Page 154 of Seeking Vengeance

Venom in my veins.

Hate in my heart.

“You’re exactly what I aspired to create.” He grins. “I couldn’t be more proud.”

My nostrils flare.

“We need to endure to evolve, my son. You never could understand that. But what I did in your teenage years was a favor. A gift.”

Grace’s murder was a gift?

Slicing her open was a fucking favor?

I laugh, otherwise I’d roar.

I picture ripping out his throat. Watching him suffer. Hearing his cries for mercy.

“That girl from your senior year was beneath you, anyway.” He continues digging his grave. “Can you believe she offered to spread her legs if I promised to get her out of town?”

My body detonates. Rage and hatred collide.

I lunge for him. Two steps is all it takes to have my hand around his throat, my eyes venomous as they will death upon him. “Your actions didn’t make me strong.” I seethe, spittle coating my lips. “They turned me into a monster.”

My mother screams. He doesn’t look at me in fear. Only in satisfaction. “I’m honored,” he wheezes.

Motherfucker.

I gave him what he wanted. I turned into the man he’d wished for. Someone callous and cruel. Vicious and brutal.

Goddamnit.

Cold metal presses into my temple, the barrel of a gun hard and unyielding against my skin as Emmanuel rasps for breath.

“Let him go,” Salvatore demands. “Get your hands off him.”

I can’t.

I want to end this. To squeeze the breath from the asshole’s lungs. To watch the life drain from his eyes.

I’ve pictured it a million times. Felt the euphoria. Tasted the victory.

“Langston,” Bishop shouts across the hall. “We’re not here for this.”

But I want to be.

I need it.

The brutality calls to me. Fucking sings.

Every wheeze invigorates me. Each stuttered breath appeases.

“He dies, we all die,” De Marco mutters behind me. “Come on, man. This isn’t the plan.”

Fuck.

I can justify my own death, but not those who followed me here. Not my siblings, either. Not yet, anyway.

And not Layla.

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