Page 43 of Cast Stones
“Tonight, we will burn him,” he declares roughly. “We will fuck on his ashes and defile his memory.”
He slides his hand between my legs to cup my damp heat.
“Where did you go, Luca?” I moan as his finger teases my clit through my panties. “I was wandering in the wilderness without you. I saw you stabbed… How did you survive?”
He chuckles darkly. “Cain saved me. Every other parishioner was out looking for you. He snuck into the cabin and dragged me to his father’s car. He left me on the edge of Holy Cross Health hospital, an irony that made me spit up blood bubbles in amusement.”
I let out a soft cry as his finger grows insistent.
“When I was out of surgery, I tried to tell them, Madi… They wouldn’t believe me. They thought I was delusional. My only love was missing, and they wouldn’t do a damn thing about it.” With an angry hiss, he swipes my panties to the side. “I begged them to visit the cabins, to see the evil for themselves. Eventually, they did, but the cult had already broken up. Everyone was gone.” He plunges two fingers inside me, pumping savagely—angry at a world that failed us for so long. “They called me a liar,cara mia,” he rages, his furious gaze burning into mine. “They locked me up in an institution, with no way of contacting you.”
Two fingers turn into three—stretching, aching.Fulfilling.
“Luca!” I throw my arms around his neck to keep my balance.
“I escaped many times, but they always found me. After eight years, I was finally freed. I returned to Florida. I paid for a new name. A new life…” His pumping quickens. The wet sounds of my desire grow louder, making us groan out in unison.
“Come for me,” he snarls suddenly, his command sending me sprawling into nothing again. Only this time, I’m not alone. This time, he’s here to catch me.
We slide to the floor together as I gasp and throb—with a backdrop of murder behind us, and a dark love filling our freshly mended hearts.
He sweeps a lock of brown hair away from my face and smiles down at me—my black-eyed boy, now a black-eyed man, as wickedly handsome as he once was pure. “You’ve been living a lie for so long, my sweet rose. Don’t you know? Our truth is even sweeter.”
Chapter Seventeen
Two Weeks Later
I hadit all wrong when I slit my father’s throat under the Seventeenth Street Causeway Bridge. I was even mistaken when I disemboweled him, strewing his organs along the pathway for stray animals to feast upon.
That wasn’t a bloodbath. Not even close.
What Madi and I unleashed…thatwas a bloodbath.
For fourteen days, a metallic layer of fear blanketed the city. South Florida’s streets ran red with the blood of both the guilty and the forsaken.
The Innocent Three, the media dubbed them.
Madi and I laughed at the outpouring of sympathy and sorrow for the three sinners turned martyrs. They weren’t innocent. News stations can herald their good deeds while shoveling that service to society bullshit as much as they want.
No one is ever innocent. We are born with sin, and we die with sin.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
For fourteen days, my wilted rose and I shed blood, severing ties, and erasing all traces of our existence in this world. Retribution came in a rush of blood, murder, sex, and lust. The more we killed, the more we fucked. Every plea of mercy, an aphrodisiac, and every eye, ear, and tongue removed, foreplay.
See no evil… Hear no evil… Speak no evil…
At the end of our reign of terror, three sinners fell. The bloodshed ceased, and the city slept.
One…Trent Anderson, convicted for tarnishing mycara mia’s strength.
Two…Judge Harris, sentenced to death by his own gavel.
Three…Detective Hunter, condemned to bleed by her own suspicion.
The city mourned them. People wept at their funerals. But no one said shit about the fifteen other bodies scattered about the state. The ones they’ve yet to find. The ones hidden deep beneath the earth and the sea. The media isn’t looking for the fifteen unknown parishioners we found hiding underneath their own beds and inside their own closets.
They knew we were coming. Like I told Madi, the devil always gets his due.
