Page 5 of Poison Vows

Leaning down, I place a kiss on the crown of her head, something I’ve selfishly done numerous times when she’s asleep.

I breathe her in, lingering like an addict inhaling a fix.

It’s potentially disruptive for me physically and mentally, but I haven’t been this close to her, skin to skin, heartbeat to blotched heartbeat, in four years.

Now that she’s back, we have a small piece of forever together. The possibilities are endless.

I just need to handle something to ensure that happens.

I press another kiss to her forehead, two to her lips, then I stand up.

If she knew I steal kisses like this, she’ll likely kill me.

The thought makes me smirk, imagining her petulant frown as she kicks up a tantrum that she never ever shows to others but me.

“So much for that saint image, baby.”

With one last look at her, I glance at the clock on her desk. It’s 02:45 in the morning.

I’ve been in here for a good fifteen minutes, but the darkest hour of the night is fast approaching, so I make my way out of her room and silently go downstairs.

CHAPTER 2

Emmett

It’s completelydark but I’m very familiar with the layout of this house, breaking and entering in it for so many years that I know where every creak is.

I go past the living room to the kitchen, then I open the second door there that leads to the garage.

It’s also dark in here, save for the one light bulb that casts a low orange glow, but also enhances the darkness somehow.

I’m used to such settings, so this doesn’t faze me.

What does turn my blood until it’s stone cold is the man I see chained down to a metal chair directly under the lone light bulb.

He’s severely bruised, his face almost completely disfigured, but I’d recognize him even if he’s bleeding from every inch of skin from the cuts all over his body, the nasty bruises and mushy tissue that’s beginning to fester.

He’s been stripped of all his clothes, so I can see the deep indent on the side of his upper arm. It’s likely that he was hit with something that caved in his humerus bone.

It’s obvious he’s been tortured and brutally beaten nonstop from the moment I was told he’d been caught.

Now he’s unconscious but panting, likely due to a punctured lung.

He’s hanging on by a thread… but I intend to make him live longer.

This torture is nothing compared to what I’m going to do with him for the next several months.

“He’s one of yours, isn’t he?”

A livid voice suddenly speaks to my left. My eyesight is disturbingly clear in the dark as a result of having spent most of my life in it.

“Yes,” I mutter.

Spider scoffs, but it does nothing to tame the anger radiating from him.

“Even your own men aren’t loyal, huh?” he mocks.

“Spider, listen?—”

---