Page 142 of The Beautiful Dead

A single tear slipped down his cheek, catching on his lip. His voice was raw when he whispered, “It’s beautiful. Put it on me?”

I obeyed, slipping the bracelet over his left wrist, watching the way he flexed his fingers, admiring the weight of it.

“It’s perfect.”

His breathy reply filled my lungs as his lips brushed against mine. He wrapped his arms around my neck. Then he was on me. No hesitation. No warning. Just collision. Devastation. Possession. His tongue forced its way into my mouth, tasting, claiming. Warring with mine as hunger seared through my veins.

I threaded my fingers through his hair and took control, swallowing him whole, my grip tightening, my other hand branding itself against his bare back.

He was mine.

He had always been mine.

And now—the whole fucking world would know it.

Brielle was running.

She knew what was coming. They always did. And yet, like every doomed thing staring into the abyss, rather than stand and face her reckoning, she ran. As if that would make a difference.

As if that would change the inevitable.

Death came for us all.

Most people liked to believe it was a gentle thing, a quiet hand that came in the night when they were old and gray, their lives full and lived.

But death wasn’t gentle. Death was power. Death was control. And we wielded it.

Remi and I. Together.

We embraced it. Lived it. Breathed it.

I loved the hunt. The chase. Watching fear seep into the bones of the hunted, twisting them into something unrecognizable. Paranoia did most of the work for me, unraveling them thread by thread before I ever laid a hand on them.

And Brielle? She was my favorite kind of prey.

Remi had shattered her mind. Together, we had crushed her soul and stripped her of the only thing that had ever mattered—her son.

Her suffering became his inspiration. The art he created in its wake was something raw, violent—a language I could barely understand, even when he tried to explain it. The jagged edges and brutal lines spoke of madness, emotion—a chaotic symphony of destruction given form. Beautiful in its brutality.

I had Ghost shadow her, feeding me updates—how she barely slept, how she changed locations every few hours, how she flinched at shadows and avoided cameras like they were landmines.

None of it mattered.

There was no escaping us. No escaping Remi.

We had been tracking her for a week. Seven days of her spiraling into desperation.

Seven days of Remi pacing like a caged animal, retribution burning in his veins, his rage an all-consuming thing.

She had already been his from the moment he decided she was. All she was doing now was making it worse for herself.

And fuck—I reveled in it.

But for Remi? This was personal.

She had manipulated him, convinced him to bring his mother to Hollow Pines. She had left scars on him—ones I could never erase, no matter how much blood I painted over them.

And she would answer for it.

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