Page 109 of Diamond Kisses

I was a Mercer.

And as the guards flipped him onto his stomach and held his kicking form down. As I kneeled on the back of his legs and shoved off his expensive shoes. As I rolled off his diamond-chequered socks and pressed the knife against his Achilles tendon…all I felt was satisfaction, perversion,ecstasy.

Victor screamed as I cut.

He sobbed as I hobbled him.

Left leg. Then right.

And as his tendons snapped and I took away his ability to run, I knotted his hands behind his back and wiped the red-dripping knife on my war-filthy jeans.

“Bring him with us,” I ordered, my vision fading in and out. “I promised his death to another. Let’s take him to the jewels.”

Chapter Nineteen

………………………….

Henri

BEN AND STEWART DIDN’T SPEAK as they pressed themselves against the narrow corridor walls and gave us space to pass.

Their eyes popped wide as the four guards carried Victor between them. He lay face down, hovering over the floor as two guards held his bound arms while the other two carried his bleeding legs. He moaned and whimpered, leaving a trail of crimson droplets as I led our strange procession.

Down the steps, out into the gardens, and toward the blazing fortress.

The night sky lit up with orange glowing flames and black billowing clouds. A few structural parts of Victor’s home had been targeted, making two corners sag strangely as if the entire place was a blow-up castle that’d slowly started to deflate.

Perhaps everything about this place hadn’t been real.

Maybe it’d all been a fantasy as surely as a blow-up bouncy castle about to be stuffed into a box and put on a shelf in a dusty warehouse. Everything that happened in those walls would be hidden. Every horrendous thing forgotten.

I can’t forget.

I won’t.

I’ll never forget.

My thoughts turned fuzzy, a cold shiver racing through my blood.

Ily…

If she was in there while the castle deflated, she’d be crushed.

She’d be stuffed into that box and shoved on that shelf far out of my reach—

I need to find her.

I tripped and almost fell on my face.

God’s sake, Ri, get a grip.

Shaking my head, I clung to sanity instead of exhausted daydreams.

Not real.

Keep it together.

Finish this.

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