Page 80 of Passion and Payback

“Come,” he said and snapped his finger as he walked past me without a second glance in my direction. I spun and followed him, holding onto my jacket so the bottle of ether didn’t clink. And then he stopped and turned to face me, peering into my eyes. “You look...familiar. Have I screwed you before and forgotten?”

“I doubt it,” I said with a wide smile that felt stretched and false. “You would undoubtedly remember it.”

I never saw it coming. The hand flashed through the air and caught me on the side of the face, sending me reeling to one side. “Donotthink you’re allowed to cute with me. You’re going to answer my fucking questions, you’re going to do what I say, or I’m going to hurt you. Actually, I’m already going to hurt you, and it’s going to hurt a lot. And you can scream and beg all you want, but no one is saving you, and no one is going to give a shit about you.”

Scream for us, c’mon. No one around here is going to think twice about hearing screams, so give us a big one!

Blood thundered in my skull as I hunched over, watching him turn away, clearly not caring what I did as he walked intohis living room. And the bastardwhistledas he walked to a small bar in the corner. Fury rolled through me, and I dropped the jacket on the floor, straightening to follow him into the room, where he grabbed a bottle.

I could feel their hands on me and see his wicked smile as Callum shoved himself into me without regard to safety or health. The smell of tequila filled the room as I remembered him breathing its foulness over my face as I cried out in agony. The last time he’d hit me had been a punch to the gut as they drove me to the ground, my face covered in dirt, snot, tears, and copious amounts of blood as everything struck me at once.

He was going to hurt me?

Hurtme?

The knife was in my hand as I advanced on him, finding my grip as I tilted it upward, coming to his side. Everything, every line, color, and movement, was crystal clear. I felt I could predict everything he would do and what would happen afterward. There was no haze, confusion, fear, or horror, just the icy cold rage that had lived inside me for two years. “No, Damon, that’s where you have it wrong.”

He turned, a flash of anger on his face as the drink in his hand swirled in the glass. “Excuse?—”

He saw the knife, and I grinned, hoping it was half as feral as his had been moments ago. “You willneverhurt me again!”

The glass fell as he tried to grab my arm, but he was too slow. The knife flashed upward, the point sliding into the underside of his jaw. A wet gagging sound sputtered from his mouth, and in the realm of focus I found myself in, I realized I’d managed to split or pin his tongue to the roof of his mouth with the blade as it slid to a stop under his jaw.

Damon’s knees failed him as he collapsed, another cry coming from his pinned mouth as he drove himself even harder onto the blade. I backed up, letting go of the knife and lettinghim fall with a horrible groan. Blood dribbled from his mouth onto the floor, his eyes wide, pupils blown in terror and pain, and I stood there...watching him. His legs kicked out, one foot hooking a metal stand holding a ceramic face, sending both crashing to the ground. His hands flexed as he clawed at the knife in his neck.

And there, in his eyes, precisely what I wanted to see in all their eyes was the pain and terror. Any choice he might have made about his future was gone, taken from him by someone with malice in their heart. His life had gone from bright and moving up to agony and the realization that death was lurking right around the corner. It wasn’t going to be a fatal wound, at least not immediately, and I took the moment as he tried to get a grip on the knife to send a message to Kai to meet me at the house.

I knelt, shoving my knee into his chest and gripping the knife’s handle, leaning over to stare him in the face. “Do you remember me, Damon? It’s been a couple of years, but surely even a piece of shit like you would remember this face? Maybe you remember my boyfriend? You and your buddies didn’t rape him, but the four of you certainly made sure to gut him like some animal.”

His wide eyes searched my face. His lips tried to move but couldn’t do more than spread slightly as the knife pinned his mouth shut. I tightened my grip around the handle, waiting as he looked through me, over me, and then...recognition filled his eyes as his lips stopped moving and his eyes widened. With a snarl, I yanked the knife out of his jaw, twisting it as I pulled.

Damon shrieked. If I had heard it any other time, I wouldn’t have believed it could come from a human. His hands clamped to his face or tried to, pawing at it instead, his body still jerking. I might not have hit anything immediately fatal with the blade,but I had clearly hit something of some importance because his body was struggling to work.

Now, all he could do was make strangled moaning sounds that filled the air, and I could feel a trickle of horror at the mess I’d created creeping into my thoughts. Deserved or not, I was watching a human body slowly shut down. There was probably no fixing what I’d done, and left alone, he would probably die a slow, agonizing death. And yes, that was precisely what the twisted, inhuman bastard deserved, but I could already feel it wasn’t in me to let that happen. I couldn’t sit there and make sure he died before I left. I needed to end it.

I knelt on him again, taking in what had to be the last moments of his life, and when his arms reached for me, I brought the knife down into his throat. When I pulled it out with a yank, there were only wet gurgles as blood began to pool horribly around his neck and on the floor. I stepped away, carefully avoiding any of the blood in a distant sort of caution.

At first, he struggled even harder, despite the crippling and now the fatal wound. I remembered that clearly, the moment I didn’t justthinkI was going to die butknewit. All the fight they had beaten, stabbed, and raped out of me had come back with a vengeance. A desperate, primal hunger for the life I thought I was going to be removed from had welled up inside and been the only thing that saved me, that and two good people willing to help a bleeding stranger.

But there would be no saving Damon. His struggles quickly weakened, and I watched as his flailing became twitches, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly. His life ended in a pool of blood, his throat savagely cut by the blade he and his friends had used on me and my poor, former love. I wonder if he dreamed of going out in his old age, surrounded by everything he’d ever wanted, peaceful in his sleep. Or perhaps, knowinghim, he had dreamed of someone’s mouth on his dick and a grin on his face.

I bet he never imagined it would happen with him covered in his own blood and piss.

“Holy shit,” a voice interrupted the silence that had fallen with Damon’s final shuddering breath, and I whirled around, heart suddenly in my throat.

Kai held up his hands, eyes wide. “It’s just me. No one else.”

“Oh...good,” I said, realizing I’d been sitting on the arm of one of the plush chairs in the living room. I hadn’t looked at it before, but it could almost be called...homey. There wasn’t much in the way of flashy signs of wealth or any real airs being put on. There was just simple, comfortable furniture, and I realized there was a nautical theme. A wooden ship’s wheel hung on the wall, draped in fake seaweed. An iron anchor was etched into the wood of a round coffee table under a sheet of thick glass. “Christ, this looks like some retiree’s vacation house on the lake or something.”

“Hunter?” Kai asked, and I could see him moving closer, but it didn’t bother me. It was Kai, after all, no more a threat to me than I was to myself...then again, considering how easily and savagely I had just killed my second person, maybe that wasn’t strictly true. “You...what happened?”

I looked at the body on the floor and blinked. “I killed him.”

“I can see that,” he said in a strangely even voice until he was at my side. “But you were supposed to call me once you had him either comfortable or knocked out.”

“Plans changed.”

“Why?”

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