“Are you going to tell me?”
“Not yet. Once we’re home.”
Her lips part. “We can go home?”
I fucking love that she calls our place home.
“Soon, baby.”
“Seriously? This is where you wanted to be on your birthday?” I side eye Carina, taking in the dark forest and barely lit cabin in front of us.
She nods, excited. “Fuck yes. This is exactly where I want to be.”
“What are we doing anyway?”
She doesn’t answer, just pushes the door open to the cabin and motions for us to enter before her. Tess stayed home as she was feeling sick, which meant Kai stayed with her, so it’s just the four of us.
Izzy steps in ahead of me. Then stops dead.
“Holy shit,” she breathes.
I step around her, freezing in place when I take in the scene.
Now, this makes sense. This is Nate’s cabin.
There’s a man strung up, dangling from the ceiling, his shirt already torn and dried blood cracking his skin.
Carina and Nate float into the room.
I raise a brow.
Nate smirks, looking incredibly smug. “Turns out, this guy was working with Dominic back in the day. Found him a couple days ago.”
Dominic was Carina’s father—we killed him two years ago after he kidnapped her. The man was a fucking predator, selling his thirteen-year-old daughter to the highest bidder.
Carina smiles, saccharine and sweet. “We’ve been having our fun with him. Now it’s time to end it.”
“Shouldn’t Kai be here to clean it up?”
Kai’s their cleanup guy—disposing of bodies, washing away the scene.
“He’s gonna swing by tomorrow. Tonight—” Nate grins, “tonight is for fun.”
We spend three hours torturing the bastard. Even Izzy joins in—not that I should be surprised. There’s a lightness to her eyes as she carves into his flesh that should be concerning but instead just serves as a reminder of why she’s perfect for me.
Carina slits the man's throat in her signature style as the rest of us watch what little life he had left fade from his eyes.
Blood splatters the walls, dripping onto the white floor below. All of us are coated in crimson liquid, clothes ruined.
We shower here quickly before heading back to the house. Exhaustion presses behind my eyes as I crawl into bed beside Izzy.
We have a lot to do. A lot of darkness yet to bury. But these moments of quiet, where we can be us without the facade of responsibilities? These are the moments that make the rest of it all worth it.
“Are you really okay with who I am now?” I ask Izzy in the quiet darkness.
She shifts, placing a hand on my chest. “Of course. Why would you ask that?”
I swallow hard. “I don’t know… tonight… my friends…” My voice trails off. “Most women would’ve run screaming.”
