Page 85 of Bought By Santa

“This is for her. For Willow,” I snarl, my voice drenched in anguish.

I haven’t noticed one of my stilettoes falling off my foot, but as I see it next to me, I reach for it. My fingers close around the nose of the shoe as I use the heel as a weapon of destruction, plunging it into his flesh with sickening ease.

Once, twice, thrice—each thrust a punctuation to my sister’s stolen future.

The red pooling under him is a grotesque mirror to the blood that now stains my soul, but I can’t stop. I keep going.

“Get her off!” someone yells, hands trying to pry me away, but I am unyielding, a force of nature unleashed.

“Carolina, stop!” It’s Nicklas again, his arms finally wrapping around me, dragging me back into the world of the living. But Ican’t stop shaking, can’t stop the raw screams tearing from my throat.

“Willow…” The name is a sob, a plea, a curse.

The aftermath is surreal, patrons huddled under tables, faces pale and eyes wide. Staff cluster by the kitchen, phones pressed to their ears, their uniforms splattered with reminders of violence. Glass crunches underfoot as sirens wail in the distance, the once festive atmosphere now a tableau of horror and disbelief.

“Is he…” I can’t finish the question, my gaze locked onto the motionless form beneath the security team.

“Dead,” Marco confirms.

“You killed him,” Nick says, his voice tinted with awe. I look up at him, searching for judgment, for condemnation. But there’s only sorrow and something else—a fierce protectiveness that both comforts and terrifies me.

“An eye for an eye,” I whisper, my fingers trembling as I touch the sticky red on my hands, “a life for a life.”

I stand there, my breaths jagged, staring down at the man whose life has just ebbed away under my hand. My stiletto, a lethal extension of my rage, drips with the consequence of my fury. There’s no tremor in my grip, no second-guessing the darkness that has settled over me like a shroud.

“Carolina?” Nick’s voice cuts through the pandemonium, but I feel distant, disconnected from the chaos that my actions have wrought. The restaurant is a warzone of overturned chairs and shattered lives, yet all I see is the void where Will’s light used to be. “Are you okay?” he asks, his hand reaching for my shoulder.

The touch should ground me, pull me back from the brink, but it doesn’t. I shake my head, a bitter laugh escaping my lips. “I’ll never be okay again. The light in my life just flickered out.”

It’s not just words; it’s a chilling revelation.

A part of me—the part that sang Christmas carols with Will and always looked out for her—has been snuffed out. In its place is a cold certainty that I will never return to who I was before this moment.

“Let’s get out of here,” Nick urges, his eyes scanning the room, ever vigilant even now.

“No!” I scream, turning back to where Will lies, her wheelchair on its side now. I barely register a fleeting thought wondering why she didn’t get out and hide under the table. I know why; shock. “I’m not leaving her.”

“Marco can—”

“I said no.”

Nick looks at one of the guys who was meant to protect us, and signals for him to come over. “Get her wheelchair,” he orders. Then he steps over to her, and with more care than I’ve ever seen him handle anything or anyone, he picks her up, cradling her lifeless body against his chest. “Can we leave now?”

Nodding, I follow him mechanically, stepping over debris, my senses dulled to everything but the weight of emptiness within me. I don’t hear the sirens approaching or the murmured prayers of the survivors. I don’t feel the December chill as we exit the restaurant. All I feel is the hollowness where my sister’s laughter once lived.

“Stay with me, Carolina,” Nick says, his voice a lifeline I’m not sure I want to grab.

Can this man, bound by blood and violence, truly understand the abyss into which I’ve fallen? Does he grasp that, in seeking vengeance, I’ve birthed a new version of myself—one that might match his own darkness?

“Nick…” I start, but words fail me. How do I explain that the woman he knew—the one who plotted to trap a rich husband, who dreamed of a brighter future is fading fast, leaving only the raw edges of a soul torn apart?

“Shh,” he soothes, pulling me close. “You don’t have to say anything.”

But silence is its own torment, and as we flee the scene of my transformation, I can’t help but wonder if the void inside me is not a pit but a womb, gestating a new life forged from loss and retribution. And whether Nicklas Knight, the man who commands empires and demands loyalty, is ready for the woman I am becoming.

As we drive away, the city lights blur into streaks of color, bleeding into the sky. They speak of life going on, of a world oblivious to the fracture in my universe. And somewhere deep inside, something primal stirs—a recognition that survival requires adaptation, that sometimes creation is born from destruction.

“What should we do with the body?” the guy—I don’t know his name—asks.

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