Page 46 of Red Dreams

Her foot soldiers shift uneasily.

“Let go of me,” Cassie hisses through gritted teeth.

I ignore her demand. “You want to break Ethan, don't you? Really make him suffer.”

Cassie stills, her curiosity piqued despite herself. “I'm listening.”

I release her wrist and step back, circling the table and taking my time doing it. My path has been a dark one. I've killed. I've lied. I've deceived. But it's all been for her—Cassie. My daughter. My first obsession before Layla.

I’m not Second Lieutenant Kaden Black anymore. I haven’t been for a very long time. At first sight of Cassie alive, I immediately flipped back to that man, the devoted father, the man who retired early so he could be there for his daughter as she first entered high school. It’s taken me too long to realize that isn’t who Cassie needed or wanted. Not anymore, because she’s not the little girl I once knew. Not even close. Cassie wants the Scythe, the man whose skin I’m comfortable in, and I shouldn’t have shed it in the first place. Not if I want to get through to her.

Ethan’s labored breathing fills the room. He refuses to raise his head. Layla’s muffled sobs make me clench my teeth, but I forge on.

“Physical pain is fleeting,” I explain, my voice taking on a clinical detachment. “It's the anticipation, the fear of what's to come, that truly shatters a person's will. You want to get inside his head, make him question everything he thought he knew.”

Cassie's eyes gleam with a twisted sort of fascination as she watches me, her anger momentarily forgotten. “And how do you suggest I do that?”

I pause behind Ethan's chair, my hands coming to rest on his trembling shoulders. He flinches at my touch. “Get thefuckoff me.”

“Exploit his weakness,” I say, my fingers digging into Ethan’s flesh. “Find the cracks in his armor and pry them open, one by one, until nothing is left but frayed, exposed nerves.”

Layla glares at me through shining, bloodshot eyes. “Kaden, stop it.”

I keep my eyes level on Cassie’s even as my heart spasms at Layla’s anguish in my periphery. “I’ve spent a decade looking for my daughter, and I’ve finally found you, Cass. I can’t let you go this time, and I certainly can’t hurt you. If I’m faced between Ethan and you … I choose you.”

Cassie's lips curve into a slow, wicked grin.

“What?” Layla’s blue eye seems to go as dark as her brown one when I finally look her way. “You can’t mean that. There has to be another way. I’ll never forgive you for hurting Ethan. Do you understand me,Scythe?I will never. Forgive.”

Turning back to Cassie, I nod toward Ethan. “He cares for Layla, that much is obvious.”

Cassie’s attention darts between Ethan, Layla, and me, intrigue mingling with delight. Her hand hovers near Ethan’s remaining fingers in his right hand, poised to inflict more pain if the whim strikes.

I watch her unflinchingly, silently daring her to make the next move—one that would shape not just this moment but our entire future.

Blood drips from Ethan’s split lip onto the carpet, each droplet marking time like a morbid metronome. Layla’s on her knees beside him, refusing to let go. I’m well aware she’s ready to dive in front of Ethan and sacrifice herself depending on what comes next.

In fact, I’m counting on it.

16

LAYLA

I’ve seen Kaden as the Scythe before. I’ve even desired the cold-hearted killer when he was covered in the viscera of his victims, his slash of white teeth when he callously smiled the only clean thing about him.

But it suddenly dawns on me that I’ve never seen the Scythe without his mask.

Until today.

His gunmetal veneer was unsettling in itself, a cold, expressionless thing that made it easy for the Scythe to intimidate and brutalize with consistent apathy. It never occurred to me that the Scythe’s real face—Kaden’sface—could mirror the mask so effortlessly.

His eyes seem to glow just like the mask’s narrow slits but infinitely shrewder. There’s no flicker of humanity in their depths as he stands behind Ethan’s drooping, seated form and rests his hands on Ethan’s shoulders. Cassie bounces eagerly on her heels, a rabid hunger in her gaze that makes my stomach turn.

“The key is precision,” Kaden says to Cassie, his voice a low, instructive murmur. “You want to cause maximum pain with minimal damage.”

Kaden refuses to look my way despite my obvious efforts to glare, curse, and sob at him to stop. To reach the man behind these lethal eyes that no longer need a mask to kill. I'd even take his horrible, blank expression, just to understand when exactly I stopped being the woman he'd kill for and became the one he'd kill. With each crack of Ethan's bones, I hear it—the sound of Kaden choosing violence over love.

Kaden curls his fingers into Ethan’s shoulders, digging into the pressure points there. Ethan’s eyes widen, and a muffled groan escapes. He’s about to pass out, and I honestly wish he would so he could be spared this torture.

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