Page 150 of Buried in Blood

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I don’t reply.

But I think—for the first time—that maybe I’m allowed to hope again.

He slowly stands to get cleaned up. He removes a gun from his clip and places it on the nightstand.

“You know how to shoot?” He asks.

I nod. Barely.

“Good. When he shows up… aim for his head.”

My stomach twists into knots at the reminder.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot my fairy tale will come to an end.

Sooner than I am okay with.

And what scares me is that he saidwhenhe shows up… notif…

The worst part is—I’ll live my life looking over my shoulder until he’s dead….

42

Damien

The silence in this place is almost holy.

The walls are bare. The floor is concrete. The only sound is the rhythmic tick of the old grandfather clock in the hall—each second like a heartbeat.

Like hers.

I sit in the high-backed chair near the window, fingers steepled beneath my chin, staring at the monitor still mounted in the corner of the room. It’s been playing the wedding footage on loop. Grainy. Bloodstained. Beautiful.

The chaos. The screams. The flash of fire.

The way Lucien ran into the wreckage like a martyr.

The way Dante grabbed Evelyn’s wrist and yanked her from the tent.

They were sopredictable.

I watch it again.

And again.

And again.

Until the taste of ash coats my tongue and I smile.

“I built that moment,” I whisper to the empty room. “I carved it from silence and delivered it like a sermon.”

But she ruined the ending.

Harmony.

The traitor.

I lean forward, teeth grinding, muscles tight as a piano wire.

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