“Considering your brother just stole Remi, I’d say you don’t have a choice.”
A beaming smile spreads across his face. “Guess that makes us partners, then.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Kuroda. We’re still rivals by default.”
Forty-Five
MAKSIM
Idon’t have to wonder what it feels like to teeter between consciousness and the brink of death. I’ve been there too many times to count. Where time dissolves and pain becomes a memory, distant but humming just beneath the surface. But for Casper—or Callum, as he finally confessed underslightduress—I can’t allow that mercy. I need him here. Present and aware, every nerve alive, and every breath earned.
He’s going to feel everything I have planned for him like an itinerary straight from hell.
Until he’s begging me to kill him.
And he will.
Of that, I’m certain.
I slap his face, freshly swollen and split open. He grunts, and his head lolls from one side to the other.
“Wake up. We haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.” I grab a fistful of his hair and wrench his head back. “You know, the part where you start to sing for me. Tell me everything I need to know.”
“P-please,” he stammers, blood and spit rolling down his chin.
“Begging won’t help you. It only pisses me off some more.”
I release him, and his head falls forward, snot landing in his lap.
Pathetic.
“I don’t know anything,” he cries. “They came tome. I had no choice.” He struggles to look at me, one eye completely swollen shut, nearly bulging from his skull. “What did you expect me to do? Let them kill me?”
I laugh quietly and circle him, dipping close to his ear. “Yes.”
My gaze lifts, and I give a single nod.
“Derek.”
Nothing else needs to be said.
I turn toward the window and wipe my blade as Derek’s dark silhouette closes in. A moment later, the sound of Callum’s screams splits the air, and I let Derek do what he came here to do.
I glance down, turning my hand over, staring at the blood-stained bandage covering the fresh ink beneath.
Kolibri.
I know where she is tonight. If it were up to me, she’d be home, safe, locked away, where no one could harm what’s mine. But as much as it kills me, I’d never be the man who clips her wings.
Callum’s howls come back into focus, and I whip around and raise a hand to Derek.
“That’s enough.”
His eyes meet mine and narrow in defiance.
“We need him alive a little longer.”
Without looking away, Derek severs one more finger, then drives the blade through what’s left of the man’s hand, pinning it to the wood before slinking back into a shadowed corner.
