He didn’t flinch though, when I reached the earth and lifted back up. But I was sure. So sure.
I stabbed again. Willing him to react, begging him to show himself, but only those all-seeing, undead eyes looking up to the night sky.
I stabbed, stabbed stabbed stabbed.
“Move!” I shouted. “Stop lying and move!”
Frantic, urgent, both hands on the hilt of the knife, I stabbed him over and over, losing myself to it.
Losing myself to the revenge. To the pain. Letting the monster win again.
Eighteen
Theo
“Youwanttoshowyourself to her first, or should I?” I asked Connor, wiping a splatter of blood from my forehead as I tried to calm my breathing. We were standing at the side of the car my sister sat in, both catching our breaths, running internal checks to make sure we’d got out unscathed even though it had been a piece of piss. Too fucking easy.
The driver and bodyguards were dead, killed with a gunshot wound each to the head. But my sister remained in the back of the car, screaming and whimpering, varying between the two at quite an impressive rate. From anger and rage to fear and a pathetic indignation she and my mother understood so well. Something Vi and Amaryllis had never mastered.
With no one to tell her what to do, she just sat there and raved. No attempt to escape, to run. Connor and I were in shadow still, hesitating though we had little time. But I wasn’t sure if our faces would make it better or worse. She cried. She screamed. But she remained there. Just waiting for death. For her fate. Fucking idiot.
“Shit, man, I think that should be on you,” I said to him. “Might be less of a shock. I’m not exactly popular with the family at the moment…” Who knows what they’d been told about me, what my father had deigned to share with them. I’d informed him about what I’d been doing with Violet, after all, but in a much more disgusting way. What we had was fucking beautiful.
Connor snorted and rolled his eyes, leaning his face against the glass with his hands cupped so he could peer in.
While he looked in on Margaret, making her scream louder, I turned to look for Violet, expecting to spot her silhouette amongst the trees, awaiting my instruction. I hoped anyway. Lord knows with her. It itched at me when I couldn’t see her.
I knew it had been a bad idea to lock her in the car; it had my bones on fire the moment she wasn’t visible anymore. It’s why I’d been on my way back to get her, second guessing my plan, leave her or bring her, the entire time.
When she’d popped up in the trees, for a moment I’d been so scared. What if she’d got lost? Wandered the wrong way? She was too damn precious to be left alone. But I’d done it again.
My brow furrowed when I didn’t spot her right away.
“Shit, she smacked the glass,” Connor said with an uncharacteristic yelp as he jumped back, returning my attention to the pressing issue. Margaret knew who we were now, and started yelling profanities, demanding we take her to Rafael’s compound like the good little brainwashed minion she was. I saw her angry face pressed against the glass as she glared at me, before sloping back into the darkness enclosing her.
“Come on, we’ve gotta hurry,” I huffed, moving to the other side of the car to block Margaret’s other exit. Not that I thought she’d run.
There had been so many variables to this plan, it was risky as shit, and we had no idea how much longer we’d be alone on this road. Margaret’s car might have been in front. There might have been an innocent car too close by. But it had gone okay. So far, so good. Though my eyes lingered on that first car, not knowing who was inside was annoying me… Christian said he couldn’t be certain, told me to ignore it.
“You know who was in that other car?” I asked. “Did you see?”
Connor shook his head, but I saw a glimmer of something there. Guilt, maybe? Did he know?
Then Margaret slammed her door open, the metal hitting my hip, and tried to shove me out of the way as she climbed out. I let her, stepping back and out of her space.
She glared at me, brushing her clothing down with a huff. “What on earth are you playing at, Theodore?” she asked me, scolding me like she was my mother, channeling that haughtiness only an upper class Brit could muster. It made me shiver. “What could you possibly be doing here on the side of the road in the middle of the night?”
“Saving you,” I replied, saluting her with my gun, already pissed off with her superior-than-thou attitude. Like Charlie, she always felt the happiest with her lot in life, always the most willing to live in this shit heap. “So get the fuck off the road.”
“Theodore…” Margaret whispered, then looked towards the other car, frowned at the chaos. Did I detect a moment of doubt? But for what? To come with me or to try to leave with them?
“You know the life they intend for you, yeah? Violet ran to get away from it.”
Margaret pursed her lips, looking so much like our mother it was painful. I could see the evil in her, the bitterness. Her nose turned up, her chin raised high with a lot more dignity than the moment allowed. “I don’t want to come with you.”
“Well, tough shit,” Connor said, sauntered around the car, his eyes still swiveling. “We’re going.”
“You can go over my shoulder or you can use your legs,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “They’ll kill you, Mag, don’t be stupid.”
