“W-what?”
“He’s dead,” Fiero repeats firmly.
My heart stutters. After all these years, I’ve finally got the courage to tell Callum exactly what I think of him, make him pay for what he did, and… he’s dead?
“H-how?”
Fiero doesn’t hesitate. “I killed him.”
I sway against his hands. “Youkilled him?”
His grip loosens slightly. “Yes.”
I feel like a thread come loose, unraveling at the seams, no end in sight. Rage explodes in my chest, turning the room red, obliterating my vision.
“How COULD you?” I scream.
Yanking my wrists from his grip, I pummel him with everything I’ve got.
My curled fists batter his chest, my knuckles digging into the hard muscle. My limbs lash, coming down on him in a shower of uncoordinated beatings.
And he justtakes it.
His body doesn’t budge an inch as I punch into him as hard and as fast as I can.
Tears streak over my eyelids until all I can see is a blur of fists and a wall of bruising skin. My screams rattle the windows, dark shadows flying out of my soul as I realize with every blow I will never get the chance to face my abuser again.
I’ll never get the closure I need because Fiero took it from me.
I must have been flying fists at him for a good few minutes when he wraps his arms around me, burying my face in hischest. Tears flood from my eyes and I weaken in his embrace, my knees buckling.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs gently into my crown. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
My wails eventually turn to sobs, then to anguished whimpers, and he holds me through them all.
When I lean slightly away from his chest, I notice the purpling skin beneath the glistening ink. I’ve saturated him with my tears and knuckle marks and he looks all the more deadly for it.
When I lift my lashes, there’s a fullness to his gaze that I feel between my legs. And from the way his eyes tick at the corners, he can see it.
“Can I see him?” I whisper, my voice steadier now.
His full lips move surely. “No. His body has gone.”
Gone?I don’t want to know what that means.
“But I took a photograph of my own.”
My heart thumps. “Let me see it.”
He releases me slowly and walks to where his jacket has been tossed over a chair. Reaching inside, he pulls out a phone and swipes it open, then he returns, holding it out to me. I take it and peer at the screen.
I thought that if I ever saw a picture of a human, not just dead, but dismembered, in bits, recognizable parts of them swimming in a pool of their own blood, I’d be, at the very least, moved. But I feel nothing in this moment but pride.
I study the image as Fiero leaves the room, fully absorbed by the sight of slick red flesh, a disembodied head, familiar orange-hued hair matted with fresh blood. Adrenaline floods through my system, searching rabidly for an outlet. I grow hot and clammy and restless.
I feel Fiero’s heat when he comes back into the room and I turn to see him silhouetted in the doorway holding something heavy in his hand.
My gaze drops to it. The shape is alarming.
