I bite the lining of my cheek until I taste blood to stop myself from leaning back into him, and I grab the first shirt on the shelf in front of me.
“My safety is no longer your concern.” I slip on the random tee over the shorts and slide my feet into a pair of sneakers without socks on.
“I can’t let you leave,” Kaiden tells me, whirling me around and crowding me against the shelf. “I already let you go once, and it nearly fucking killed me, Iris. I can’t do it again. I won’t surviveit this time.”
“I said don’t touch me!” I send my palm flying at his face.
There’s a loudcrackas it connects with Kaiden’s stubbled cheek,catching him by surprise. His head snaps to the side.His nostrils flare as he whirls his head back, then he steps forward, caging me in. He slams one hand on the shelf at the side of my head, the other wrapping around my throat possessively. The silver rings adorning his fingers are cold against my heated skin.
“I don’t care if you slap me. Fuck. I’ll hand you the knife to stab me myself. Just. Don’t. Leave. Me.” The last word comes out in a broken whisper. “Please.”
It almost shatters my resolve.Almost.
“Let me go!” I grit out through clenched teeth. My eyes throw angry daggers at Kaiden as I stare at him, face hot. The air sparks and sizzles between us, and fireworks crackle between my ribs.
He ignores me as his gaze darkens. “I’m sorry, angel…so fucking sorry for not being able to say a thing. I can’t stand the idea of you hating me,” he rasps, tone rougher than sandpaper.
My breath hitches when he inches forward, his lips hovering dangerously close, his eyes glimmering obsidian fire. “I can’t let you leave because I love you, Iris. I’ve been in love with you since the first moment I saw you. You came into my life like a blazing sun and pulled me out of the pitch-black night I’ve been lost in for years. You’re mine. Fucking mine, and I’m never letting you go.”
Next thing I know, his lips bruise mine in a soul-searing kiss. Our tongues lash against each other in a fiery dance of destruction.
Then Malik’s words start playing through my mind in a loop. They cut through me like a million razor blades, each slice drawing more blood. So, I let Kaiden incinerate me from the inside out, my fluttering pulse heavy against his fingers, for just a few seconds. Just a few seconds of indulgence to burn his touchand scent into memory because this is the last time I will ever allow Kaiden Black tokiss me.
With a muffled sob, I use my hellseeker strength to push at his chest. Kaiden stumbles back. A deep frown knits his eyebrows.
“That’s funny, because you were nothing more than a mistake to me.” The lie burns through my lead-filled tongue like battery acid. Still, I continue, “I don’t want to see you ever again.”
Kaiden’s face falls. Akin to a hurricane, hurt ripples through his features. “You don’t mean that. I know you feel something for me.” Again, the foreign, jumbled emotions bounce in the confines of my ribcage, bruising my lungs and heart.
I force a brittle laugh from my lips. “Yeah, I feel something for you all right. It’s called hate. Did you know that after the accident, I stayed in a mental facility owned by the Order for a fucking year? It should have been only a few months for me to adjust to the world without my memories, but losing them made me spiral into a depression so deep I tried to”—I swallow thickly—“to kill myself. I took an entire bottle of pills. If they had found me five minutes later…And you know what the worst part is? If they hadn’t kept a close eye on me, I would have done it again.”
Kaiden flinches as if I hit him. Slams his eyes shut. Then rakes a trembling hand through his hair as he lets out a sharp curse. When he opens his eyes, and his gaze finds mine again, shame and guilt flood his features. A silent tear rolls down his cheek. “I’m so sorry, angel. So fucking sorry.” He crumbles to his knees, and I have to tear my gaze away because I can’t look at him. “You’re the only person I have ever loved in this world.”
My hemorrhaging heart is urging me to go to him, but I can’t. I fucking can’t. “If you really did take my memories, then you took everything from me. I was nothing more than a shadow of a person for years. I blamed myself to the point where I didn’t want to be alive anymore, and that’s something I can never forgive you for.” A trembling breath saws out of my lungs.“Goodbye, Kaiden. I wish I never met you. Stay away from me and forget I exist, because that’s what I’ll do.”
He doesn’t come after me as I storm out of the dressing room into the bedroom to snatch my phone and my mother’s journal from the bedside table. I fly down the stairs and into the elevator. As I enter it and jab my finger into the button for the ground floor, Kaiden appears in the middle of the penthouse. His shoulders are slumped as if weighing a thousand pounds. He’s only a few feet away, but it feels as though a chasm deeper than the Mariana Trench stands between us. I cast him one last glance. Our gazes hook and snare—mine resolute, his shining with defeat—and the sorrow on his face is almost too much to bear.
The doors slide closed, breaking our connection. I stagger backward, hitting the mirror wall. I can’t break down right now. If I do, I’ll never be able to leave this elevator. I square my shoulders and shove everything down, down, down—until I’m nothing more than a walking corpse. It’s all a blur as I exit the elevator, stride outside, hail a cab, and find myself at Sam’s door, banging on it as hard as I can.
A sleep-rumpled Sam opens the door. “What the…Holy Hecate! Iris, what happened? You look like shit. What are you doing here?”
I throw myself in her arms and finally lose it, sobbing my eyes and heart out.
8
Kaiden
Itook an entire bottle of pills. If they had found me five minutes later…
“Fucking fuck!” I bellow and send my fist flying into the mirror perched above the sink. Knuckles split. Blood gushes out. A tornado of broken glass follows. Funny how the jagged pieces resemble the inside of my chest cavity. However, the punch does nothing to douse the crackle ofillumshe lit inside me with those words.
The overhead lights of the basement start flickering as blinding white overtakes my vision. I should despise the pure power flooding me because it’shis,or better said, it belongs to the half I inherited from my father. But I don’t. Because no matter how many times he brutalized me over the years to bring it tothe surface, he failed—the scars riddling my body are testament to that. Theillumcame only after she barreled into my life. It answered to her.
My angel.
Expelling a trembling breath, I stop pacing and ground myself back to reality by slamming the door back on the thread of pure power before I turn this entire building to ashes. I strangle every emotion and bury it behind a titanium wall—the same one I erected when my father used his special whip on me for the first time. Once I’m under control, I march back to the sink next to the fortified door. The shards of glass, stained scarlet by my fury and regret, crunch under the soles of my motorcycle boots. I bend to pick up the trash can, then fill it with water before bringing it to the naked piece of shit slumped in the chair in the middle of the cavernous room.
He gasps when I throw the water at his face to wake him. Confusion blankets his gaze for a second. Then, in the next, he flicks his beady eyes to the table near him—where I keep all my torture instruments. A high-pitched whimper escapes him. “P-please. I have a f-family.”
