Page 77 of Ruthless Reign

It was quiet inside. The soft drone of voices behind the doors of apartments on the first and second floors turned to absolute silence as I pushed past the third floor and stepped up to the landing on the fourth.

I swept the area, a pounding in my temples as I noticed the door to the apartment wasn’t fully closed. The sliver of air betrayed almost no light. No sound.

Fuck.

My knees ached with every step toward the door and for one brutal second I wasn’t sure I could go in there.

But then the second passed and I pushed the door open with the toe of my boot, pushing in with my gun and head on a swivel, scanning the darkened space.

The smell hit me before I saw him and my nose wrinkled.

His thrifted luxury brand sneakers were the first things I saw, their soles a bright, glaring canary yellow. The color only the slightest bit less offensive than the dark red and mottled pink gore blown out through the back of his skull.

Fuck. Toby.

His death hit me more than it should’ve, but the pain of it was second-hand. Not mine. This was going to crush Becca. I couldn’t stand the idea of?—

I hadn’t seen her at first. The way she was slumped over her knees in the dark. Unmoving.

Her black nail polish, chipped and cracked, looked to be an ever starker contrast than usual against her pale fingers. Pale fingers in pale hands, connected to pale wrists that were zip tied to the back of a chair.

I choked, my eyes burning with liquid fire. My throat scraped raw and aching.

My gun hand lowered and as if in a dream or a nightmare, I watched myself move toward her, knowing what I would find.

Deadened eyes, glazed with opaque white.

I knelt in front of her, lifting the curtain of dark hair falling over her shins to push it back over her face.

Already my mind was filled with blackness.

Shadow and blood. Ash and smoke. I would kill every last Son with my own bare hands. I’d tear them into pieces and burn them and drown them and break them until they were nothing. I’d pulverize their bones and scatter them in the wind.

My fingers grazed her cheek and I stilled.

Warm.

She was still warm.

I wrenched her upright and she came to all at once, coughing and choking, her eyes wide and face covered in dried blood. A fist clenched in my gut at the sight.

“He’s—”

I pressed my lips to hers fiercely, holding her face to mine, tasting salt and old copper. She tried to pull back, but I couldn’t let go. I wasn’t ever going to again.

I grunted as she bit my lip hard and the tang of fresh copper filled my mouth.

“He’s here,” she blurted as soon as her mouth was free. “Séamas! Séamas is?—”

I was up and spinning. I had the whole place cleared in less than a minute and came back to a softly sobbing Becca in her chair, her gaze fixated on Toby.

There were bruises on her collar that made me want to tear apart the universe.

Cuts and bruises over her cheek and brow that had me so thirsty for blood my vision was tinted with the mirage of it, soaking everything in a reddened hue.

“He killed him,” she croaked, and I tucked my gun into my waistband, flicking out my switchblade to free her hands and legs.

“Don’t look at him, baby,” I found myself saying as I pulled her gently from the chair and into my arms. She gasped in pain when she tried to put pressure on her right leg and I noticed the river of blood soaking the hem of her skirt and the skin there.

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