Page 8 of Beyond Hate

An impossible explanation that pulled me straight from the clutches of hell.

“He doesn’t remember me.”

Nathaniel seemed unperturbed. “He’s died multiple times since you knew him, Otto. Of course he doesn’t remember you.”

Multiple times. So impossible.

It had been close to seventy years since the Nicholas I knew was alive, but the memories felt like they were from yesterday. I fought the urge to flick my eyes back to the glass behind me and kept them trained on Nathaniel instead.

“But he will.” There wasn’t a question in my voice.

“Of course, when you give him the drug, he will. Just like the others. We perfected the method with you, Otto. We know what we’re doing.”

Perfected the method. I’d never asked him how many people came before me. From what I’d read, I was the first success when it came to bringing back someone from so long ago. It was… heavy.

It felt like I had so much weight bearing down on me, flashes of memories that weren’t fit to make a whole from so many lives that weren’t mine.

But in every life since the one I recognized asmine, I’d known one thing.

I had to find Nicholas.

I had him now. Trapped in a room—a little rabbit in a cage.

My gaze flicked to the glass wall behind me like I couldn’t help myself, and I had to force my attention back to Nathaniel. I hated the way he watched me with narrowed eyes and a calculating gaze—as much as he seemedpleasedwith me, with the progress I’d made, I wasn’t under any illusion that helikedme.

I was an experiment to him.

Asuccessfulexperiment, but an experiment nonetheless.

“I’m going to shower.” I forced the words out before I let impulse take me back into the room so I could try to taunt the truth out of the man on the ground. I wrinkled my nose instead and gestured to my scuffed shoes. “I had to chase him into an alley to catch him.” Unbidden, my vision swept back to the room one more time. To blood on a soft face and the cut on his brow.

My fingers twitched—it was probably the man he lived with who’d done it. I had to imagine the reason it bothered me was becauseIwanted to be the one who caused him pain, who caused him to bleed.

Which meant it needed to be patched up so I could have a clean slate.

“Would you like me to send someone in to check him over?” Irritation coursed through me. Was I letting my thoughts play on my face? Or maybe it was just because he’d caught me staring. I opened my mouth to tell him yes, he could send one of his little scientists in to make sure nothing was broken, but somehow the words got lost when I heard London whimper behind me.

“No. I’ll check him out tomorrow if you get me a medical kit.” When Nathaniel’s brows hiked, I let a smile play across my features that was more natural to the body I was in than the memories that were my own. Dangerous, deadly. Empty. “I want him to know that everything he feels, everything he experiences, everything he has from here on out is because I let it happen. I want to be the only contact he has, other than our brothers.”

Nathaniel’s eyes sparked in delight, like the answer was everything he’d wanted to hear. Another little part of his experiment, I was sure—what happened when you put a man who felttoo muchinto the mind of a pure psychopath? Which instinct would win?

“You want to break him, of course.”

“I want to own every emotion he feels from now until I kill him.”

Itsoundedmenacing enough. The body I was in had been a pure psychopath from everything I’d read, and the thought processseemedlike something he would do. Isolate a victim. Make them depend on him—make them realize he was the only thing that could grant them breath, grant themlife. Make them realize he was the one person who would take it away before it was all over.

My own emotions felt… dull… under the weight of the memories still flooding my mind.

It was almost ironic that I’d been reborn into a body that was everything I’d been lacking—I was the psychopath my adoptive mother had always wanted me to be. If I could have beenthisOtto, I never would have gotten killed.

If I could have beenthisOtto, I never would have loved Nicholas.

Chapter 3

London

Timewasweirdwhenyou were in a room with no windows.

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