Page 58 of To Curse A Knight

I stood over his body, acknowledging it was truly time to let him go. Holding him in captivity to make him suffer had continued to make me suffer. I understood now that no amount of extended torture would bring back Isabella.

“For Isabella!” The words were a bitter declaration to lay my beautifulCariñoto rest.

Without mercy, I drew back and thrust the knife with power into Alec’s chest, then twisted it sharply into his heart, exactly as he had done to mine. Blood poured from the wound; Alec convulsed on the floor, twitching chest at odds with his frozen limbs.

I removed the dagger, then punctured his lung with another strategic stab, fascinated for a moment by the blood flooding into his throat and sputtering out of his mouth.

I withdrew the blade and cleaned it on the wool sleeve of my jacket. My gaze, though, never wavered from Alec’s eyes as life left them.

The grisly satisfaction I was waiting for did not arrive.

Not while Marco Alvarez still conducted the orchestra of unwilling women and children in our state.

Not while Antonio remained ready and willing to replace every aspect of Alvarez’s business with his own.

Not when there were more victims to avenge.

Nodding once, I spun on my heel and tossed the dagger to Aaron. He caught it deftly, spinning it on his finger. He bent down to Alec’s lifeless body and stabbed the knife into the man’s stomach.

“For Isabella,” he said solemnly, then handed the bloodied knife to Lucky.

The Irishman’s gaze was as severe as I’d ever seen it, and he didn’t break eye contact with me as he stabbed Alec’s corpse in the dick, wrenching it deep into the flesh before withdrawing the blade.

“For Isabella,” he said, then passed the weapon into Kellan’s waiting palm.

Kellan knelt over Alec’s face and plunged the stiletto into Alec’s eye. “Som man bäddar får man ligga,” he spat, then yanked the grisly knife out of the man’s skull and wiped it on the blanket tourniquet across his thigh.

I grimaced at what was left of Alec’s body. The mangled, bloodied mess a scene out ofDexteragainst the stark white floor. I stared at it, cataloging every gruesome detail, determined to bring out this imagery every time my brain wanted to work against me with another nightmare.

Itwas sadistic and twisted and yet, the exact comfort I needed.

Alec was dead, and the burden of keeping him alive was no longer mine to carry. It was time to move forward with the rest of our mission. Sandra had made a call, and we needed to get moving.

Walking over to the corner of the room, I was determined to relieve myself of one more burden before we left.

How had he escaped?

Under the camera’s corner blind spot, I peeled back the padded framework to see a jagged hole cut out in the grouted tile, a series of electrical wires pulled down and sliced through with uneven edges—likely from sharp shards of the ceramic tile itself. It would have been painstaking work, and Alec wouldn’t have known necessarilywhathe was cutting into, but his persistence had paid off.

Until it hadn’t. Instead of being a captive in a warm cell with food and water every day, he was now dead. Served him fucking right.

“We’re going to need a fire.”

Back to bitch mode. There were plenty of villains still in this town, and we needed to get our asses moving if we were going to make every sorry fuck bleed through their eyeballs.

“Aye, that’s where I come in.” Lucky’s gaze strayed from the bleeding corpse on the floor to mine, a renewed light and purpose shining in his eyes. A little—well,a lot—of blood and bone didn’t affect him, apparently. “I’m a very skilled arsonist, Blondie. Leave that part to me.”

“Do what you need to do. You have ten minutes.” Direction delivered, I turned to my other two soldiers as Lucky scurried off with an excited whoop.

“Kellan, I need all records of this building destroyed. It’s registered under a shell corporation and won’t be easily traced, but just in case.”

Henodded and pulled out his phone, dialing a number quickly and moving to the corner of the room to murmur into the receiver.

Aaron stood in front of me, calmly awaiting my instructions. His once raging face was placid, as if he had already accepted this new direction of the plan, and was ready and willing to carry it out at a moment’s notice.

His loyalty and dedication to me pierced my heart like my dagger had pierced Alec’s, but I put the intensity of those feelings on pause for the sake of the mission.

“Aaron, grab whatever you need to bring with you from the basement. You’re going to stay with me. We’ll bring you into the building through my hidden entrance, and you’ll be on house arrest there for a little while. But you’ll have fresh air and lots of natural light, which is a little better than here.”

---