Page 58 of The Beautiful Dead

In the time it took me to blink, Remi scrambled onto all fours, crawling for my Glock, fingers slipping in the blood-soaked mud. One of the Gallo men was on him in an instant, looming over him as he lay on his back.

My jaw clenched, muscles ticking as I reached into the holster at the small of my back for my SIG Sauer P228 and aimed.

Remi didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate. The trigger depressed, a fierceness I hadn’t seen before solidified in his burning eyes.Crack. The man’s head exploded, and then he dropped, dead before he hit the ground.

For a second, Remi just stared. His chest rose and fell too fast as adrenaline surged through his body, lighting up the receptors in his brain. Fingers tight around the gun.

Chaos continued around us, but we were somewhere else. His lips parted, and he exhaled, his muscles relaxing, embracing the euphoria zinging around his body.

The fire burning in my eyes reflected back at me when our eyes connected. We shared a moment, a silent conversion passing between us. Everything I felt was mirrored in his expression. The rage. The hunger. The need to destroy.

I sprung to my feet and turned my attention to the remaining Gallo soldiers with a brutality that had nothing to do with efficiency and everything to do with the blood they spilled of the man that belonged to me.

They would burn in hell for what they did to him. He was mine!

A shot to the stomach instead of the head. Let them suffer. A knife to the throat—slow. Deliberate. A crushed windpipe beneath my heel, ribs snapping like wet twigs. Blood was splattered across my face and dripped from my hands. Copper coated my tongue with every inhale as my monster wrought havoc on the idiots who thought they could attack me and what’s mine and survive.

Valentin had vanished. The coward ran the second he realized the fight wasn’t tipping in his favor. He would pay for that later; deserters paid with their lives. He lived up to his name, El Fantasma, just not the way he thought he did.

Remi stalked through the shadows behind me, lips set in a grimace, hand raised, gun ready to fire if needed. “There,” he shouted, head nodding toward a guy crab crawling half under a freight cart.

There was one still breathing. That wouldn’t do. I grabbed the last conscious Gallo by the collar, slamming him against the side of a freight car. The impact sent a hollow, metallic groan through the air. His head lolled forward, blood leaking from his lips. He was done. But I wasn’t finished; I’d just started.

I let go, and he crumpled to the ground. I followed, knees pressing into his ribs as I drove my fist into his face. His head snapped back against the mud. Again, and his nose shattered under my knuckles. A third time. Blood gushed from his mouth, the rain making it streak and swirl like red ink.

He coughed and spit teeth at me. A hollow laugh spilled from my lips, devoid of all emotion. I grabbed him by the hair, forcing his head back and making him look into my eyes. My face would be the last thing he’d ever see.

My blade gleamed under the freight yard lights. The tip pressed into the delicate flesh just beneath his eye.

“Who sent you?” My voice was low, lethal.

The knife sank deeper. He choked, body jerking, but the name still came. “Salvatore Gallo.”

A slow smile curled at my lips. I should’ve just ended him, but I wanted him to feel it. To suffer. I twisted the knife into the cavity behind his eye. He screamed. He thrashed, legs kicking wildly, hands clawing at my arms. I let it take longer than necessary.

I felt Remi’s presence at my back, his penetrating gaze memorizing this moment, storing it in the twisted depths of his mind. His energy, his hunger for the kill, crawled across my skin like electricity.

“End him.” His words were barely a breath.

We watched as his life left his body, the light fading from his only eye, the other hung from a hollow socket. Remi sat on a concrete block, eyes roaming over the bodies littered around us.Blood dripped from the fingers of his left hand as it hung loosely at his side.

I knelt at his feet, enraptured by the vision before me. Fire and brimstone had nothing on the hell contained within his flesh. I cupped his cheek, smearing mud with the blood that coated it. “You’re mine,piccolo agnello,”I breathed. “This is what we are.”

CHAPTER 13

DOMINO

Sunlight bled through the gap in the curtains, an unwelcome intruder in the sacred dark. The city below pulsed with meaningless life, but none of it mattered. Nothing existed beyond this room, beyond the steady rise and fall of Remi’s chest beside me. He was warm, soft, his breath a slow metronome against my skin.

Mine.

His arm lay draped over my stomach, unconscious instinct pulling him close. Even in sleep, he reached for me. Because he knew. His body knew. It had surrendered long before his mind had caught up.

But even now, even here, something inside him still fought. A twitch of his fingers, a crease between his brows. A caged thing testing the bars. Foolish.

I brushed ink and snow strands from his forehead, my touch featherlight. He shivered. So fragile. So easy to break.

He thought he had a choice. He thought he could walk away, slip back into that hollow, fabricated world of lectures and expectations. That life was a mirage, an illusion I allowed him to believe in. But I knew better.

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