“No luck,” says Logan, his face white.
I bite down on the despair that surges within me. I knew it before he said it. I’ve known since the moment I saw the pictures that it was hopeless. My Seraphina, gagged and bound, stark-naked, and in front of her, the looming crevasse of a coffin-shaped hole.
Angel doesn’t play games. They wouldn’t have dug that hole if they hadn’t planned to bury her in it. They want her gone, and they want me to suffer.
It’s all my fault. I underestimated them. I underestimated Gabriel’s love for his brother. It’s a love that mirrors my own—no. Nothing can come close to the love I have for my girl. The moment I held her in my arms, breathed her in, knew she was mine,reallymine… no words can describe that feeling. It was like coming home.
And now, they’ve taken her from me. She’s gone. They’ve just stripped all reason I had for living.
No, not all reason. They’ve left one, and it’s become my sole drive.
I will find them, and I will smite them. Every last one of them. They will die slow, painful deaths at my hands. I will look them in the eye as their lifeforce is extinguished in a long, torturous agony.
They are all dead. They just don’t know it yet.
Beware the Devil.
The organization I founded with my closest childhood friends—Everest, Vale, Igor and Logan—has fractured. Now that Vale,the traitor, is dead at my hands, and Logan, the man I once called my brother, has confessed his own betrayal, Devil is no more. There is only me.TheDevil. And I will not give up until all fear that name.
Logan looks at me warily. He knows I haven’t forgiven him. How he caused my pet harm in a twisted attempt to protect me. Deep down, I understand why he did it. He was terrified I’d be labeled weak, and Vale would take that chance to swoop in and wrest leadership from me. Still, I’ll never forgive him. He knows it, too. He might be doing everything in his power to find my girl, but it’ll only delay his fate. The minute I find her lifeless body, and punish those responsible for it, I will turn the gun on him. And then, on myself.
“We’ve searched every inch of the forest around their compound,” states Everest, and I turn to the man who was once Seraphina’s only defender.
He never actually cared all that much for her. But he’s a softie, the moral compass of Devil, and he couldn’t bear to think he had played a part in a woman’s abduction. And that I had kept her isolated from the world.
That’s the only thing Idon’tregret. In fact, I regret not keeping her even more isolated. If I had, no one would have been able to get to her. She’d still be here, with me.
My fists clench at the thought.If I ever find her alive… The thought rings out in my mind like a sad little refrain, a desperate hope I do my best to quash.If I ever find her alive… I’ll take her to a desert island, and no one but me will ever see her again… no one but the fish.
And the jellyfish, I add to myself, smiling bitterly as I remember her spirit animal.
Then my smile turns into a glare, and hear Everest gasp as he imagines my expression is directed at him. And it is. At him, at Logan, at the whole world. At my girl. At me.
Especiallyat me. I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to take care of her. Keep her safe. Instead, I allowed her to get stolen from me, and then murdered.
I bring my head down to my hands.
“I’m very sorry, Damien,” whispers Everest. “When Devil gets their hands on those assholes…”
He doesn’t realize thereisno more Devil. None of them do, yet.
“They must have been lying in wait,” I growl, “and the minute I left her alone in my apartment they swooped in. But they couldn’t have taken her very far. Our meeting only lasted about an hour.”
Logan hangs his head in devastation, but I’m not sure whether that devastation comes from thinking of Seraphina’s fate or his increasing fear as he awaits his own.
“Do you… do you think she was buried alive?” blurts out Everest, voicing the thought that has until now been unspoken.
My chest constricts. “It’s likely. But it’s too late now.”
My eyes close as I think once more of all the pain she probably experienced before dying. Nausea, dizziness, and fear, cold, horrifying fear, clawing at her chest. If they did bury her alive, she probably managed to hang on for an hour. Five, tops.
Twenty hours have passed since we began our fruitless search, and there is no hope. Not anymore.
I clench my hands around the cold wooden table of our conference room.
“We’re not looking for the right thing. We shouldn’t be looking for her anymore, but forthem.”
My words are followed by a deafening silence. We’re no longer hoping to find her alive. That’s the meaning behind my words.
