Page 145 of Sinful Games

Just like Lukyan.

Gone. Both of them.

Ripped from me in the blink of an eye, leaving me alone in this fucking nightmare.

I cradled her, my hands slipping in the blood as I pulled her into my arms, still holding Lukyan’s tiny, lifeless body against my chest.

The two of them.

My everything. My world. My fucking heart.

Gone.

I sobbed, my chest heaving with it, tears burning down my face, mixing with the blood, her blood, as I held them both.

This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

But it was.

It was my reality, and it was tearing me apart piece by piece.

“No. No, no, no.” I whispered, my voice barely a sound, just a broken whisper in the stillness. “I can’t… I can’t…”

I was breaking.

I was fucking breaking.

I wanted to wake up. I needed to wake up.

But this wasn’t a dream.

This was my reality. My fucking reality.

Alone. Broken. Destroyed.

I clutched them tighter, like if I held on hard enough, I could keep them here. Like I could stop them from slipping away from me entirely.

But the cold, the stillness—it was too real. Too fucking real.

I lost everything. Everything that ever mattered. My boy. My wife.

And all I had left was the emptiness. The memories.

My mama had been right. You never know how much someone means until they’re gone. And the void they leave? It fucking swallows you whole.

Caia. Lukyan. They had filled that void once. They had given me hope. They had given me a reason to fucking live. Now, that hole was bigger than ever, a black pit, bottomless, endless, devouring me.

And I was stuck.

Drowning in it.

Chapter

Forty-Eight

“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent

itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy.”

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