Page 158 of Seek Me Darling

My breath catches, caught somewhere between disbelief and something sharp and aching.

I look at them—both of them. My stalkers. My captors. My monsters.

My kings.

And I realize I fucking love those assholes too.

I reach behind me slowly, fingers curling around the hilt of the blade Matteo strapped there earlier.

The moment my hand closes around it, something in meshifts.

I draw the knife free with one smooth, practiced motion.

Javier watches me, panting, blood at the corner of his mouth. His eyes widen—not with fear, no, he’s too much of a narcissist for that—but with dawning comprehension.

He knows. He sees it now. The inevitability.

He’s staring at his executioner.

I take one step forward.

He raises his chin like a king refusing to kneel. But his lip is bleeding, his gun is empty, and his legacy is slipping through his fingers like dust.

“I should’ve killed you when I had the chance,” he sneers.

I smile, slow and vicious. “Yeah. You really fucking should have.”

He snarls and lunges, but he’s too slow, too off-balance.

And I don’t hesitate.

I slam the knife into him, just under the ribcage—angled upward, clean and brutal. His breath catches. His eyes go wide.

I don’t stop, jerking it out before thrusting it back in.

Then I twist.Just like my parents always taught me.

He chokes on blood, tries to reach for me, but I shove him back. He stumbles, crashing to his knees, one hand clutching the wound. The other reaching blindly—for help, for power, for a name that used to mean something.

Bodhi and Matteo don’t move.

Marcus doesn’t move.

This ismine.

I kick him in the face.

Hard.

Bone cracks under the heel of my boot—his nose or his cheek or both, I don’t fucking care. His head snaps backward, blood spraying like crushed cherries.

He crumples further, mouth slack, eyes dazed.

I stand over him, chest heaving, the knife still warm in my hand.

The silence that follows isthick. Holy. Heavy in the way all endings are.

Then Matteo steps closer, slow and steady. He doesn’t say a word—just reaches out and brushes a smear of blood from my cheek with the pad of his thumb. His touch is soft. Reverent.

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