Page 81 of Red Dreams

“Oh, that’s precious. You think my father will keep saving you?” She pauses to smile at me, slow and vicious. “News flash, Layla—Daddy’s not the white knight you've built him up to be. He's just as broken and fucked up as I am. And when he finds your body washed up on shore? He'll do what he always does?—”

Cassie cuts herself off when one of the lieutenants uses a meaty hand to grope along my side, undoing my vest and going under my shirt.

“Just like old times with the boss, eh?” he says to Cassie, or maybe the other men. “Teaching bad little girls their place.”

The man's hand starts to wander, his touch invasive and sickeningly familiar. Bile rises in my throat as I realize what he's implying, the horrors Cassie must have endured at Morelli's hands.

I meet her gaze, seeing my own revulsion reflected back at me.

“What did you just say?” Cassie asks him, her voice a deadly whisper.

The man laughs, ugly and unaware. “Come on, Cass. We all know how Morelli liked to break in the new?—”

Cassie moves like a striking viper. One moment, she's poised with her fingers tangled in my hair, and the next, she's on the man, a blur of black leather and fury. She slams him to the dock with a force that rattles the boards.

Savage, animalistic snarls rip from her throat as she straddles his chest, pinning him.

“Don’t you EVER say that again!” she screams.

She snatches a knife from her belt and buries it in his eye with a savage twist. The man's scream cuts off with a wet gurgle as she rips the blade free, a gout of blood and sclera splattering her face.

The other men stand paralyzed, eyes wide with shock and dawning horror. They exchange uncertain glances, hands creeping toward weapons.

Cassie's chin snaps up, those ferocious eyes fixing on them. “None of you move, or I swear to God I'll renovate this dock with your fucking insides.”

They freeze, cowed by the sheer, unhinged savagery in her gaze. She refocuses on the man pinned beneath her, fingers curling into claws.

“You don't know what he did,” she hisses, spittle flying from her lips. “The things he made me...”

She leaps to her feet, and the other men shout in alarm, the last one releasing me as he scrambles for his gun. But Cassie is a hurricane of rage, unstoppable in her onslaught.

Cassie slashes the throat of one man, his blood arcing through the air in a crimson spray. Another shoots at her, but she sidesteps nimbly, hamstringing him with a vicious swipe of her blade. He crumples, howling, and she silences him with a brutal stomp to his windpipe.

Through it all, Cassie screams, a sound of pure anguish torn from the depths of her traumatized psyche. Tears streak her blood-splattered face, her eyes dark and unfocused.

This isn't the calculated violence I've come to expect from her. This is the deranged viciousness of a wounded animal, lashing out at a world that has only ever brought her pain.

Finally, she stops, chest heaving, standing amid the carnage. Her knife clatters to the dock, slick with blood. She stares at her shaking hands, then at me, her eyes wide and lost.

“Cassie,” I whisper, slowly pushing myself upright. Every inch of me throbs, my throat raw from the icy water. “Cassie, it's over.”

The night explodes with the roar of an engine. Tires screech, followed by the slam of a truck’s door. I see Ethan’s pallid face in the back seat before the interior light goes off.

Heavy footsteps pound down the dock, the boards shuddering under their force.

Kaden appears like the harbinger of death, his mask molten silver in the moonlight. In his hand, a gun smokes.

Cassie tenses, her hand twitching toward her fallen knife, but she doesn't move. Even she knows better than to stand in the way of the Scythe's wrath.

Kaden reaches me in a heartbeat, gathering me into his arms.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, his free hand skimming down my body, checking for injuries.

I shake my head, fighting back a sob. His warm touch is grounding, chasing away the god-awful hands that pawed at me.

Cassie makes a disgusted noise. We both look at her. She's glaring at us, her face a mask of blood and contempt.

“I hate that I couldn't let them hurt you,” she spits at me. “I hate that I saved your pathetic life.”

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