Page 94 of The Beautiful Dead

I slid my blade up his leg, pressing just enough to make him flinch. “Let’s try again. Who sent you?”

Silence.

My grip tightened in his hair; strands ripped free. “You have five seconds,” I whispered against his ear. The smell of urine burned my nostrils. I stepped back, looking at him in disgust.

“Five.”

The blade traced the blue veins in his wrist, dragging slowly along his arm, up to his throat.

“Four.”

His breath stuttered. Blood and saliva dripped from his ruined lips.

“Three.”

I circled his good eye with the bloodied tip of the blade, pressing harder—tracing the socket, peeling the skin away, exposing raw, pulsing flesh inch by inch.

“Two—”

Before I finished, he cried out, his voice like nails on a chalkboard.

“Salvatore Gallo!” The words ripped from his lungs. “It was Salvatore Gallo!”

I stilled. Watching the fresh blood drip off his lashes and inhaling, savoring the flavor of his suffering. As I exhaled, the storm inside me went deathly quiet. Remi’s words slithered through my mind. A whisper in the darkness.

What if he was telling the truth?

What if..?

“H-he has…in-information for…for you.” He gulped, blood coating his lips with every word. “I-it’ll change…everything.”

I clenched my jaw and ground my molars together, shutting those thoughts down. Now wasn’t the time to look closer. Now was the time to make someone pay. My blade continued its fluid movement around Stephan’s eye socket so he would keep talking. I let him spill his guts through a haze of pain and delirium. I needed to glean as much information as I possibly could from him.

But none of it mattered. Not really. I already knew where to look next. Once the floodgates opened, his words became background noise. Drowned out by the slow, methodical drag of my blade carving his confession into his skin.

By the time he stopped screaming, his voice was nothing more than brittle whimpers; he was barely human. Just muscle, bone, and blood pooling in the spaces between my cuts.

Stephan was clinging to life, but not for long. Angelo and Ghost would deliver my message to the gates of the Gallo compound.

And by the time he died, Salvatore Gallo would know—The DeMarcos were coming.

And I wasn’t going to leave anyone breathing.

CHAPTER 19

REMI

Ascream—guttural and low—ripped me from unconsciousness, carving me open from the inside. My heavy-lidded eyes blinked slowly. A full-body shudder rolled through me, from the tips of my toes to the base of my skull. Goosebumps prickled my skin in its wake, jolting me upright in bed.

The sheets smelled like smoke and steel, like him, but the bed was empty. My body ached—deep, lingering bruises thrumming beneath my skin. But nothing compared to the raw, searing burn around my throat.

The scream still echoed in my ears as I dragged my fingers over the imprint Domino left behind.A brutal necklace of bruises. The cemetery. His hands. The bloodied and broken corpses at his feet. The moment he’d snapped, the moment I’d told him his father had a hand in his mother’s death. It all rushed back like a black-and-white film flickering in my mind.

I had never seen him lose control like that. Not with me. I’d thought he might kill me. I was certain some part of me wanted him to. That should have terrified me. Maybe it did. But deep down, I knew—The only way to prove myself to him was to offer my mortal body as a sacrifice.

I’d be his sacrificial lamb whenever he needed. That thought settled inside me with an eerie calm. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for him.

Even if it cost me my life.

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