Page 98 of The Ripper

The voice taunted me, so I turned around, and one look at her was enough to reduce it to silence. A sigh of relief escaped me as I took the steps that separated us and propped my arms on the counter on either side of her. There were no words to describe what the sight of my blood on her was doing to my brain.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” I whispered.

“You keep saying that,” she answered, as she reached her arm up and brushed her fingers over one of the tattoos on my chest, that of a dove with broken wings.

“It’s the truth.”

I smiled, and as I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror behind her, I was shocked by it, and by the fact that it didn’t feel odd, nor did the absence of the scowl. For the first time, the curl of my lips didn’t look out of place.

This.

This was what true happiness looked and felt like.

“Do your tattoos have a meaning?” she asked, ripping me out of the trance.

“Some do,” I answered, my eyebrows drawing together as she traced the outline of the dove with her fingertip.

“Does this bird have one?”

“Yes, I had it made for my mother,” I said as I slowly pushed her hair back.

“Is she…”

“She’s alive,Snezhinka,” I sighed. “She’s just not part of my life, never has been.”

“Oh,” she pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “Why does it have broken wings?”

“That’s how I saw her after finding out her story.” I shrugged.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I breathed in and let my head fall down, staring at her legs dangling off the counter for a moment as I thought about it.

“There’s not much to say,” I began, shaking my head. “I was an accident that my father didn’t allow her to get rid of. From what he told me, she was just a student who wanted to have a fun night with her friends when they met. They had a one-night stand, but my father had ulterior motives at the time. He needed an heir, and he obsessively kept track of all his conquests after he slept with them,” I paused for a moment and looked at her.

“Obsession runs in the family then,” she chuckled.

“Might be, yeah.” I licked my lips, trying to continue.

“Still, it wasn’t up to him, not entirely at least,” she sighed.

“It wasn’t at all, no matter what he wanted,” I agreed with her. “He handled the situation much too brutally, especially since she had no ties to our life.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was following her when he saw her going inside an abortion clinic, and he went mad. She didn’t even have a chance to fill out the form before my father stormed in with his guards,” I sighed. “I know you’ve met him, and although he let some of his monsters go after he met Klaus’ mother, he was a different man then, ruthless, merciless, a devil in the truest sense of the word, one who had something to prove. They killed everyone who worked in that clinic and he…” I paused.

Shit. Was I really going to tell her that story after the moment we shared?

~ Might as well if you couldn’t lie about the tattoo.

“He what?”

“He skinned the doctor that was supposed to perform the procedure alive, right in front of her.”

She flinched, then tightened her arms around me.

“He traumatized her,” she affirmed.

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