Page 76 of Kissed By Shadows

My breath stutters out of my lips, and his burning gaze focuses on them, heat entering his brown eyes in a way that makes nausea roll around my insides.

“And if I don’t?” I ask, already knowing that I will do anything to keep the Shadows and Bubby safe. The weight of my blade presses into my hip, but I daren’t use it, not with Sergi and several of his goons filling the room, violence swirling around them like a heady perfume.

“Then they, and everyone else who is important to them, will die tonight.” His words are a violent caress, a devastating promise that settles inside me with the finality of a stone falling to the bottom of a lake.

My eyelids flutter shut, two hot tears scorching a path down my cheeks.

“I’ll go, just please don’t hurt them,” I plead, my voice broken, small, and full of desolation.

“So beautiful when you cry and beg,” Sergi comments softly, leaning in and placing his dry lips against my cheek. His tongue darts out, catching my anguish and lapping it up. I have to swallow hard to stop from vomiting all over his pristine, tailoredsuit. “Tell the men to stand down.” His order is quiet, but I hear the door open and then the crack of gunfire stopping.

Blinking my eyes open, I face my new reality, one that, in the deepest part of myself, I knew I wouldn’t be able to escape. It was always going to come to this, a choice which is no choice at all, because there is no way I’d be able to live in a world without them, without my Shadows.

“Let’s go and give them the good news, shall we?” Sergi suggests, but we both know it’s a command when his fingers wrap around my bicep to drag me towards the door of the flat.

“SUFFOCATE” BY NATHAN WAGNER

HUNTER

All of a sudden, the gunfire stops, and I exchange a concerned look with Roman.Why have they stopped?Nausea swirls in my stomach as the answer comes to me, my stomach bottoming out as it becomes obvious.

“It was a distraction,” I whisper, locking eyes with Roman. Comprehension dawns on him just as we hear the door to the stairwell slam open, and I know, before even looking, that we’ve somehow lost.

“Time to come out, little Shadows,” Sergi’s voice is full of glee as it rings around the courtyard. “And drop your weapons. You wouldn’t want your precious flower to have her petals plucked.”

My eyelids slide closed, my world ending when he confirms my worst nightmare. They have Iris. They’ve overpoweredRowan. They have us surrounded, outmanned, and outgunned. I can’t save my people and her.

With a heaving sigh, I get up, my arms raised as I slowly spin and face the direction of his voice. Seeing something is different from believing it, and the moment I see her beautiful face, tears glistening on her perfect cheeks, my soul fractures.

“I’m so sorry, Hunt,” she whispers, the words somehow making them to me, cutting into me, even given the distance between us.

I lower my arms, dropping my gun on the tarmac, the sound bouncing around the night. “Drop your weapons.” The sound of guns hitting the floor rings around us, my crew following my order as we face the devil him-fucking-self.

Roman appears beside me, his sharp intake of breath making my eyes look away from Iris’s face to see Sergi with his hand wrapped around her arm, a knife pressed against her delicate throat. My beast roars at the audacity he has of touching our woman, and I swear a vow that he will die by my hand one day.

“Good. Now, you took something that didn’t belong to you, boy,” Sergi chides, like I’m some naughty child to be told off. My hands clench into fists at my sides, my jaw working as my brain tries to find some way out of this. “I’m taking it back.”

Beefy hands pull my arms behind me, the grunt to the side of me telling me the same is happening to Roman, and we’re pushed towards Sergi and Iris. I don’t take my gaze off her, unable to look away as her eyes plead with me to make this right. To fix this somehow.

One of Sergi’s men steps from behind him, and Roman’s growl fills the space as a bloodied and almost out-of-it Rowan is brought beside us. His chest is coated in red, and I’m pretty sure he’s been at least shot, a head wound trickling blood down the side of his face.

We’re forced to our knees, the cold, unforgiving pavement sending pain ricocheting up my legs from the impact. Then the cold barrel of a gun is pressed to my forehead, Iris’s stuttered cry filled with terror as my attention is brought back to the man in front of me.

“Y–you promised that if I came with you, you wouldn’t hurt them,” she says, her wide gaze flitting between the twins and I.

“Oh,Kukolka,” Sergi coos, and a red mist coats my vision as he leans in and brushes his nose along her cheek. “That is just to make sure they don’t do something stupid.”

A small whimper sounds in her throat when he finally moves that fucking knife, rage filling my veins when he uses it to slice down the front of the hoodie that she’s wearing, her naked breasts exposed to the night as he cuts it away from her.

“You motherfucker!” Roman snarls, grunting when the massive guy holding him pistol-whips him with the gun. I see the bloom of red on the side of his head, but my guy pushes his gun painfully into my skin, forcing me to look back at his boss.

“No!” Iris cries, fresh tears welling in her eyes as Sergi ignores all of us and starts to cut away the leggings she’s wearing next. Her body trembles, fresh tears dripping down her cheeks as she holds still, her hands balled into tight fists at her sides.

“You will learn,Kukolka, that I can do whatever I like to the things that I own,” Sergi tells her softly, gently, like it’s words a lover would speak. My blood boils, my body burning as I watch him cut away her underwear until she’s naked and shivering in the freezing air.

The leggings land with a softthunk, and he pauses, an eyebrow raised. Then one of his men dips down, searching and pulling out something that was hidden in the fabric. Iris’s jaw sets as Sergi takes the object, a low, goosebump-inducing chuckle falling from his lips when he presses a button and a razor-sharp blade slides out.

“Seems like our baby doll has some sharp edges,” he muses, the switchblade that Rowan gave Iris glinting in the moonlight. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to smooth them out.”

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