My knuckles are wet, and I don’t care whose blood it is.
“She’s mine.”
And then it breaks.
Whatever leash I was holding is now gone.
The violence swallows me whole. It’s just rabid, volcanic fury tearing through me. I don’t care if he screams. I don’t care if he begs. I’m past hearing or stopping. I just hit, again and again, until he’s nothing but broken pieces under my hands, and even then, I don’t fucking stop.
“I’ll make you wish you were strangled in the womb, you worthless fucking parasite.”
I hit him so hard the chair splinters beneath him, and he crumples to the floor.
“Mitch, calm down.” Wes, grabs my arm, but that infuriates me even more.
Snapping with explosive anger, I whirl on him and shove him back so hard he stumbles.
“Get your hands off me before I break every bone they’re attached to.”
“You’re losing your mind,” he growls, eyes narrowing.
“Then stay the fuck out of my way before I lose it with you, too.”
Leo coughs, choking on blood, half-dead on the floor.
“Calvano …” Air rattles in his chest.
“What?”
“C-Calvano wants to sell her v-virginity.”
“What?” Wes whispers in disbelief.
My jaw clamps so hard that my teeth grind almost to the point of breaking.
“What the hell did you just say?”
His breath shivers out of him, this sad little noise, and it makes something savage snap in me.
“V-Virgins cost a lot in our circle. Your g-girl drove the bidding higher than expected,” he gasps. “Her f-father set the price.”
Son of a bitch …
“I’m j-just the highest b-bidder interested in a p-pig for slaughter s-since day on-ne … s-since she was b-born.”
My mind fractures.
There’s a crawling static under my skull, a dozen voices murmuring a single note of disgust, as though something holy has just been desecrated.
My jaw twitches, and my vision trembles at the edges; the world seems to strain against its frame, trying to slip away, but it can’t. It’s trapped here with me, with him, with the buzzing, buzzing, buzzing …
I love this manic, broken beat pounding behind my eyes.
And the axe …
Oh, the axe …
It looms on the wall, humming a perfect, wicked harmony as chaos tears through my nerves.
