Page 13 of Worse Than Wicked
I loosen my grip enough to allow Mabel to answer. Her wide, blue eyes skate back and forth, as if looking for a way out. I drag her forward and slam her back against the wall again.
“Where did you take her?” I snarl.
“Who?” she manages.
Her pulse is racing like a scared little bunny under my fingers, and it makes my cock harden feeling it, seeing her terror, her helplessness.
But Mabel Darling has never been a harmless little bunny.
“You know who,” I growl. “You avoided the question when we brought it up, and we stopped asking because you stopped killing, but it was always you. Wasn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?” she croaks, clawing at my fingers helplessly.
I squeeze tighter, watching her face darken, blood pooling under her skin.
“Dude, let her go,” Duke says from behind me. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Are you the fucking Black Widow Killer?” I demand of Mabel.
She winces, prying at my fingers, unable to speak. Her mouth opens and closes as she mouths a denial.
“Then where the fuck is Jane?” I demand.
She can’t answer, though. Her face is purple now. This is how I wanted my kill, looking right into her eyes, watching the realization dawn, the life slip away.
“What does that have to do with the Black Widow Killer?” Duke asks, scrambling up from the bed. He grabs my shoulder and wrenches me back. My fingers stay locked around Mabel’s throat, but when Duke drags me back a step, she comes with me, and she manages to drag in a wheezing breath through my grip.
“Let her go,” my brother barks, slamming his elbow down inside mine. Mine buckles at the force, and Mabel is jerked forward, her head colliding with Duke’s forearm. The three of us wrestle for control for a minute before they free Mabel. She stumbles back and slides down the wall, her hand at her throat, the other bracing against the floor for balance.
She looks defeated, beaten, but I know it’s all an act. She’s not the helpless little princess she wants us to believe she is. She’s a silent predator, sleek and deadly, a ruthless killer waiting motionless in her web, planning her attack.
“What the fuck,” Duke says, shoving me aside and kneeling beside her. “You could have killed her.”
I look down at my hands. I could have. I was thinking about it. Wanting it.
Planning it?
I’m not sure. I don’t lose control like that, but something about this, about her fucking withmykill, when she’s racked up dozens… Sneaking around behind my back when I’m supposed to know where she is at all times… Managing to evade the question each time I ask if she’s behind the killings… It got to me. I spend every fucking day running myself ragged trying to stay on top of everything—maintaining my rigorous courseload at school, monitoring the news to make sure nothing incriminating surfaces, growing the operation that funds our lives, giving her the life she deserves, balancing Duke and his moods at every turn, so she doesn’t feel like we’re ganging up on her again.
And now this.
“You okay, Duchess?” Duke asks her, his voice gentle, that fucking nickname he gave her grating over my frayed nerves.
Her breath hitches, and tears pool in her eyes as she stares up at me, though she swipes them away each time they spring back, refusing to let them fall. At last, she nods.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at my brother.
“What?” he asks, blinking up at me with apparent bewilderment.
“You went back for her,” I say. “For Jane. You took her, didn’t you? I saw you in the woods with her. You didn’t have the stomach for it, so I got rid of her. But you stayed, didn’t you? You came back and got her once I was done with her.”
“What are you talking about?” he asks. “I was with Mabel that night when you got back.” He wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a protective embrace and scowling up at me with a wounded look, as if I hurt him too.
He’s done this before, trying to make it into a competition, to make Mabel take “his side,” even though we’re all on the same side—the side of making it work. The three of us against everyone else. I thought he understood that, but maybe he still can’t quite grasp the concept of us all needing each other, providing for each other.
“Are you lying to me right now?” I grit out. “Because if you are…”
“I’m not,” he says, scowling. “We don’t lie to each other. Neither of us did shit to Jane. You did. And if she wasn’t there, it’s not our fault. You just don’t want to admit that you fucked up.”
