Page 16 of Beyond Hate

Him calling me London didn’t make up for the way I’d watched his entire demeanor shift from man to monster. Something unfeeling. To the same predator I’d seen looking at me in the alley, the same one I’d seen watching me when his eyes had still been dark.

No matter how good it had felt to press my body against his, at the end of the day, Otto was dangerous. He wasn’tgood.

And as he stepped forward and very carefully slid the knife he held into the delicate skin of the chained man’s finger, I felt my stomach clench and roil.

I was going to be sick—I couldn’t watch this.

But for some reason I couldn’t look away, because in the end… I knew.

Everything Otto did was because of me.

He didn’t finish for an hour. The first twenty minutes had been full of screams that were still buzzing around in my head.The second was sounds I’d never heard a human make—low whimpers, wet snuffles, and gurgling groans cut off by gags. Otto took the man apart one tiny piece at a time, and before he’d lost the ability to speak, he was apologizing.

To Otto.

To me.

To God.

No one was listening, though, and I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs to tell Otto it was enough.

To beg him to stop.

To…

Do anything.

I just sat there on the bed with my eyes glued to the carnage and watched a man being tortured until he finally fainted from pain and blood loss, and I really wondered if he was going to wake up this time.

My entire body was trembling as Otto carefully placed the knife on a table away from me and my cellmate—he’d also been quiet, watching with wide, horrified eyes. It took me a second, but I realized why.

He was next.

He knew he was next, and he was getting a live preview of what was to come. The difference between the two of us was that he’d buried his head beneath his pillow after the first ten minutes, and I half wondered if he’d smothered himself.

It meant he wasn’t watching when Otto turned to me—for someone who’d spent so much time torturing a man, who’d soaked the floor crimson with his blood, there was barely anything on him. He wiped his hands carefully on a white rag, leaving behind a smear of red, and turned his attention back to me.

“They’re not worth that look, London.” He’d been perfectly silent while he was torturing the man on the other side of theroom, or if he’d spoken, it had been in such a soft murmur that I hadn’t heard it over the screams. But now…

Now his voice was clear, and his eyes were all for me, even though his pupils were slightly dilated, like the violence had done something to him.

And when he kneeled on the bed beside me, I couldn’t force myself to recoil any more than I already had. I was so drawn in on myself there wasn’t any space. There was just his eyes, fixated on me, studying the shivers running through my body, the terror on my face.

“You never looked like this before,” he whispered, and for the first time it didn’t feel like an accusation. I opened my mouth to try to speak, but the only sound that came out was a soft, trembling sob, a little hiccup of pain and terror that turned into a cut-off cry when he shifted forward and threaded his fingers slowly through my hair. “Nikki never looked at me like I was a monster.”

I’m not Nikki.

The thought beat in the back of my mind, the thing I’d tried to say to the man before he talked enough to get himself tortured to the edge of death. The thing I’d been trying to tell Otto… and…

Fuck. When he smoothed his hand down the side of my face, I could smell the slightest hint of copper, the distinct smell of blood that made me want to recoil, that made me want to vomit, that…

Engulfed me when he slid forward and dragged me onto his lap. I hadn’t realized how hard I was shivering until his warm arms wrapping around me forced me to feel it. I hadn’t realized I was taking fast, shallow breaths that were making me dizzy until his voice came soft and low in my ear.

“Breathe, London. You’re having a panic attack.”

“Of c-course… I-I-I…” I couldn’t get the accusation out, couldn’t tell him that the reason I was having one was because he’d just tortured a man in front of me.

“You didn’t have to watch.” It was like he could read my mind. He shifted us until my thighs were hooked over his hips and he could wrap his arms completely around me.

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