Page 115 of My Rose

Coming back around to his front, I raised a brow at him. “You think you aren’t?” I scrubbed my hand down the length of my face, the permanent stubble there a reminder of the woman waiting for me back at our home. She preferred the tickle and burn it gave herbetween her thighs, and it was kind of growing on me—both the marks it left on her and the stubble itself. “Let’s start with your biggest lie—Rose.” I pointed my bloodied knife at him, his eyes flaring at the motion. “You never gave a shit about her. You only stayed close to her because you were paid to do it. Correct?”

“I—” I held up the blade, waving it back and forth, reminding him what would happen if he continued to lie. Carving into him was going to happen again regardless, but he didn’t seem to think so. He exhaled. “Yes. Yes, okay. At first, I thought she was kind of cute and interesting. I met her in fucking middle school, dude. Puberty, you know.”

I smirked. “You wanted to fuck her because you had raging hormones.” When he nodded with relief at my apparent understanding, I crouched down and went to work on another piece. His shouts were ravenous, his body jerking in the chair. Blood began to dribble down his other leg, where a new mark was taking shape. “Wrong answer, you fucking moron.”

“Shit! Stop! Please!”

“Disrespect her one more time in this room, and I won’t stop until every inch of your skin is marked with what you truly are on the inside. Are we clear?”

His tears warmed me up all over again. “Fucking crystal, just stop!”

“Good.” I wiped the blade on his boxers, right above where the wordcowardwas etched in. “Tell me, when did he come to you and offer you payment?” His mouth popped open. “And before you askwho, I’d take a long look at your legs and wonder what word will be next and where I’ll decide to put it.”

He hung his head, his narrow shoulders shaking as he sobbed. “Sometime during her first year in college. Please. Please just let me go. If you know who did it—”

“Tell me, rat—after he paid you and told you to stay close to her, did he tell you to try to rape her? Or was it your eyes that were supposed to be on her?”

“You…you don’t know what he wanted me to do?”

I stood and circled him again, concealing my face in the process. The truth was, I had no idea. But at the risk of sounding or looking like I didn’t, I pressed the blade to his neck. He tensed. “Why don’t you tell me in your own words.”

“He wanted me to find out what she knew. He said”—he loosed a shuddering breath—“he said that if she ever talked about the fire or started snooping around, I was supposed t-to—”

I gripped his hair and tugged his head back, exposing his neck as I pressed the blade in enough to knick his skin. “Tell me!”

“Defile her! I was given money to make her undesirable, so you wouldn’t want her once she found out about your shared past. He said since I ruined your arranged marriage, it was my job to make sure you wouldn’t go after the girl you were chasing. You weren’t supposed to want her if I got to her first—if I made her love me and only want me and not you. He said if I didn’t do it, he’d come after me and my family next.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Why wouldn’t he just want her killed? All this time, I thought he believed she was dead. I had keptmy purchases around town as random as possible to keep it discreet, although most of the buildings were all within a certain distance from her house—all places she went to or passed by often. Yet, he knew. For some reason, he wanted her alive. For some reason, my father meticulously worked around every safeguard I thought I’d put into place and hadn’t set out to kill her like he tried to before.

For a minor blip of a second, I understood why August did what he did because here I was, doing the same thing. The irony wasn’t lost on me that we were both protecting the people we loved. The problem was he picked the wrong fucking girl to do it to. Irony be damned—August deserved this.

“The party,” I started, circling back around to face him. Crouching to the floor, I held the blade between two fingers. “The Christmas one. You knew he’d be there, didn’t you? You knew he was coming for her, and you had every opportunity to tell someone. Instead, you let her life hang in the balance.” His whimper was all the confirmation I needed. I stood and kicked the chair back, his head banging against the floor, causing his eyes to roll back into his head. “You lied to her.” I pointed at his leg with the wordliarcarved into his skin. “You hid behind the mask of money, mistaking it for power.” My jaw flexed as I pointed at the other leg, his pupils flaring with the concussion he no doubt just got when I slammed his head into the concrete floor. “And because you decided that trying to fuck my woman when I told you to stay the hell away from her—not only once, by the way—you’ll have a third word carved into your skin. Can you guess the word?”

His head lolled to the side as he tried to blink what I imagined were tiny dots blurring his vision. Concussions were brutal. “I’ll give you a hint—it’s going right above your tiny little dick, and I’ll even draw a pretty arrow pointing down to it. Care to guess now?”

His mumbled words made no sense. It was a shame he wouldn’t be fully coherent while I etched the next word into his flesh. “You’re a liar, a coward, and so many other things. But, most of all, you’re a rapist. I saw the look on your face the day you almost got your way with her, and no amount of money can coax out the desire you had to fulfill the sick games you and my father tried to play. You might not have completed what you set out to do, but that doesn’t change what you are deep inside.”

I knelt beside him and got to work on the word while the pain forced him to come to. By the time I was done, I stood and looked down at the mess of blood around him, then positioned the chair upright again. A swift knock sounded at the door minutes after I finished wiping my blade clean, and when I called for him to enter, August didn’t even have the drive to raise his head.

“Let him sit here for another hour, then cut him free.”

Jim cocked his head down at August, clearly confused. “Sure you don’t want him dead?”

“Oh, I do.” I slid my knife back into my pocket right as August’s beady little eyes found mine.Blueberries.That’s why she refused to eat them. His eyes were like two little blueberries, and my little viper almost gauged them out with her key. God, I fucking missed her.

“Got something on your blonde.” Jim held out his phone in front of me. “Recognize her?”

My gut clenched as I shook my head. “No. Local or federal?”

“Looks to be fed.” He pocketed his phone and cracked his knuckles. “She won’t find a trace of her informant, by the way.”

“As expected,” I replied, checking the time on my watch.

“Need me to handle her, too?”

My phone vibrated with a message, and my eyes widened in delight. It was great when the universe just aligned in your favor for fucking once. “Fed—you’re sure?” He nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. “Get me her name and number. A ghost just appeared. I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

“You start smoking?” Jim asked, his eyes falling to my shoulder.

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