Page 20 of Beyond Hate

The man stared at me like he didn’t recognize me—like we hadn’t shared moments of terror and horror together. His eyes were different. His voice was different… but it wasn’t just that. His entire posture was different. He’d been curled in on himself and broken before.

Now…

Now he stood straight, fierce. A little afraid, but…

“What’s going on?” He finally snapped the question out again and surged forward, baring his teeth at both of us. “I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll…”

The arms around me tightened enough to punch the breath from my chest… and then they went loose.

“Hello, Warren.”

Warren. I was pretty sure I’d heard the people who came in before call him Vince. I…

Another life.

Fuck… Fucking shit. Had he been telling the truth? Had Otto actually been telling the truth when he said there were past lives and this was what he wanted to do to me?

“Who the fuck are you?”

Otto’s arms fell from my body, though his fingers still danced across the back of my knuckles as he spoke in a cool, dangerous voice I didn’t recognize. “Don’t you recognize your family, Warren?” I’d seen himlooklike a different person when he was torturing Marco… but this…

This was like a completely different man was sitting beside me.Touchingme.

“Family? My family is dead, I…” The man in chains trailed off slowly, and his eyes widened in shock.

Maybe a hint of recognition.

“Otto?”

“Bingo.” He stood as he said it, throwing me a look over his shoulder. “Otto and Nikki. I’m afraid Marco’s a bit… incapacitated.” His eyes flicked to the almost dead man in the corner, and Warren’s followed.

“What the fuck did you do, Otto? You’redead. I saw our mother kill you, I—” I whimpered when his gaze suddenly swung to me. Dangerous. Dark. Furious. “Nikki?”

“I’m not—”

“You were the last thing I saw before… before I woke up here, I…” That fury made me tremble, and the trembling drew me back on the bed… brought my knees to my chest. Otto stood between me and the chained man, and I still didn’t feel safe. “You don’t look right.”

“N… not… I’m not Nikki. I’m—”

“Listen, Warren.” Otto stepped completely between the two of us, his shoulders straight, his posture loose as he pulled the same knife he’d used on Marco from his side. “Don’t worry about him right now. I want you to look at me… and I want you to think of every time you put a knife to my skin. Every time your hands were on me.”

“I didn’t—”

“I think today we’ll just work on you learning to tell me the truth. Confession is good for the soul.” Otto threw me one more look over his shoulder, and the cool, dead expression on his face flickered for just a second when he saw me. It came and went so quickly that I wondered if I’d imagined it. “Let’s prove the impossible is possible, right?”

Me…

This was because of meagain.

Because he wanted to prove that what he’d told me was true, and I…

“Otto…”

“Shhh, London. Do you know when we were small, every time he fucked up, he blamed it on you?”

“You’re both fucked up,” Warren snarled from his chains. “You were both always bitches. I don’t know why Mom brought you in off the streets, but you were never part of our family, Otto. And you…” I could almost feel his eyes trying to find me, even though Otto still stood between us. “She should have killed you when she killed him. You’re a waste of air.”

The man speaking wasnotthe man who’d been in the room with me before. I couldn’t ignore it, I couldn’t deny it… so in a way, Otto had won.

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