Page 38 of Scorch

I meet her eyes and shake my head. “I’ll get there. Take her out, brother.”

Her eyes water, and for some reason, she looks like she’s going to cry. I don’t understand.

I walk over to her and brush my finger along her cheekbone. I draw it back, wet with her tears. “Why don’t you want to leave?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I don’t know, but I—I have to stay.”

Fuck.

I don’t want her to see me and see a monster. But I have to honor her request.

“Alright. I’ll allow it. But you stay behind me,” I concede, a heavy reluctance in my voice.

As Mikhail steps aside, Lydia takes a deep, shuddering breath, steeling herself against the violence she is about to witness.

And there… in the dark, cold warehouse with her eyes staring into mine, her commitment not to walk away or shield herself from who I am and what I do—something shifts between us. I know who she is. I’ve seen her demons. I know the darkness she battles and the darkness she revels in.

She’s about to see mine.

I turn back to the man bound before us, his fate sealed by what he’s done. I whip the baseball bat against the wall with all my might. It splinters into pieces. I won’t need weapons for what I’m going to do next.

I flex my hands.

Lydia doesn’t flinch.

“Get behind me.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lydia

“No.”

I don't know why I need to see him do this. I don't think it has anything to do with that piece of shit he’s got tied to a chair.

This is about Viktor and me.

When he nods, power surges through me. He’s… agreed. He’ll let me.

I swallow hard and face him. It's not about the violence—it's about him… trusting me enough to let me watch it. To know that I'm not going to dissolve into a puddle and lose my shit.

He turns back to the man, who seems to not be showing a lot of fear. If it were me, I would literally be wetting my pants. Viktor is the biggest, most powerful man I’ve ever met in person. He just knocked the kneecap out of another man before he ordered him shot and killed. And now this asshole was some kind of creeper for me…

I don’t know how he’s still sitting there, staring at Viktor with a look of sheer challenge.

He must not be right in the head because any normal human who saw Viktor just splinter a baseball bat into matchsticks in one hard throw can’t possibly be still sitting there without a single trace of fear or remorse on his face.

Viktor stalks over and grabs this guy by the hair. With a vicious pull that makes me cringe, he yanks his head back, bares his neck, and stares into his eyes.

I half expect him to scalp him with a knife, bloody and brutal.

“Tell me what you did,” he snarls. I hold my own. It isn’t easy.

The man in front of us has the gall to spit at him. “Yudin promised me that he would share. So he did. He gave me pictures of her. He took videos. And he was planning on letting me have her fucking pussy.”

I gasp and cover my mouth with my hand.

He wouldn't.

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