The rage surges again, hot and black and suffocating.
He has to pay for this.
Not with his life. That would be too easy.
But there are other ways to destroy a man.
The tightness enveloping me slowly starts to release.
I have a girl in my basement who can’t remember her own name. A boy covered in scratches and bruises who’s bound to wake up with an awful hangover and a chunk of his time unaccounted for.
I know exactly how to turn those two things into a fairytale worthy of the Grimm brothers.
“She’ll never forgive you,”Good Wolf’s final, pleading warning is as pathetic as this entire night has been.
But I consider it anyway, weighing it against the fury still boiling in my blood.
Ultimately, I decide I don’t care. Haven has proven time and time again that all it takes is a little pressure before she bends to my will. She’ll have no choice but to forgive me, because I’llmakeher do it.
I straighten my clothes. Smooth my hair. Practice the neutral expression I’ll wear when I return to my car.
Kai made me lose control.
Made me submit.
Made me feel things I’ve spent decades learning to bury.
This time tomorrow, he’ll be in a cell, wondering how the fuck his life fell apart so quickly.
And Haven? She’ll be guilt tripping herself into a fucking vegetative state for running to me.
Oh, how they’ll hate me for orchestrating the chaos to come…
Yet I’ll be the only oneeitherof them can turn to.
And that’ll make them hate me even more.
Chapter 24
Kai
The silence after Rooke stops talking is louder than the bass back at Sanctuary. Louder than the headache thumping inside my skull. Louder than the voice in my head screaming that this can’t be real—can’t be true—can’t befucking happening!
He said I kissed him.
Ikissedhim, not the other way around. This wasn’t some fucked-up assault I couldn’t control. I grabbed him by the hair and crushed my mouth against his like I’d been waiting for him my whole goddamn life.
And then I cried like a fucking pussy when he pushed me away. The memory is there now, vivid and fucking devastating.
The brick wall against my back.
The smell of weed and his cologne.
The way my hands shook when I reached for him.
The way his mouth tasted like beer and ash and sweet, horrific depravity.
The way Iwantedit.
