Page 93 of Merciless Prince
Before I could say anything else, he swung the shovel at my head.
27
Killian
The bladeof the shovel hurtled past Shay’s left ear as I jabbed it in her direction, making her jump and skitter to the side. She tried to regain her footing and ended up tripping and falling right into the pit I’d forced her to dig.
She winced and rolled onto her back, chest heaving as she caught her breath. It was clear that she was trying to say something, but she was far too winded.
I picked up a hefty load of snow from the edge of the pit and dumped it on her legs. She gasped and rolled to avoid it, but I followed it up with another heap on the other side so she couldn’t escape it.
“No,” she managed to gasp out, lifting her arms to shield her face and upper body. “Stop.”
I ignored her and used the shovel blade to scrape an entire pile of snow into the pit, covering her feet and lower legs.
Her chest was heaving so hard that it looked like she was having an asthma attack. She kept trying to get up and kick the snow off, but she was still too weak and winded from the fall. On top of that, she couldn’t dodge the relentless avalanche of snow falling onto her from the edges of the pit as I pushed it all in with the shovel.
“Killian,” she rasped. “Please. Get me out of here.”
I flattened my lips and shook my head. “I told you, it’s too late. We’re done.”
It wasn’t true, but she didn’t need to know that. Not yet, anyway.
After today’s vicious attack on Derrick, I’d come to realize how fucking sick I was of dealing with Shay’s tenacity. No matter what I threw at her, no matter how much I tormented her, she resisted me and kept her mouth firmly shut. Apparently, she was also willing to tear people’s throats out with her teeth in order to keep her secrets.
In any other circumstances, her grit and strength would be impressive as fuck. But not now. I needed those names from her, and I was too sick of her bullshit to wait any longer.
I already knew pain and torture wasn’t enough to make those pretty lips of hers spill their secrets to me or anyone else. Seduction didn’t work either, and neither did kindness, as Derrick discovered earlier today. That meant I had to do the most despicable thing I could come up with to finally get her talking.
I needed her to think she was going to die.
I wanted her in the ground below me, teary-eyed, snot-nosed, and petrified. I wanted her humiliated, shivering uncontrollably, and begging for mercy. I wanted her to stare death in the face and realize there was only one way to escape it.
I couldn’t let her catch onto my plan, though. I had to pretend I was actually going to bury her in the snow; make her believe that death was truly imminent. That meant I had to ignore all her pleas for mercy until she was neck deep and gasping for air. Had to pretend I was truly done with her.
The average human body could survive burial in snow for fifteen minutes, but hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. If all went according to plan, Shay would start spilling her guts to me before the snow covered every inch of her.
“Killian,” she gasped out, weakly trying to lift herself up on one arm. “Don’t do this. Please!”
I stared at her blankly and scraped another pile of snow closer to the pit, ignoring her desperate pleas for mercy. It wasn’t hard to feel zero empathy for her, despite all the pain and terror in her voice. I just had to switch that part of my mind off.
I wasn’t a psychopath, but having strong tendencies in that direction was practically a prerequisite to exist in my world. Regular people with average lives could get away with having strong feelings and consciences, because it kept their part of society running smoothly. Meanwhile, people in the upper echelons had to actively go against that part of human socialization in order to maintain their positions in the hierarchy. After all, feelings weren’t going to run a multibillion-dollar enterprise and keep it profitable, and a conscience wasn’t going to stop the stock price from trending downward.
Only cold ruthlessness could do that.
Scions of the mega-rich were taught to emulate this borderline-sociopathic behavior from the minute they were brought into the world. Part of it involved blocking out other people’s emotions and refusing to lose any sleep over them. If we didn’t do it, we’d develop a proper conscience like everyone else, and then we’d be suffocated by the emotions that resulted from an affluent, exploitative existence—guilt, remorse, regret.
I never wanted that to happen to me. I was wildly fortunate that the Knights had accepted me as one of their own, even though I was technically the illegitimate son of whatever man my mother was fucking behind my father’s back. That meant I had to do everything I could to fit in and ensure they didn’t regret their decision to grant me a family. I simply couldn’t afford to set myself apart as an outsider any more than my appearance already did. Not unless I wanted to prove that little voice in the back of my head right—the voice that told me I didn’t belong, that I’d never be a true Knight.
“Please, Killian!” Shay suddenly shrieked. “Don’t do this!”
“Look who finally got their voice back,” Derrick said with a sneer, standing on the other side of the pit with his hands in his pockets. “Too bad it won’t help you.”
Shay ignored him and tilted her head to look at me as I shoveled another pile of snow onto her stomach and arms, completely pinning her under the heavy weight. “Killian, please!Please!Let me out! You can’t do this to me!”
When she realized I wasn’t going to acknowledge her words, she started screaming instead, voice rising to a fever pitch.
“There’s a nice familiar sound,” Derrick said, flashing a lazy grin in my direction. “Like music to my ears.”
