Page 22 of Shadow

“You want me to kill you? What good would that do?”

“I can’t live like this. Please. Please do it. I’m begging you. PLEASE!” She slid down onto her knees and faced me, her words tumbling off her lips quickly as she repeated her request.

“If Rina finds out, she’ll hate me forever. I need you to do this for me. Please. Please, Dante. Please. I-I only let it happen because I didn’t think Adam would let me live after. I-I thought I w-wouldn’t have to face Sirena. That she’d be safe.”

I reached out and wrapped my hand around her delicate throat, feeling the dampness from her tears as they dropped onto my hand. She trembled beneath my hold as I tightened my grip.

Cadence Lawrence was brave.

I admired that about her.

I tightened my hold on her throat, listening as her breathing became ragged at the restricted airflow. Killing was part of who I was. As I held her by the neck, I let the feelings of bliss rush through me. The familiarity of the joy the kill brought me made my body come to life.

I shoved her roughly onto the floor and straddled my body over hers, drinking in the way her eyes widened and how her chest moved as she tried to rake in mouthfuls of air.

I tightened my hand further. Cadence was a delicate little thing, just like my specter.

Her chest heaved as I continued to choke her. It took a lot to kill someone with your bare hands. I’d done it plenty of times before. It made my list of the top three ways to kill someone—something about feeling the life slip away made my dick hard.

That made me just a little crazier.

The blood vessels began to splinter in her pretty eyes. Her lips parted, struggling to breathe.

“You wanted this,” I whispered to her. “Don’t cry when you get what you want.”

More tears squeezed from her eyes at my words.

I leaned in and ran my nose along her trembling jaw before my lips brushed against her ear.

“I love killing,” I whispered in her ear. “It’s my passion. It’s what fucking drives me. It’s whatfucking built me. Today, I will do you no favors. You will live with the choices you made and learn to do fucking better. Sometimes, our failures are our best teachers.” I inhaled her scent of cinnamon and lilac. “Killing you would hurt my specter. I would do no such thing to her. Stop being so fucking selfish. If you love her, you’ll live. Do you love her?”

She choked out what I thought was yes.

I pulled away and stared down at her beet-red face.

Carefully, I loosened my hold on her. She coughed violently as she sucked in mouthfuls of air.

“Then fucking live,” I said in a dangerous whisper. “If you consider death again, do it your fucking self. I’m not interested in doing you any favors.”

She stared up at me, her small body trembling as I continued to straddle her.

“Please don’t tell her,” she rasped, reaching for me. “Dante.Please.She’ll hate me. I-I can’t lose her. She’s all I have.”

I took her hand in mine and pulled her to sit up so she was facing me. She stared up at me with big blue eyes, silently begging me not to tell her ugly secrets. I released her hand, gripped her face tightly, and gave it a vicious shake.

“You fucking did this. You tell her what you did, or I will. Do you understand me?” I shook her face again. “You knew he was trash, and you kept bringing him out of the fucking dumpster.You fucking knew, Cadence.”

She let out a choked sob and nodded miserably.

“Fucking use words when you speak to me,” I snarled.

“Y-Yes. I’ll tell her.”

“I fucking expect to see you downstairs and acting like a goddamn functioning part of society within the next seventy-two hours. If you’re not, I swear to fucking god, Claws, I will come up here and make you regret ever being born. Remember what we did to Sin?”

“Yes.” She wept harder.

“That’ll be a Sunday walk in the park compared to what I’ll do to you if I don’t see you making Sirena smile. I will come for you if she’s stressed, even the smallest amount. Believe me, you do not want to piss me off.”

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