“Do you remember how you pressed the candy wrapper in my arm each time you drove a stitch into my body, like your own personal music box, humming as you did it?”
Klein whimpers.
It sounds beautiful.
“Do you remember whenIgot the scalpel?” Sullen tilts his head. His shoulders shift with the movement.
Fuck, I want to fuck him.
I squeeze the gun in my fist to stop from moving.
“When I didthis,”he cups his entire hand over Klein’s scarred face.
Warmth spreads in my tummy, and this time, it’s pleasant.He is the reason Klein is disfigured.I cannot bite back my smile.
“Is that the same night he crossed his own lines and stuck a needle in your cock until you cried like a child into your pillowcase, legs spread, body exhausted?” Stein’s words.
My smile falls away.
I aim the weapon at his head.
Sullen turns to his father and without warning, he slams his fist into the wound on his chest.
Stein groans, and I watch as he bows his head and blood bubbles up through his nose. His mouth.
“I thought you were meant to be immortal?” I say, stalking closer, gun in hand. I stare at him as he lifts his cloudy eyes to mine. Then I spit on him, mingling my saliva with his blood. “You look an inch from death to me. Where is your god now?”
Sullen slowly turns to stare up at me. There is a spark in his eyes. But he says, “Do not put any more of your bodily fluids on him, Karia.”
Like a warning.
I grin at my lover.
“Whatever you say,Daddy.”
His brows jump, but even he cannot fight his smile.
Something loosens in my chest.
We are going to survive, and I am never going to let him go.
“I only wanted to protect you,” Klein whispers, voice ragged.
Sullen turns to him, as if under a spell. He needs an apology. A reason. He needs something I know will never come.
“If it wasn’t me, it would be someone worse. Kill him, but spare me, Sullen Rule. Your mother, she had mercy.”
Sullen is frozen.
I wonder if he is thinking of it, what happened to Mercy Rule, inside his precious head now.
“Your mother would forgive me. Your mother would?—”
Sullen shoves his fingers—both hands—inside Klein’s mouth.
And he begins to rip his jaw apart.
Klein tries to struggle away, but on his wrecked thigh, he does not get far. Sullen shoves him backward, so Klein is in a reclining hero yoga pose, if I remember them correctly from my brief foray into yoga classes, and Sullen is over him, his fingers ripping at his mouth, tearing through bone as Klein screams.
