Page 123 of Fall Into Me

But the damage was done.

That horrifying giddiness flickered back into his expression, spreading like oil across an ocean, slick and sinister. His knife was back at my throat in an instant, the cold press of it rooting me to the spot. The quips I’d been clinging to—the fleeting scraps of defiance that had kept me upright—died in my throat, leaving only the sound of my shallow breaths to fill the silence.

I wasn’t running outside.

I didn’t have Jerry.

And there would be no Fane at the end of this to catch me.

There was only me and the terrifying likelihood that I might not be enough.

“Rosie suits you. So soft, delicate. I think I’ll call you Rosie. I mean, of course, if that’s okay with you?”

I nodded my head stiffly, my neck pinching a little at the way my head had so aggressively wrenched to the side.

Declan dragged the back of his knuckles across the cheek he’d just hit, his touch mockingly tender. I couldn’t feel it, just the dull, stinging heat radiating from the skin that I knew was already swelling.

“So pretty, Rosie. How you’re changing color right before my eyes.” His voice was low and conversational, like we were discussing fucking paint samples. His smile twisted, warping into something manic. “I have to admit, I wasn’t sure if this was going to be as fun as some of my other ideas, but…I really am having a great time. Are you?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I watched, terror coursing through me, locking my bones and squeezing at my rib cage, while his face started to drop.

“Yes,” I forced the word past my trembling lips.

Declan’s smile returned, wide and gleeful. “Oh, good.Good.”

He nodded, leaning forward to press a kiss to the side of my face. Lingering in a way that felt suffocating. I was grateful—pathetically, desperately grateful—that I couldn’t feel much. Just the small, sharp sting near my eyebrow and the growing pressure that made it clear it was puffing and swelling.

Before I had time to react, Declan’s knife disappeared from my throat, his hand snapping out to grab my ponytail. The yank was so sudden, so violent, my head jerked back with a cry that broke free before I could stop it. My eyes watered from the strain, and the angle made swallowing nearly impossible. I couldn’t see him anymore, but Ifelthim.

Felt the way he yanked me sideways so he could step around Jerry’s still body before pressing himself against me. Fully. Completely. There wasn’t an inch of space left between us, and the hard, horrifying evidence of what this was doing to him pressed against my stomach.

Bile rose in my throat, hot and acidic, threatening to spill out as the angle of my neck fought to keep it down. If the sheer knowledge of his arousal wasn’t enough to make me sick, the sensation of his tongue dragging up my throat—lapping at the blood that trickled from the cut he’d made—would have done it.

My whole body filled with dread. Like water pouring in, starting at my toes and slowly filling me up. Weighing me down. Drowning me in panic.

He was going to kill me.

I knew it. I felt his intention to do it in every word he spoke, every rise and fall of his shoulders. The grip he had on me, and how he dug his nails into the skin of my scalp like if he could rip it from my skull, he would.

The only real thing I knew at that moment was that I would be damned if I went down without trying my best to take him with me.

I just needed to be smart.

“You know what’s missing?Fane!”Declan said his name like it was vile. Like the very existence of it was something so desperately unwanted. Something he loathed.

I thought that maybe I’d been right from the start, when he approached me in the café, when he touched me at the bar, that he was only interested in me because of Fane.

But then…he’d never done anything directlytohim. Because of that, my concern had morphed from beingforFane to being about what he’d do if he’d found out what was happening.

It all clicked together so clearly for me right then. I wasnothingto Declan. A means to an end. A pawn to be used and shifted in his game.

He wanted to hurt Fane. I had no idea why, but he obviously thought the best way to do that was through me. My whole chest constricted at that thought. I’d only just gotten him back. We were meant to have more time than this. Our whole fucking lives—that’swhat we were meant to have.

This piece of shit wasn’t going to take that. From me. From Fane. Who’d given up everything for me. Given up everything for everyone, his whole fucking life.

This man who always insisted on putting himself between me and the world.

Yeah, well, guess fucking what Declan? My turn.

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