Page 24 of Obsessions of the Heart

Trevor was currently clawing at the sides, yelling for someone to help him, but no one was coming. My brothers would ensure that.

I pounced on him. His surprised gasp was all I heard until I grabbed his wrists, yanked both arms back, and twisted. He gave an animalistic yelp before his arms fell to his sides, wrenched out of their sockets. I wanted him to fight back, but I didn't want it to be even.

Grabbing him by the collar, I threw him onto his back in the dirt, straddled him, and slapped him around a few times. I wanted to take this slowly, drawing out the same desperation I was sure Rin had felt.

“I-I-I'm sorry. W-w-wh-hatever I did. P-p-please.” His pitiful stutters made me cackle something dark and evil.

Sneering, I whispered in his ear, “Did she ask you to stop? Did she plead with you?” He started to shake and zipped his lips real fast, which told me he knew what I was talking about. I was a little disappointed, wishing he were an idiot who’d try to deny it, but he wasn't that stupid. My loss.

“That's what I want from you, Trevor. I want you to beg.” Before he could sputter out anything, I grabbed his throat and squeezed, taunting, “I can’t hear you. Speak up, Trevor.”

His fingers clawed at my hands, desperately trying to pry them off while he wheezed. His legs kicked out from behind me as his desperation kicked in. He bucked beneath me to no avail. I was steel, refusing to move despite his rugby-playing ass trying his hardest.

My fingers dug in, feeling the lines of his quaking muscles. My mind was burned with the image of her pale face and drooping eyes, her consciousness barely hanging on by a thread as he groped and kissed her against her will.

I faced the man I was going to kill and realized that his eyes were about to flutter closed. Letting go of his neck, I gave him a moment, only a moment, to suck down as much breath as he could. To feel just a small glimpse of hope that he might get out of this and live to see another day. It was fun to watch his eyes light up as if he thought I’d had a change of heart.

Sucking in a slow, controlled breath of my own, I envisioned what she’d felt, what I’d heard, what I’d witnessed. I immersed myself in that scene until I felt like I was there again, seeing it, feeling it. I cracked open the box that held all my bloodthirsty rage, letting the fire burning up and down my body consume me.

Beneath me was a man who’d tried to rape my girl. He deserved more than punishment, and she was due some rightful revenge.

A broken sob slipped past his lips. His legs behind me kicked out, trying to do something, anything to help himself. It was his last shred of hope, his last bit of fight. You’d think it would make me feel bad for him, but it just set the wood on the fire in my mind. Cocking my fist back, I looked down at the slobbering mess, smiling like I was a kid at Christmas and Santa had just gotten me everything I wanted. My fists furiously rained down on him, one after the other.

Smash. Crunch. Smash. Crunch.

The anvils dropped faster and faster until his body stopped fighting back, simply twitching with the impact. Hot liquid splattered everywhere—my face, my clothes, the soil walls—but I kept going. This rage inside of me was an unending chasm that replenished quicker than what I used

When my knuckles connected with bone, I stopped. His face beaten into his own skull so severely I couldn't tell what he looked like before. He didn't even look human.

My anger receded as I laughed at his state. “You shouldn’t have touched her. Death was too easy of an escape for you.” The need to end it with my normal ritual rose up in me and I called up, “Knife!”

I expected Ravi, the little psycho, to throw it down, wanting to see if I could dodge it. At the edge of the grave, a flash of silver shone in the moonlight, then it was lowered down by a rope. That meant it was Rion, always the perfectionist.

Grabbing the knife, I went back to Trevor, thinking about how his hand had grabbed at her, his unwanted hands. Well, now I wanted them.

Setting myself to work, I sliced through the skin, tendons, and muscle just fine, but the damn bone gave me some trouble. Eventually, after some breaking, I took both as trophies. I would keep them preserved and cared for, reminding me of this glorious night and how it had felt to exact vengeance.

“Ready.” A rope came down with a loop at the end, and I stuck my foot in. Holding the rope with one hand, I kept my body straight and clutched the fingers of the two severed hands in my other.

On my way up, I heard Ravi mumble about me getting heavy. I was going to make him pay for that little comment, but I needed to talk to them now that my head was clear and thinking properly.

As soon as I broke the surface, I threw my new hands over and climbed my way out. I’d done this many times, so it was easy. As soon as I was out, my brothers got to work. One of them standing on either end, wearing face masks, they sprayed chemicals down into the grave.

In Foedus, one of the trials was to find your own new and inventive way of getting rid of a body. At eighteen, we handled three situations where we had to kill and take care of clean-up. We were told to “figure it out,” and that was that. Since three heads was better than one, we came up with this—the forest reserve.

With our first deposit from Foedus, we did all the paperwork and paid the right hands to make a forest reserve on campus. Its intent was to save plants and trees that were going extinct. We had holes as big as graves at the ready at all times, and if anyone caught on, they would need to not only have proof, but highly qualified lawyers to even think about pursuing it. They’d be buried in a mountain of legal and agricultural paperwork if they wanted to dig up so much as a single tree. No cop would touch it with a ten-foot pole.

Rion had perfected the whole thing by coming up with a chemical compound of heat-inducing acid that would deteriorate any evidence in a span of a month, so even if they did find a spot to dig up, the body would no longer be there. All they’d find was soil and not a single shred of evidence.

“Go to the greenhouse. You're a mess.” Rion’s annoyed voice clearly came through the mask, and I smiled. While he was all for taking our pound of flesh, he was more methodical and less messy. The greenhouse housed not only the trees waiting to be planted, but a shower with a special bleach feature that would taint any evidence a forensic team might get from any recovered clothes or personal effects.

“I will, but we need to talk.” This had both of my brothers removing their masks and turning to me.

“The Riccis are on to Rin.”

Silence filled the space between us as Rion’s expression contorted, the planes of his face taking on sharpness I’d never seen before as he bellowed to the sky. Ravi gave me a worried grimace, but I shook my head. He needed to get over this and start thinking of a solution.

I continued as soon as Rion was done. “They don't know she’s tied to us, but they do suspect something. Cinzia and Elio seem to want to protect her.” I fisted some grass at the thought of Elio being in class with her, flirting with her. The grass ripped from the ground as I exhaled. “But Luca seems to want to dig in deeper. That's why he drugged her.”

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