Fuck.
The quiet ones are the hardest since Sasha likes making them scream. I’ll have to drug them before allowing her to claim their life. Hopefully, the secluded villa has expelled some of her need to scare them so she’ll be amenable to a quiet kill.
We have sixty-four hours until we need to leave, so I leave her in the kitchen and walk through the open-plan lounge, overlooking the scenery many would kill to witness. Bali’s rainforest. The trees are so close, their refreshing scent floats through the open patio as I reach the staircase. I don’t know why I pause, but I do. I look out at the densely packed trees. Somewhere on the other side, Delilah is existing without me. I lie to myself, the same lie as always: she’s safe, happy, protected.
“She’s fucking someone else,”Asher hisses.
“I don’t care,” I tell him, meaning it. She can fuck who she wants because my dick doesn’t work without the pills anymore and I know she needs it to forget the bad things. She can fuck every person on this planet while I reduce the population until we meet in the middle. Then and only then will it stop. I’ll fuckher with every part of me—body and soul—to rid her of their touch.
“You don’t care?”he snaps as I walk up the light wood staircase.“You don’t fucking care she’s giving her cunt to anyone who looks at her?”
“No.”
“Or she’s screaming his name? Riding him? Watching the stars with him while she tells him she loves him?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I grit as I enter the largest bedroom. “She doesn’t love anyone else.”
One wall is made up entirely of glass, bringing Asher into view as I walk to the bathroom. His lips lift into a smug smile.“She doesn’t love anyone at all.”
I turn to face him. “Fuck you. She loves me. She was going to leave with me.”
“Whores aren’t capable of love.”
I step closer to the glass, trailing blood from the severed limb across the floor. “My whore is. That’s what she is. I control her fucking cunt.I’mallowing her to give it away until I get her back.”
His nostrils flare in the glass as I turn around, ignoring the prick shouting at my back,“It’s all her fault!”
The bathroom is huge. A large egg-shaped stone tub sits in front of the glass, but it’s the double vanity I need. I drop the arm into the sink to search the cabinets for what I need. 1371 was a doctor, so there should be a med kit. Harkin always left his in the bathroom. It doesn’t take me long to find it tucked between the pipes under the floating vanity.
When I rise to my full height, Asher is waiting for me in the mirror. He doesn’t allow me a moment of peace as he says,“Kid is dead because you chose her. You’re fucking pathetic. Even now, you won’t let her go when all she has ever done is cheat on you and lie, killing everything you love.”
“My fault,” I mumble around the grief lodged in my throat, which doesn’t seem to leave. It’s been years, yet the sound of his name is the equivalent of claws scraping the empty cavity in my chest.
“She killed me.”
“Your fault.”
I copy him as he flattens his hand on the mirror, lining my inked and bloody hand directly over the reflection of his clean one. Our faces are in different positions too, unnaturally so when we’re identical, but he’s young with hate in his eyes whereas I’m older, scruff covering my jaw, blood sprayed on half of my face. We’re finally our own people.
AsherandKane.
Asher and not-Asher.
Asher, the reflection. Kane, the ghost.
Neither of us exists.
He loses some of his hate as he asks,“Did she kill someone you love, Kane?”
“Did you love me?”
“Yeah, in my own way. I would have grown up to be the brother you deserved.”
“I think I loved you too,” I whisper. “I wanted you to be my friend, and I would have done anything you asked me to if you were.”
“I never needed a friend,”he admits.“I needed my reflection, but now I’m yours. The skin is going to get tough.”He gestures to the limb.
Running the hot water takes him away as the steam rises, fogging the mirror. But the task has my full attention as I remove the diamond tennis bracelet with a curly three charm dangling from the clasp, the rings next—a large pavé wedding set—then scrub the forearm, wash the hand, sliding my fingers through theirs.
