“Where next?” she asked firmly.
Her tears had stopped, though I could see she was still shaking. Blood splatter was down her front and up her arm from when she’d retracted the knife, and I knew she was going to lose it when she saw it on her.
Carlos had woken up, his head rolling on his shoulders as he tried to focus on everything and everyone around him. He knew his time was up once his gaze landed on me, and he froze momentarily, his fear giving way. He was muttering in Italian until he saw Belle, and then his words died on his lips and a grin cracked his face.
“Pretty girl, I warned you what my brother would do to you, didn’t I?” He smirked and licked his lips. “He’ll fuck you until you can’t walk and then he’ll kill you.”
The room fell away from me and I saw red. I dropped my knife and stormed forward, my fist rearing back and slamming into his face before he could speak again, knocking the breath from his lungs and the teeth from his mouth. I raised my fist again and slammed it into his face over and over until he was coughing and choking on his own blood and Belle was screaming at me to stop. I’d waited for this moment for so long, and the scent of his blood spurred me on. I wanted to beat him to death with my bare hands and show him exactly how the next few months of his pitiful existence were going to be. And if it would have been at any other time in my life, I would have kept him chained like that for months, if not years, repeatedly beating him until there was nothing left of the man he once was but broken bone and dying flesh.
Belle tugged on my arm and screamed my name again and I turned to look at her, my fists dripping with his blood, and one look at the horror on her face had the feeling of rage dying away like the tide slipping out.
She looked terrified of me and what I was capable of, and I felt sick to my stomach that I had caused that look in her eyes. I had made her cry. Me. The monster I was. The monster I had hidden from her, but now she had seen me in all my black glory and there was no point in hiding anything from her now.
“Stop,” she begged, fresh tears trailing down her face.
The world came back in, and I saw my brothers and I saw Carlos’s blood and I heard Mateo yelling at me in Italian, pulling on his chains frantically to get to me, to stop me from killing his brother. It spurred me on and calmed me all at the same time.
I was panting, the blood hot on my knuckles, and I nodded at Belle. “It’s okay,” I said, my voice thick with barely contained rage. She let go of my arm and I turned back to Carlos. Stepping closer to him, I clasped his head in my hands, letting his blood trail between my fingers. “Remember me, motherfucker?”
He spat in my face, blood and saliva sliding down my chin. I reared my head back and slammed it into his, hearing the satisfying crunch of his nose against my skull and he called out. I let his head go and it rolled on his shoulders, his eyes swimming in and out of focus, but he was laughing hysterically a high-pitched hyena laugh that set my nerves on edge.
I raised my blade up. “Something funny?” I asked, and he spat on the ground in front of him, his gaze straying to Mateo, whose blood was still dripping slowly from his stab wound.
“You think you’ve won?” He laughed, blood dripping down his face and into his eyes. “That’s what’s so funny. You think that this is over. That it ends with us.” He laughed again and I gripped my knife tight in my grip and stabbed him in the same spot that I’d just shown Belle.
Carlos grunted as I held the blade in him. I stared into his eyes and I felt like God, looking life and death in the face, deciding someone’s fate with a strike of my knife. I twisted it and he grunted again, his mouth opening and blood spilling off his flaccid tongue as he tried to call out. I put a hand over his mouth to stifle his cries and glared at him.
“You’re lucky I’m not going to make this last,” I gritted out, “that I’m going to end this quickly for you instead of keeping you on the brink of death for the next year, just like you did to me. I’m sending you on a swift one-way journey to hell, where you can serve your time with the real Devil, but you make sure to save a place for when I’m done up here…because I’ll be seeing you again.”
I pulled the knife out of his side, gripped the handle tighter, and stabbed it into his chest, the sharp blade cutting through bone and muscle easily. I dragged it down his chest all the way to his belly button, cutting him open like a fish and letting his screams of pain fill up my cup for bloodlust to overflowing. When I reached his belly button, I pulled the knife out as he let out a final raspy breath and his insides tumbled at his feet.
I felt, rather than saw, Belle come to stand next to me as I stared at Carlos, feeling nothing but hatred for the piece of shit who’d brought me so much pain. Belle reached over and pried the knife from my hand, and I finally tore my gaze away from Carlos to look at her. I expected fear or terror, and she did look frightened. There was no denying that. But mostly she looked determined. I’d shown her the beast that lived within me and she was still by my side. She wrapped herself around me, burying her face against my chest like she was trying to calm me, like she was trying to soothe me, and I held her back, feeling more at peace than I ever had done in my life.
“He deserved that,” she said, finally pulling away. Her face was smeared with blood and her eyes looked brighter. “After everything he did to you…he deserved that.”
She looked over at Mateo, who was glaring at us both. But there was no mistaking the fear in his eyes or the sadness as he saw his brother dead, his blood and guts dripping to the floor.
“You going to do that to me now, gorgeous?” he asked with a smirk, and I started toward him but she put a hand to my chest. “Pity, I had big plans for us.”
“I have to do this,” she said softly. “I have to do this for us.” She reached up and cupped my face, running her thumb along one of the deeper gouges down my cheek. “I’ll do it for you, Beast.”
If I could have loved her any more than I already did, my heart would have burst out of my chest.
Belle turned away from me and stepped toward Mateo, a knife in each hand now. Mateo lifted his chin and sneered at her.
“Sweet piece of ass like you going to cut me open?” he asked, coughing and wincing at the same time. “Sounds like a good time, not punishment.” He licked his lips and sneered at her.
“I hope this hurts,” she said, sounding fierce as fuck, and my dick twitched.
His smile grew wider. “I’ll be seeing you in hell soon enough, bitch. I’ll take my punishment and when you get down there” —he side-eyed me—“I’ll be waiting for both of you.”
I thought she was going to cry—she was already shaking from head to toe—but she stepped right up to him, close enough for him to stick out his tongue and lick along her cheek, but she didn’t flinch. Not even a millimeter.
“Are you done?” she asked, and he laughed in response. Belle looked across at me. “Show me,” she said. “Where can I hurt him the most?”
My Belle.
My beautiful Belle was turning into a monster just like me.
