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If he thought that would discourage me, he was wrong. I turned to get the jagged length of metal with the makeshift rag handle. My breasts heaved as I tried to catch my breath. My head pounded, and my hands ached. My feet continued to leave bloody footprints on the floor.

I paid all of that no mind. I was focused solely on the task at hand.

But then I heard shuffling. I turned, and he staggered to his feet. He swayed and coughed up blood. The sight of him so obviously injured did nothing to me. I didn’t feel empathy. I didn’t feel sympathy. I felt nothing but a black hole of hatred.

“You don’t deserve to die in prison with a needle in your arm.” It was the one thing I had never been able to accept, even after his guilty verdict. It was too good an end, too gentle, too kind for a heinous serial killer like him. All the things he had done, all the pain he had caused, he needed to pay for those crimes in blood and suffering.

“You’re probably right.” Kiki rushed me, startling me with the burst of energy he managed to compel from his battered body. I was heavier, but he caught me off guard. I stumbled back into the shelf, slamming my back into the rough metal. I felt it slice my back open, and I cried out in pain.

“That’s it, baby. You sing for me,” Kiki urged, his disgusting breath choking the air right out of my lungs. His words took me back to the countless times he had abused me in our bedroom. He always called my screams and begging singing.

“She’s going to sing for me later,” he’d tell people when we were at parties. They would think it was something sweet like I was going to serenade him with a love song. That tickled him. He enjoyed it when others laughed or encouraged his abuse of me, ignorant of it as they were.

“No.” I spit right in his face, and it felt good. He punched me right in the gut, burying his fist deep in my abdomen, and I gasped for breath. It was the kind of hit that would have dropped me, but he was weaker now. It hurt, and it set me back. But I didn’t go down.

“I’m going to have to find another place to hit you,gordita.” Kiki scowled at me. “Too much fat protecting all your soft, vulnerable spots.”

“And not enough protecting yours,flaco.” I slammed my knee right between his legs, cracking his dick and balls as hard as I could.

He fell forward into me, his face smashing into my neck. I knew it was coming before I felt it, but I couldn’t move fast enough. He sank his brown and yellowed teeth into my neck, biting through my flesh like an animal.

I shrieked. The pain was so bad, and I felt him chewing at my skin, gnawing on me like a beast with a meaty bone.

I reached back, clawing at the shelf and trying to feel the jagged metal I had hidden there. Finally, I felt it. Gripping the metal in my hand, I drew it off the shelf and roughly shoved it into his side, jamming it through tissue and muscle and right into his belly.

His jaw sagged with the shock of it. His blood spilled over my hand, the hot liquid scalding my skin. Our eyes were locked, and I saw the flicker of fear in his.

He’s afraid. He’s afraid to die.

“Finish it, Nisha,” Kiki urged. “Kill me, you fat bitch.”

Grabbing the metal with both hands, I rammed it the rest of the way through his body. I tore through the viscera, gutting him and leaving him to die in agony.

Kiki staggered back on wobbly legs. His gaze never left my face. Blood and worse poured from his belly, soaking the front of his shirt and jeans and puddling on the floor. I stood there, completely oblivious to all that was happening around me. All I could see, all I could hear, was Kiki dying in front of me.

“You know,” he said, voice raspy and weak. “I don’t think I ever loved you at all.”

“I know I didn’t.” I watched him fall to his knees and then slump forward onto the concrete. The metal sticking out of him scraped against the floor and held his body up at a strange angle. He jerked and twitched as his blood pumped from his veins and out of the wound. His eyes closed, and his breathing grew labored.

I didn’t move. I stood perfectly still. I watched and waited for the end.

When the double doors burst open, I reluctantly tore my gaze away from Kiki. Ten stood in the doorway now, filling it with his broad shoulders. The panic in his eyes fled as soon as he saw me standing there, but then his expression turned to worry as he took in the blood soaking me from neck to toe.

Kiki’s last breath drew our attention. He made a rattling noise that I would never forget—and expired.

Gone.

He’s finally gone.

It was over.

He can never hurt me or anyone else ever again.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Hey!No!”Tenrushedto intercept Lev before he could grab the chess pieces off Nikolai’s board and stuff them in his mouth. The little boy squealed with delight as Ten swept him up off the ground. Wanting to hear that laughter a few seconds longer, he shifted Lev in his arms and flew him around the library like an airplane. “Flight E-LEV-EN coming in for a landing.”

Vivian appeared in the doorway as he swooped Lev down and then right back up again. She smiled at their antics. “Oh, no! Did our landing gear fail to deploy?”

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