Chose pride.
Chose to hurt her one last time.
The sound he made—something between a laugh and a choke—was the final fracture.
Something inside me snapped.
Clean. Irreversible.
I moved before the thought could fully form.
My boot slammed hard into his shoulder, forcing his collapsing body upright again. Bone met force with a dull, jarring thud, his frame jerking under the weight of it.
He tried to fall—his body already halfway to death—but I didn’t let him.
Not yet.
A sound tore out of me.
Raw.
It ripped through my throat like something dragged up from a place I had buried years ago—a place made of chains, darkness, and a boy who had once screamed until his voice broke.
My hands closed around the dagger’s hilt—tight, unrelenting.
In one sharp motion, I tore it free from where it had been lodged in his cheek, tearing it loose in one brutal motion. Blood spilled in a sudden, violent surge as he convulsed beneath me, his body thrashing in raw, desperate pain.
But I didn’t hesitate.
I drove the blade down with cold precision, forcing it through resistance, straight into the center of his head.
The blade punched through the crown of his skull with a sickening, unmistakable crunch.
Bone split beneath the force, resistance shattering as steel carved its path downward. I felt it—every layer it broke through—vibrating up my arms, lodging deep into muscle and memory.
His body twitched violently.
A final, grotesque surge of life.
His eyes bulged, veins bursting red against white, his limbs jerking in sharp, unnatural motions like a puppet whose strings had been yanked too hard.
I drove the blade deeper in a surge of rage, my grip unyielding as it pierced through his skull.
Through bone. Through brain.
Through what remained of him.
It burst out beneath his chin in a spray of hot, red mist.
Even as I did, the memories came crashing back—sharp, relentless—of my own pain... and Loretta’s. The nights she suffered, the silence that followed, the damage he caused and allowed. It all bled together, fusing into something heavier than anger.
This wasn’t just fury.
It was the weight of everything he had done.
My vision narrowed until all I could see was white—blinding, consuming.
For a second—
