burned, my muscles straining, but I could almost see it, the exit from this part of the trail, from the forest.
It was almost there. I was almost there.
“Nooooo!” I thundered as a fist wrapped around my ponytail, pulling me down. I never got to exit the forest. I never got to scream for help.
My back hit the floor with a thud, the back of my head sending sharp jolts of pain as it connected with the hard ground. A man hovered above me, one I'd never seen before, but he seemed so familiar.
His eyes, the shape of his lips, the arch of his eyebrow, and I knew.
“Tristan,” I breathed out, suddenly more afraid than when only Eddie was here. Tristan was working with him, or, well, Eddie was working with Tristan. My lower lip wobbled as Tristan smirked, the venom dripping from his eyes poisoning the air.
He looked so much like Cillian, almost identical, but the darkness hiding in Tristan’s eyes wasn’t the same kind of darkness that lived in Kill. This man had no mercy, no remorse, and I knew I would never see my guys again. I knew this was it, this was the end, because Tristan Nightingale wanted to destroy his brother.
He knew about me, and I was the stupid girl that allowed him to catch me.
No one was going to come for me. No one would save me.
“This is going to hurt just a little bit,” he murmured. But before I could ask him what would happen, his fist collided with my face, my head hitting against the trail floor even harder, and I was out.
Slipping into the darkness with one last thought—that I would never get to tell Cillian and Christian how much I actually loved them.
16
CILLIAN
Something was wrong.
I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t put my finger on it or explain it in words, but something was fucking wrong. I could feel it in my gut as we rushed to the other side of the city, driving toward our apartment. Panic gripped my heart, squeezing the life out of me, and it didn’t help that Evelyn wasn’t answering her phone.
“Faster,” I clipped, my fist pressed to my lips as Christian drove like a madman, surpassing the cars that kept on honking at us.
We were following a trail where Tristan was supposedly staying last night, and I almost retched seeing the place. He was completely unhinged, insane, and the board he had on the wall in that apartment was enough to awaken the panic inside of me.
He knew about Evelyn. He knew every single thing about her, and he knew about her ex-husband, Eddie. Eddie’s face was circled in red right in the middle of the board, and when I called Casimir, asking him to see where Eddie was right now, he informed me that the motherfucker was free, based on his good behavior.
He almost killed his wife, but they let him walk free. He raped her, tortured her, caused so much damage, and they fucking let him go.
“Kill,” Christian started, his knuckles white from the grip he had on the steering wheel, “she’s gonna be okay. She’s probably just sleeping. You’ll see, she’s okay.” I had no idea if he was trying to convince me or himself, but it didn’t work.
