The knife.
My pulse hammering behind my eyes.
His breath in my face.
Then I drove the knife through the center of his chest.
The resistance stopped, and Luke made a sound that was more surprise than pain as his body went rigid against mine.
The knife was between us, buried beneath rib and muscle, clean through his heart, where his own momentum and my last brutal push had driven it.
His eyes locked on mine, wide and disbelieving, like even at the end he couldn’t understand that consequences had finally found him in a hallway beneath fluorescent lights.
I held him there because I wanted to watch him die.
Not because I was confused. Not because the pain had blurred the line between survival and vengeance. I knew exactly what I was doing.
Luke’s mouth moved, but no words came out. Just a wet, broken sound that should’ve meant something to me.
It didn’t.
Not when I could still see Bliss’s bruised throat in my head. Not when I could still hear the way her voice broke when she tried to hand me the truth without making me look directly at every piece of it. Not when I knew how many times this piece of shit had heard her say no and decided the word didn’t matter because he wanted something more.
My hand tightened around the knife.
“She told you no,” I said, my voice low and wrecked, but steady enough for him to hear every word. “A million times.”
His fingers twitched weakly toward mine as I shoved his hand away.
“A million times, and you ignored it.”
The blade dragged through blood-soaked fabric and skin, rough and ugly and final, but my hand didn’t shake from doubt. I carved the first letter into him because men like Luke understood loss in any language, and I wanted him to die carrying the only word he should’ve ever acknowledged.
N.
His breath hitched.
I carved the second beside it, jaw locked so hard pain sparked behind my teeth.
O.
No.
The word sat there in blood and torn cotton, brutal and undeniable just beneath the hole in his chest.
I threw the knife aside and grabbed his chin, forcing his fading eyes back to mine. “Look at me.”
His pupils jumped, unfocused and terrified now.
I leaned closer, every breath ripping wrong through my chest. “Look at the man who ended your life.”
His mouth opened.
Closed.
“You were never getting out of this hallway,” I whispered.
He made another attempt, smaller this time, pathetic and weak.
