Page 6 of Beyond Hate

“I’ve always been destined to kill you, Nikki,” I murmured to the limp body in my arms, and picked him up, surprised at how easily he fit against my chest as I made my way back to my car.

When I dumped him into the back seat, I couldn’t help but take pause—there was a cut above his brow, and his lip was split open. The bruise forming on his cheek looked like someone had backhanded him.

It made images flash behind my eyes from our childhood. For a long time, he’d step in front of me whenever his mother decided she was angry.

For a long time, I thought he was some kind of fucking savior.

I’d seen these cuts on his face before, even if he’d been bigger then, his jaw sharper, his features honed by a lifetime of training and abuse.

This Nicholas was different. He was small. Soft… delicate. Dark brown hair spilled haphazardly across his forehead like he intentionally styled it to hide the damage on his face.

And with the streetlights streaming into the car, I could see the dark circles under his eyes.

Sleepless nights.

Fuck, he looked soft.

My fingers came out, brushing a few strands of hair back, tacky with blood and sticking to his brow.

He was pretty in this lifetime.

I dropped my hand to my side, before the warmth of his skin could penetrate the chill that had consumed me from the second I woke up, and slammed the car door behind me.

It didn’t matter how pretty he was—how soft, how delicate, how broken he looked.

The only thing that mattered was my revenge.

He stirred in my arms as I got to the cell that would be his home for the rest of his life—his prison, his tomb. I’d just finished chaining him to his little corner when his lids slowly fluttered open. The confusion on his face was almost so sweet I believed it.

Then his dark brows snapped together and he pushed back, shifting away from me so quickly he fell against the floor with a loud thud that knocked the breath out of him and left him whimpering.

It didn’t stop him from scrambling away on hands and knees, shoving himself until his back was against his bed. His eyes darted around in panic.

Fuck, he really was a little rabbit, caged and cornered.

I couldn’t help myself. I came down on one knee, kneeling in front of him and tilting my head while I watched him. Fascination poured through me, making my fingertips almost tingle to touch him. In all the memories I had, in all the lives I’d lived… I’d never seen him quite like this.

So vulnerable.

So afraid.

So at my mercy.

“W-what… where am I? What’s going on? I didn’t… I didn’t do anything. I don’t know you. I—”

“It’s not going to help, Nikki,” I murmured, but I didn’t reach out to him. He looked like he’d break if I touched him, and I needed him whole. Intact. We’d just gotten started, and Nathaniel West promised me as long as I wanted with this little experiment of his.

As long as I needed.

Looking into his wide blue eyes, I realized I was going to need a long, long time.

“I’m notNikki. I don’t know who you think I am, but I promise I’mnot.”

I sat back on my heels, looking him over. The words certainly didn’t sound like anything Nikki had ever said. The posture, the broken expression… He looked like him, like a softer, delicate version of him… but he wasn’t acting like him.

Then again, when we found Marco and Warren, they hadn’t acted like themselves either. They’d still been nasty, but they weren’t the same men who’d taken pleasure in torturing me.

Now that he’d been injected with the same serum as me, Marco was his old self. My eyes flicked to the corner of the room—he was still chained to the wall, his body limp from our last little session together.

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