His whole body tenses at my answer, like he’s having to actively work to not do it anyway.
“I want to.”
Damon relaxes, a sigh of relief filtering through the voice modulator. He kneels in front of me and grabs a knife from a holster on his ankle. Presenting it to me, he says, “They’re all yours, darling.”
I grab it, my hand shaking slightly. Am I actually about to kill my boyfriend and his shitty friends?
“What will we do with the bodies?” I ask him.
“Leave that to me.”
This confirms that he has definitely killed people in this room before.
I stand slowly and turn to face Aaron and his friends. All three are pulling against their restraints. Tyler and Zach are gagged, and they look fucking terrified. Good, they should be.
I walk up to Tyler, the weight of the knife unfamiliar in my hand. His eyes widen, and he starts shaking his head and mumbling incoherent pleas behind his gag. My stomach twists with uncertainty. Can I really do this? Then the memory of that night—the feeling of them inside me, violating me—rushes back. Certainty settles through me, and my hand tightens around the knife handle.
I slice his throat, the knife so sharp I don’t feel any resistance, and blood instantly sprays over me and the room. Hopefully Damon can clean that up too.
Tyler’s wide eyes stare at me in panic for only a minute longer before the life drains from them and he slumps in his chair.
He’s gone.
My heart pounds, and my hands shake.
“Violet, what the fuck is wrong with you?!” Aaron cries beside him. “You just fucking killed him!”
Zach is silently crying. I almost feel bad for him. But he could have stopped Aaron, could have refused to participate, and he chose not to.
When I walk over to him, I drag the knife along his cheek slowly. He squeezes his eyes shut, and I can’t have that.
“Look at me,” I demand.
His eyes open, fear and regret filling them.
“You could have stopped this. You could have stopped all of this,” I tell him, and then I plunge the knife into his abdomen, just below his rib cage, twisting and arcing up as I do. I’m no anatomy expert, but I hope I pierced his heart.
He coughs, blood trickling out of his mouth, covering his teeth. Maybe I at least punctured a lung. He’ll die, and that’s all that matters. I leave the fucker to it.
I stand in front of Aaron, wielding the knife covered in his best friends’ blood.
“Don’t do this, Vi,” he begs. “You know you love me, you don’t want me dead.”
I stare at him, appalled that he would think I still love him, or that it would stop me at this point even if I did.
When I don’t say anything or move, he starts pleading. “Vi, come on, please. I’ll help you cover up what you’ve already done. My dad can represent you, if it comes to that. Please, just put the knife down and let’s go home.”
Home.The place he manipulated me, hurt me, violated me. Where he let the dead pieces of shit next to him violate me. That place was never home.
Home is the broad shoulders and denim-blue eyes behind me; the man who gave me the power to overcome this. Home is wherever he is from now on.
I stab the knife into Aaron’s thigh and then immediately pull it out. Based on the small amount of blood pooling on his light-blue jeans, I must not have hit the right spot. I try again on the other thigh, and this time blood instantly floods his pants.
“Fuck! Stop this, you can still stop! Help me!” he cries.
“You can die a slow, painful death. But I’m sick of your stupid voice.” I reach in his mouth and grab his tongue, pulling it as far out and taut as I can. The knife is too big to reach the base, so hopefully half is enough. Around his screams, I try to slice through the muscle, blood pooling in his open mouth. I don’t quite get all the way through, but it’s enough that he can’t use it anymore. When I’m done, I turn back around to face Damon.
He’s removed his mask, and the look on his face is pure pride. “How do you feel?” he asks tentatively.
