Page 104 of Killer Kiss

Eddie raised an eyebrow, his breath hot across my face because we were so damn close together. “Ooh, what do we have here?” he mocked. “Little Zaney finally standing up for himself?” His gaze narrowed, and he laughed bitterly. “You’re such an arrogant fuck. You always were. You think you know everything, but you know absolutely nothing. Not a single fucking thing.” He shoved me toward the hallway. “Walk.”

“Fuck off.”

For a big guy, Eddie moved fast, his fingers wrapping around my throat, the force behind them crushing my windpipe. I had no choice but to stumble backward, fingers gripped around my brother’s wrists, desperately trying to pry him off my neck.

Sim kicked out one of my knees, and a howl of pain lodged itself in my chest, nowhere else to go.

Eddie’s expression lit up at the violence, and Sim purred in the glow of Eddie’s approval.

I stopped fighting. What was the point? This was my life, just one run-in with my brother after the other and living with the consequences in between.

I let myself go limp.

Let him choke the oxygen from lungs until darkness flickered at the corners of my eyes and blood rushed in my ears.

Eddie kicked open a door at the end of the hall, and a second later, a bright light flooded my eyes.

He let go of me.

Pure, sweet oxygen rushed in, and I doubled over, sucking in the deepest breaths I could, replenishing the air in my starving lungs. I coughed and choked, my throat burning, eyes watering.

A tiny noise came from the bottom of the basement stairs.

I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, my blood going cold at the thought of Eddie keeping some small defenseless animal down here.

The same way he’d done with that neighborhood cat before he’d finally put it out of his misery.

My vision cleared, my gaze locked on to dark-brown eyes, staring up at us in terror.

My heart squeezed so fucking hard I wished Eddie had killed me then and there.

“See?” Eddie practically fucking crowed. “You don’t know shit, Zane. I’ve had her here this entire time and you had no idea.”

Sim and Roman laughed behind me, like they’d been in on the secret, but all I could see was her.

Her hair was matted, blond on the ends but her dark, natural color at the top. Her clothes were barely more than rags, ripped and torn, still the same ones I remembered her wearing weeks ago when Eddie had first taken her. Weeks, or had the days turned into months? I couldn’t even remember. Maybe it was longer than I’d thought because Fawn didn’t seem well. She was gaunt, her cheeks hollowed out. She had her arms wrapped around herself, and she rocked back and forth, staring at us with what I could only describe as pure terror in her eyes.

“What have you done?” I said to Eddie, staring down at the woman who had once been so beautiful and vibrant my heart could barely stand it every time Eddie had laid a finger on her.

She still was beautiful, even beneath the dirt and the fear.

She still made my heart ache every time she glanced my way, even though she’d never seen me as anything other than her boyfriend’s little brother.

Eddie looked past me to his goons behind me. “Get your cameras out, boys. You’re going to want to film this. Zaney boy, being reunited with the woman he’s spent his entire adult life jacking off over. Star-crossed lovers, these two!”

I stared at him in horror, and he laughed at my expression, slapping my cheek twice.

“What? You think I didn’t hear you, tugging on your mushroom-sized dick, rubbing one out over my girl?”

I glared at him. “Fuck you, Eddie. I never did that.”

That was the truth, but it had only been respect for her that had stopped me. Not because I didn’t want her.

He wasn’t wrong about that.

I’d wanted Fawn since I was fourteen fucking years old, and she’d walked in the door with my brother who was nearly twice her age.

“Get up here, peach,” Eddie called.

---