Page 51 of Missing Piece
“Now, now, Mr. Bellenger, there’s no need for that kind of language—”
“Do you not get it? If I hear from you again, I will nail you to the fucking ground and peel off your goddamn eyelids so youcan watch the sun come up. Leave. Us. Alone.” Vincent knew he was losing control over the beast, but he didn’t care.
“My, my, that’s quite the threat, now isn’t it?”
“Your thirty seconds was up a while ago. Are you done?” Vincent kept his tone steady in spite of his frayed patience.
“All this hostility over a few humans? I thought you’d outgrown such…sentimentality. The Order teaches us that attachments to mortals only weaken us, but between you and me, Vincent, and we can speak freely here, I think you and I both know there are more important things than ideology, don’t we?”
Richard’s voice shifted, becoming slick with amusement. “Then again, I suppose we can do this the hard way. If you don’t agree to meet me when I’ve already conceded to time and place, then I’m afraid this could be a painful experience when we do finally meet. This wouldn’t be your first time finding freedom and purpose through pain, now would it?”
The words hit Vincent like a physical blow. His stomach twisted as fragments of memory flickered through his mind—chains, blood, screams that might have been his own. The beast snarled in his head, pushing past those memories with a singular demand:Kill.
“What did you just say to me?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, a moment that seemed to stretch into an eternity, before Richard’s reply came through with a finality that made Vincent’s insides churn.
“Goodbye, Mr. Bellenger. I’ll see you soon.”
The line went dead.
Vincent stood motionless, his hand still gripping the phone as if it were Richard’s throat.
* **
Find him first,the beast insisted, pushing against Vincent’s control.
I need to calm down.Vincent made his way into the room Adam had previously occupied, a strange tightness in his throat when he eyed the chains still coiled on the bed. He hesitated for a moment before sitting in the same spot he usually occupied when he would sneak in to watch Adam breathe. He ran his fingers over the chain, the metal cool and familiar against his skin.
Would it be possible to start over?
A knock on the open door kept his mind from wandering too deep. Luka leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest and eyebrows raised. Matteo stood beside him holding the box of medical supplies, his face ashen, the circles beneath his eyes a slightly deeper shade of purple than they had been the day before.
«You know he has a little lock pick hidden inside the pillowcase, right?» Luka signed.
“I do,” Vincent said, a wry smile working its way onto his face. He had found it right away the night he first discovered he could no longer resist the desire to kiss the human, after Adam had fallen asleep. He had snuck in to make sure Adam was not too cold and saw that he was having some sort of nightmare, drenched in sweat and his normally grumpy face contorted into a mask of sadness. He wasn’t even looking for contraband then, he just felt an overwhelming urge to lay beside Adam and hold him.
Past Vincent would have tormented a trial with it, using itto pry out an eye or pop off a toenail or two. But now? All he could think was how clever his human was.
«Adam is cleaned up and stitched again, and I gave him an antibiotic in case all that ‘exercise’ you did causes any issues. He’s in good spirits,» Luka signed. He paused, his hands neutral for a moment as though there was something else he wanted to say.
“Yes?”
Luka shrugged. «I was going to ask how the sex was—»
“Shut the fuck up.”
Luka started to sign a response, but Vincent’s was distracted by Matteo. His usual gentle expression was replaced with a vacant stare, his eyes pitch black, fixed on the inside of the medical box. Vincent recognized the look: the glazed-over eyes, the subtle tremble in Matteo’s hands. It was the look of a starving predator on the brink of losing control.
Going to snap,the beast murmured, a low rumble in the back of Vincent’s mind.Soon.
Even Vincent, who had often been annoyed by Matteo’s aversion to blood bags and the lengths Luka went to in order to keep his twin fed, felt a pang of sorrow.
Luka moved with practiced speed, snatching the box from his twin’s grip and setting it aside. He cupped Matteo’s face between his palms, forcing their eyes to meet in that peculiar way they had.
After a moment, the blackness in Matteo’s eyes receded, replaced by confusion. He blinked a few times, as if waking from a dream, then his hands moved. «I’m okay.»
«No, you’re not.» Luka glanced at Vincent, his brow furrowed with concern. «I’ll try and fixthis. You take care of Adam.»
