Page 46 of Black Hearts
I started to move to stand between my father and Juliet’s motionless body, but something tugged at my neck. Something cold and round, something that had definitely not been there mere moments ago. My whole body was yanked back, and my backside slammed against a stone wall. I brought a hand to my neck to see what it was, how I could get out of it, and I found a thick iron manacle.
I was chained to the fucking wall.
My father chuckled. “Now, now, Markus. Try to get out of those all you like, but you won’t be able to. You’ll fail. So just calm yourself and take in this lesson.” He moved to stand beside Juliet, and I tried once again to go to her.
The chain snapped taut, and the closest I could get to her left three feet between us still. No matter how much I pulled on it, no matter how much I strained my neck and used every ounce of strength inside of me, I could not break myself free of the wall or the chain holding me to it.
“Come now. You’re only making a fool of yourself,” my father spoke with a shrug. He did not pause to take off his suit; that particular pre-torture ritual was mine alone. A suit could always be replaced. He inched closer to Juliet, and he set the sharp edge of the knife on her cheek.
“No,” I growled out. “Don’t do this. If you do, I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Glare me to death? Please, Markus, you learned all your tricks from me, so you should’ve known where this would go. This will serve as both a lesson and a punishment for your obsession with this pathetic little girl.” And with that, he dragged the knife down her pale skin, hard enough to make her bleed.
Juliet jerked awake, whimpering at the deep cut on her cheek. She blinked a few times, her big, blue eyes focusing on me first. “Markus,” she cried out my name, though her voice broke when my father grabbed her cheeks, digging his fingers into the wound in doing so. Her eyes went to my father, realizing we were not alone in the room.
How had we gotten here? Was this really my fault? I… I could not let this be. If my father thought he could torture her, kill her and take her away from me, and we would go back to the way things were, he could not be more wrong.
“If you do this,” I warned him, “I will end you.”
“Me?” My father acted shocked. “Markus, I’m not the one doing this. Don’t you see? You are.”
I blinked, and suddenly I was no longer chained to the wall. My father stood outside in the hall, watching through the large window, overseeing me and what I was about to do. I held the knife in my hand, the stainless steel dripping with Juliet’s blood. I tried to drop the knife, tried to move away from her, but I couldn’t. It was like something held me in place, an invisible force, perhaps my father’s sick, twisted will.
Juliet whimpered, her eyes squeezing shut. “Don’t do this, Markus. Please stop.” Tears began to fall from the corners of her eyes, the pain she was in evident. Dark red oozed easily from the wound on her cheek, and she was slow to open those eyes and stare up at me, wordlessly pleading.
But this… this wasn’t me. I wasn’t doing this. This was my father, somehow. I would never. I could never. This girl was my fucking life. I’d known it from the beginning. I’d never sink this low, never want to do this.
I moved to stand before her, and I took her face in my knife-free hand. I couldn’t angle her head back thanks to the chair and the thick leather strap wrapped around her neck, but that didn’t stop me from trying. My other hand clutched the knife so tightly it began to shake.
I opened my mouth, wanting to do something I’d never done before: apologize. Tell her that I was sorry for it all, that I never meant to hurt her, that this wasn’t me. My whole life had led up to this moment, and when the pieces finally fell, I was not as strong of a man as I’d thought.
But again, no words came out. I said nothing, not even when I lifted the knife to her. I let go of her face, though I was unable to break eye contact. I was also unable to stop myself from doing what I did next, and I knew this day would haunt me for the rest of my life.
I plunged the knife into her gut. Her body took the steel easily, like sliding a knife through warm butter; no resistance. Juliet sputtered out a sharp breath, her eyes widening as she gazed up at me. Her blood coated my hand and the knife, but I didn’t pull it out. I was motionless, as if I could not move from where I stood, the knife in her gut.
I was killing her. The foolish, selfish part of me had wanted to believe this could work out, that we could make this work, somehow. That Juliet, the light, innocence incarnate, could be happy to live alongside me and my house of psychos.
But it couldn’t be. We were too different, too opposite. She could never live in my world and be happy. I should’ve known it. We had always been destined for failure. My father was right, wasn’t he?
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, and those big, blue eyes blinked at me. Her lips parted, but no words came out of her. Juliet looked utterly and completely broken.
She coughed, and my hand twisted the knife in her gut, causing her to cry out. I could tell she so desperately wanted to say something, but she could not. All she could do was grow paler and paler as the seconds ticked by, as more and more of her blood escaped around the knife lodged in her stomach.
I was just like her father. I was just like Fred. That realization would’ve hurt me if I wasn’t already crumbling into pieces. Jagged, sharp little pieces only this girl could put back together.
And then she was gone, just like that. Her blood still warm on my hand and the knife, but she was gone. Her pupils dilated, her eyes rolled back and went vacant, and Juliet breathed her last breath, her final moments full of fear.
Because of me.
“Good job, son,” my father’s voice filled the room from the speaker below the window, and I jerked my hand out of her stomach, staring down at the red stuff. All her blood. So much blood. It had covered her lap, started to drip on the floor. So much of it was on my hand, her guts on the knife. “I knew you had it in you.”
His words of encouragement did nothing to me. They meant nothing.
I took a step back, away from Juliet. Or her body. Whatever you wanted to call it, call this. This twisted turn of events. I was a Scott. The Scott. I’d overseen so much since taking the reins from my father. I’d witnessed some come and some go, allowed others to bring in new blood. I’d seen that my brothers could be happy, so why couldn’t I have an ounce of that happiness?
My father was suddenly in the room with me, and he patted me on the shoulder. “I still don’t know what you saw in her, Markus. She was nothing but a stupid girl. You could have anyone in this world—anyone—so the next time you decide on a woman, why don’t you think of furthering the family genes, first?”
I was certain my father could go on and on about this, but I’d stopped listening when he’d called Juliet nothing but a stupid girl.
