BecauseIwould never hurt her like that. Icouldn’t. I know that with visceral, grounding certainty.
I feel it in my veins, down to the core of my being.
I would never put a gun to her face.
And that’s what shatters the illusion. That’s what rips down the gauzy veil and lets reality come glaring in on me.
The man with a gun to her head isn’t me. He can't be.
He’s not a manifestation of my broken, fractured mind.
He’s fuckingreal.
He’s alive.
And if he's alive, he can fuckingdie.
Quentin grunts when I crash into him, sending him clean off his feet and slamming him into the wall.
I roar, scrambling to bring the gun up. Just as I do, pain bites into me, taking my breath away.
Wetness floods my skin. Evelina screams, and I look down in confusion at the blood pouring from my side.
Fire erupts through me when Quentin slashes the blade across my ribs again. My vision kaleidoscopes as I stumble to the side.
“That was foolish, Grandson,” he exhales quietly. “Very, very foolish.”
I groan and drop to my knees as he turns to Evelina. He slips the knife into the back of his belt and then stoops slightly to pick up the riding crop.
“I wonder what would break you first, Grandson,” he muses. “Watching me whip her pretty face to ribbons? Or maybe going after her legs and feet, and clipping the dancer’s wings right in front of you.” He turns to level a cold look at me. “I wonder if that would make you see what is necessary in order tolead.”
“I…”
I choke on the words as blood trickles down the back of my throat. My head swims, and I’m barely clinging to consciousness as my eyes slide from Quentin to the only person ever to have pulled me from my own madness.
The only person who’s ever seen the real me.
The only woman I’ve ever loved.
My gaze slides lethally back to Quentin.
“In the next sixrty seconds,” I mumble, blood trickling from my split lip and pouring from the stab wounds in my side, “I’m going to kill you.”
Quentin almost smiles with sick pride, shaking his head. “Yes!There'sthe monster I need, Grandson. There’s the savagery required to lead the Syndicate. Together, we will?—”
“No,” I burble, my vision blurring. “No we. Because I’m going to kill you.”
His stares coldly at me, and his lips curl dangerously. “The face it is, then.”
He turns to Evelina as adrenaline explodes through my system.
But suddenly, Quentin cries out and twists violently. Blood splatters from the back of his head as it snaps to the side.
I don’t have time to dwell on the how or the what.
With my last surge of energy, I lurch from the ground, grab the knife from the back of Quentin’s belt, and ram it as hard as I can between his shoulder blades.
Quentin screams in agony, his back contorting as I yank the blade out and then jam it in again.
