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But this wasn’t my first catfight. I drove my knee into the back of hers, watching as she crumpled forward, throwing out her hands as she clawed for a hold of the faucets.“Who the fuck are you?”
Buzz…buzz.I flicked the switch on the clippers. “Katerina VanHalen.”
“Who?” Her eyes were wide. So wide I could see all the way down into the festering pit of her soul. So wide, I knew she was lying. She knew who I was.
I threw my head back and laughed, then pressed the edge of the clippers against her neck. “So, you really haven’t heard of me, have you?”
“N-no,” she stammered, her eyes glassy with rage. “Let me go or I’ll fucking hurt you.”
“You’ll hurt me?” I laughed, the sound maniacal and weird.“You’ll…hurtme?”
My laughter quieted, until the silence was hollow and strange, and in its place was that unhinged part of me I usually leashed, the one I let out on special occasions…like now. “You hurt my friend,” I snarled, my fist clenching around her hair, and lifted the humming clippers. “And that I just cannot stand.”
“Who?”she roared.
“Anna.”Don’t say her name…don’t fucking say it.“Today in the fingerprinting class.”
“That auburn-haired nobody?” she wailed, her hands clawing for a hold again as she slipped. “All this for an unknown little bitch?”
“See, that’s the difference between you and me,” I started, and lifted the clippers closer. “You hurt my friends and you hurt me. And you know what happens when you mess with a VanHalen? The damn claws come out.”
I shoved those clippers along the side of her hair, smiling as the sound of the buzz deepened with work.
Her long hair fell around her hands. She stared at it in horror…until that horror turned to utter rage.“I’m going to get my bodyguards to fucking kill you!”she screamed, her pale face purpling with rage.
Threats.
I’d heard them all before.
I yanked her head backwards and turned the clippers in my hand. It wasn’t hair I wanted now. It wasn’t hair at all.
I saw Anna. I saw innocence, the kind that had been taken from me, the kind I would’ve killed for, to protect…I flicked the clippers off and pressed the teeth against her neck. Stainless steel bit into the flesh above her vein.
“You d-don’t even fucking know h-her. I asked around…no one knows her,” she protested.
They didn’t know her, didn’twantto know her. I needed it to stay that way.
I eased back. “You’re right, sheisa nobody. But that doesn’t give you the fucking right to do whatever you want. The next time you see her, youwillbe nice, do you hear me?”
A nod of her head and one tear slipped free.
It was a wonder she felt anything in her drug-induced haze.
“You will apologize…and youwillstay out of my fucking way, or this,” I drove the blade deeper and leaned close “will be a drop in the fucking ocean of what I’ll unleash.”
She shuddered, her chest heaving as tears slid down her pale-ass fucking cheeks as I pulled away, releasing her hair with a grunt of disgust. “And get some fucking sun, will you, I can see your goddamn veins. That shit went out five fucking years ago.”
I gripped the clippers and stepped away, watching her fall apart, just like bitches like her always did.
Then I went to find her, my little butterfly, so perfect and strange.
The best friend I’d always wanted.
11
Lazarus
The salty air clung to my nostrils as I clenched my jaw. Desperation drove me here, all the way into the middle of fucking nowhere. I lifted my gaze to the brilliant orange sunset fading to darkness across the sky. I came because of some kind of drive inside me, somegnawingache in my gut. I came because I wanted to piss Finley off…but now that I was here…I wasn’t so sure.
