Page 26 of Spiteful Heart

“Sylvester’s gone. Harvey’s got to know he doesn’t trust him. If Sylvester’s right and he’s our bad guy, I doubt he’d sit around and go on a date tonight. No. If it’s him, he’ll be doing something else.”

“So then why wouldn’t we watch him? Why leave him be?”

“Our killer is careful. He knows how we operate. If he’s our killer, he’s got to know he’s being watched. Maybe if we pull back, he’ll make a move.” Lola bit her bottom lip, pulling away from me.

I sighed. “You want to try to prove to Sylvester that it’s not Harvey.”

She grinned at me. “You know me all too well, Viper. Yes, I want to do what I can to prove it to him, because there’s just no way it’s Harvey. No way.” She shook her head once. “I know what killers are.”

“He’s not just a killer—he’s a serial killer.”

“Yeah, and serial killers are different than you and Sylvester and Maddox. They’re different than Roman and Carter. We are different. We like our rituals and our routines. I’m more like him than I am like you.”

It occurred to me then that was why Lola wanted to be right about Harvey. Not only was this killer going after young, pretty girls, mutilating their bodies and raping them, but he was a serial killer just like she was. Granted, she hadn’t killed in a long time, not like she used to, but she’d long since stopped pretending she was just another pretty face. She knew she was deadly, and she owned it.

She wanted to be right about this because of her pride. Because, if she couldn’t pick a serial killer out of a lineup, what good was she? How good of a serial killer could she be?

Or maybe this all just made her doubt what she’d done, and now she sought to find repentance in the only way she could: by killing the serial killer stalking the city streets. By taking the city back by force and being its dark queen.

“You’re not like him,” I told her, taking her face in my hands after swiping her hair aside. I cupped her cheeks, made her look into my eyes, and I hoped my expression told her that I honestly, genuinely believed it. “You’re nothing like him, Lola.”

She gave me another smile, but this one was smaller, a little disheartened, and I could tell she didn’t believe me. “But I am. Past the semantics, we’re both killers. We both enjoy what we do. We just do it for different reasons.” Her lids fell, eyes closing. “I kill because of what the world made me. He kills because of what I made him.”

My thumbs caressed her cheeks, causing her eyes to open to slits. “You didn’t make him a killer,” I told her, meaning it. “None of this is your fault.” I’d lost track of how many times we’d told her this, how often Sylvester, Maddox, Mike and I had told her that what was happening now wasn’t her fault.

It didn’t matter, because no matter how many times we told her, she never believed us. Deep down, she’d always blame herself for this, place all those deaths on her shoulders. All those girls, she considered tortured and dead because of her—but that wasn’t fair. Lola didn’t make him into a killer, whether he was Harvey or Newton or someone else.

“I wish you were right,” Lola whispered. She lifted her hands, setting them on my sides, her fingers curling in the fabric of my shirt. “I just can’t fight this feeling, Viper, that I made him. He said it in the tape: he’s doing this because of me. He’s my responsibility, my monster to put down.”

I closed my eyes, leaning my head down. My forehead touched hers, and for a few moments, we simply stood there, not doing much of anything other than breathing. I wished I could make Lola see that none of this was her fault, but maybe that was something that’d have to wait until after the motherfucker was caught. Once he was dead and the streets were relatively safe, then I could focus on making sure Lola didn’t blame herself.

Or maybe I’d have to put all of my efforts into helping her forgive herself.

Lola exhaled a long breath, its heat blooming across my face. Our noses touched, my hands still holding onto her cheeks. She’d leaned her body into mine, and I felt her chest touch me every time she inhaled. We were so close, and even with my eyes closed, it was hard to stand there and not want to rip off her clothes piece by piece until she was naked, throw her onto my bed, and hold her the rest of the day, make love to her in a way that would help her forget all of her worries.

But nothing was that simple.

“Sometimes I wish everything was different,” she whispered, sounding sad. A rare moment of vulnerability no one saw of Lola. She always acted so confident, so self-assured, so crazy and maniacal. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve been like if my parents would’ve cared about me more than they cared for Aiden. If they would’ve stopped him instead of taking me to the doctor again and again until they decided to remedy the problem permanently.”

I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t imagine the horrors she’d gone through when she was growing up, the terror that living in that house must’ve created. The things her own brother did to her… I only wished I would’ve been there to see him die.

“I probably would’ve gone to college. Maybe graduate school. Or maybe I would’ve found myself a husband and been married already.” Lola got quiet, her head turning down, her forehead now against my nose. “Maybe I’d be pregnant. Maybe I’d actuallywantto have kids.”

My hands still cupped her face, and I moved my head until my lips rested against her forehead. “You’ll only torture yourself if you let yourself think about the what-ifs,” I whispered.

“I know,” she whispered, her eyes opening as she pulled her face away from mine, just a few inches. She reached up and curled her hands around my wrists, though she didn’t tug me off her face. “But if I can’t catch this guy, what good am I, Viper? What’s the point of this?”

Those questions, at face value, meant something different than what I knew she meant them as, and that was why I told her, “Sometimes the point is just to live. Sometimes it means getting through another day. It doesn’t always have to mean life or death. We’ll get this guy, Lola. We will. I know we will. You have a whole crew of people behind you. Me, my brother, Sylvester, Maddox, Roman and Carter—hell, even Fang and the Beast, from what I hear. Everyone is out looking for this guy, so we’re going to find him. We’re going to stop him, and when we do, when it’s all said and done, we’ll be right by your side for whatever comes next.”

The hands she had curled around my wrists tightened, and she murmured, “You have a way with words. You should be a poet or some shit.”

I chuckled. “I don’t know about that.” Before either of us could say anything else, I brought her face back to mine, my lips finding hers. I kissed her hard, hoping the passion and heat of our embrace would help soothe her broken spirit.

That’s the thing about Lola. She might act crazy, she might act vicious and cruel sometimes, but she was the most broken out of anyone I’d ever met. Life had been so unkind to her, it truly was a miracle she was still standing. My broken, beautiful, bloody queen.

She practically hummed into the kiss, and before I knew it, she was working on my belt. As if sensing my thoughts, she pulled her lips off mine to whisper, “Come on, just a quickie. Then we can go full-out stalker mode.”

Considering I’d never agreed to let her come with me, she was taking a lot on faith here… but maybe that’s because she knew I couldn’t say no to her, not with Sylvester gone. Besides, maybe it was a good idea—maybe we needed to bait our killer into making his next move. And if our killer knew he was being watched, he’d wait until he didn’t have a tail to make the next play.

---