Page 125 of Savage Enemy

No, I had to do this on my own.

There had to be something else I could use as a weapon.

I retraced my steps to the kitchen. Kitchens had knives. Aris’s death wouldn’t be as clean—or from a distance. I would have to get up close and personal.

Shooting a person was one thing. You only had to pull a trigger, not much more difficult than pressing a button. But stabbing offered no separation between you and your victim.

Aris also had a better chance of living with a stab wound than one made by gunshot. Unless I slit his throat.

I would have to find the strength to creep into his room, pray I didn’t wake him, and slice through his neck.

Mother of Christ. I gripped my abdomen.

So fucking nauseating.

For my son’s safety, for Enzo, I would do it, though.

Deep satisfaction warmed my blood—Aris would know who killed him. But if I shot him in the head, he probably wouldn’t see it coming.

This way, with a knife, he would know the little girl he’d abused, the woman he tortured, won in the end. And I wouldeven get to see the light fade from his evil eyes as his soul drifted down to hell.

Bile burned my throat. I covered my mouth.

Could I really do it?

For Enzo, yes, you can. You will.

I tiptoed back into the kitchen.

Nonna had kept her knife block on the counter, the one her mother passed down to her, brought here from the old country. About every six months, she’d sent them out to get sharpened, and she always honed the blades whenever she used them.

She had yelled at me once for touching them when I was young, then Aris chased me with one when we were a little older. I still had the faint white line over my collar bone from where he’d cut me before Marco found us and saved me.

I didn’t see the wood block on any of the countertops.

Saul wasn’t sentimental like his mother had been. He must have gotten rid of Nonna’s beautiful knives.

As quietly as possible, I slid open all the kitchen drawers, looking for an impromptu weapon that might work just as well.

I found newer knives in the fourth drawer. A cheap set of dull blades replacing the beautiful steel and olive wood handles with perfect balance that my family had passed from generation to generation.

Saul’s housemaid or whoever hadn’t even bothered with the different types needed for different tasks. They just bought a bunch of generic chef’s knives. I couldn’t chop up a salad with the fuckers, let alone slit a man’s throat.

I considered looking for something else and lost myself in thought while sorting through the options.

Male voices snapped my mind back to attention.

Aris, laughing.

I would know that psychotic laughter anywhere.

Glancing outside, I saw him cross the lawn, coming from the security cabin, and head toward the house. He couldn’t just use the door into the four seasons room like everyone else, oh hell no, the asshole had to use the back fucking door into the kitchen.

My pulse thrummed inside my ears.

With a knife in my hand, I scurried to hide, diving at the table and under the tablecloth right as the door flew open.

“Nah, we’re shipping the dirty cunt out tomorrow, and Marco is all pissed,” Aris said. “He thinks it’s bad business.”

---