Page 53 of Dangerous Silence
“Who the hell are you?” the man begged, his voice turning to tears. I knew my brothers were proud to brag about our name. Annihilate. Conquer. Rule. That was our way of life, and while my only purpose wasannihilation—I also knew that this stranger deserved to know. To know that if he had listened to his gut instinct, if had declined Muro, maybe he wouldn’t be looking into the face of death.
“We’re the Adlers,” I said.
A sob escaped from his chest, telling me all I needed to know. Wanting to leave a statement for Muro, I pulled my cleaver from its sheath, holding down the man’s hand as the blade sliced through the forearm. He flailed, and I grabbed the other hand, about to do the same.
“Can I help—”
I heard her voice, but I didn’t stop. I sliced the man’s other hand. He didn’t fight. The man wailed in a piercing noise that made me grind my teeth. Blood bubbled from his stumps, oozing onto the white comforter. It must have been expensive. What would the housekeepers think?
I turned to Demi. Could she helpwhat? We both knew she didn’t mean it. She was trying hard to figure out where her moral lines actually landed, if she was anything like her father, testing that boundary. Could she help kill a man who had helped a criminal launder money?
No. I didn’t think she could.
But she stared at me with passion in her eyes. She was trying to figure it out.
“Axe,” she whispered. “Let me be a part of this.”
I blinked, and the man whimpered.
“You want to be a part of this,” I repeated.
“Yes,” she said, so softly, I almost didn’t hear it.
I dropped the man on the bed, then bounded over to her, seizing my grip around her waist. I pulled her into me. Her body went rigid with tension. I placed the cleaver in her hand, wrapping our fingers around the handle together. Her chest tightened; she wasn’t breathing, too anxious to do even that. It was hard for me to remember that this wasn’t normal. Death, like this, wasn’t an everyday occurrence for someone like Demi. I shouldn’t have exposed her to this.
But I needed her to know. I needed to see what happened when I made it her new life.
I moved my hand, holding her wrist, letting her feel the heavy blade in her hand. She was trembling, her eyes flicking over the man, his skin ghostly white, mouth opened, his lips dry and parched. She was second-guessing herself, but I thought of this as a gift. Something she could never undo. It would be part of her. Like her father had made it a part of me too.
I had to know what she would do.
“You asked for this,” I whispered in her ear. “You asked to be a part of this.”
“But I—”
I tightened my grip on her wrist. “If you don’t do this, it will take minutes for him to die. Excruciating, painful minutes. It will be a long time before he has his final heartbeat.” The truth was that I didn’t know how long it would take. But after doing this for as long as I had, you had an instinct about these things. She could make it easy, or harder for him. It was her choice. “Or you can end it now,” I said. “Give him peace.”
Demi stared for a moment, and when the man’s eyes opened widely, his lips quivering to form words, she turned her chin to me, keeping her eyes on him.
“He was bad to your family,” she whispered.
I didn’t answer.
She brought the cleaver down on his neck. The blade sliced through the first part, splitting the skin of his throat and the wall of his esophagus, cylindrical pieces of flesh torn open, but it wasn’t enough. She started shaking, so I grabbed her hands, holding onto the cleaver with her palm, and I forced her hand down the rest of the way.
The spinal cord spotted pink, the head rolled on the bed, the eyes fluttered open. Demi took a deep breath, jumping back, her eyes full of tears. She flung her own body against the wall in shock. She shook her head, holding her face. Then her eyes were vacant, staring past the man’s corpse, but then she hit her hands against her chest, her body swelling with air.
“I did it,” she said, more to herself than to me. “I did it.” Her face contorted, her eyebrows bunched, her mouth dropped open. “I actually did it.” She shook her head. “He was a criminal?” she asked. “Right, Axe? He was a bad person?”
He laundered money. A white-collar crime. Would that be enough for Demi? I should have expected it, but it stunned me that she needed a reason. She cared about what was just. I admired that about her. But I wanted to teach her too.
The reason didn’t matter anymore. He was already dead.
Her chin trembled. “I just killed someone,” she said. She pleaded to me. “But he was a bad person,” she stammered. “Wasn’t he?”
Her gloves crunched in her hands. I touched her arm; she was ice cold. She needed comfort from me, the answer to her worries. A way to explain what she had done to that man. To tell herself that it wasn’t for nothing. Because it wasn’t simply a murder; it was a death so brutal that even I saved it for special occasions like this: the moment we told Muro that we were coming for his head next; the day that I showed Demi who I really was. When I stopped holding back. When I stopped trying to save her from me.
CHAPTER 17
