Page 51 of The Ripper

I went back to the garage, where the boys had already carried the bodies down to the crematorium. All that was left behind was that awful chlorine smell. The blood had been washed off, not a trace of what happened.

As I lit a cigarette, I looked back at the chair Klaus had been tied to, imagining what could have happened if I’d arrived even ten minutes later than I did.

I didn’t care for many people.

Since I’d been an executioner for most of my life, I was immune to feeling for those I tortured and killed, but when something happened to those few I did care about, fuck, that thing inside my chest twisted and turned with the only type of pain I couldn’t withstand, a hunger for revenge settling my stomach each time. Those few I did care about carried the power to hurt me, Klaus being one of them, then Willow, then maybe – just maybe – my father.

But Arella… she didn’t just hold the power to hurt me.

No.

Arella had the power to ruin me.

I knew it the moment I saw Boris’ hand wrapped around her throat, because the mere thought that someone could hurt her, take her away from me, inflict pain on her, turned me feral.

“How is he?”

I gritted my teeth as I heard Boris’ voice behind me and took a long drag from the cigarette before turning around and punching him in his stupid, bland face. He stumbled back as I clenched and unclenched my fist a few times, but did nothing to hit me back.

“You owe her your life,” I told him as I took another drag.

“I didn’t know she was the doctor, I thought she was one of Klaus’ crazy conquests,” he defended himself.

“That doesn’t excuse the fact that you laid hands on her. We don’t hurt women, Boris, you fucking know that.”

“I know, it was a mistake on my part, and I apologize.”

“My father would have killed you on the spot,” I shook my head, taking another drag.

He nodded, and when I waved my hand to dismiss him, he left.

It was true, though.

My father would have put a bullet between his eyes without blinking if he had been there to witness it. Ever since Amaliya, he made a point of educating every man in our organization. Aggression towards women was a death penalty, and he delivered every time, in front of everyone, getting the message across with maximum brutality.

Nikolai Abaddon didn’t believe in an eye for an eye. He never hurt the people close to his enemies. He carried his battles like a man, not like a coward, because while he might have been a monster, he would never be that kind of monster.

He would never be the monster that went after the weak.

I stepped outside to clear my head, and the cold air of the night calmed the waves a little as I threw the bud on the concrete and put it out under my shoe.

I lit a new one, burning away another six minutes of my life as my mind was still baffled by Arella’s unfazed behavior towards everything that surrounded her. From the dead bodies to the armed guards, to my so-called job.

I took out my phone and thought about texting Hannibal to ask him to dig a little deeper.

According to his earlier research, Arella Santino became a US citizen when she started college, but all records before that moment seemed to have been wiped off the face of the Earth. I didn’t ask him to search further after that, because I was more interested in her future, but right now my thoughts began to spiral out of control.

She kept doing things that made me wonder what happened in her life that left her unaffected by my world.

~ Maybe she’s a spy.

~ She’s not.

~ I didn’t say she is, but MAYBE. Are you deaf?

~ You’re driving me crazy.

~ Or again, MAYBE she’s a psychopath. Many doctors are. That’s why they can cut so easily into human flesh.

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