Page 82 of The Hate We Breathe
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LEX
My entire world is tucked up in my bed, her face pressed to my pillow—the one that I usually sleep on—as if even in slumber, she’s trying to inhale my scent. She doesn’t even know what she does to me like this—unconscious, vulnerable, oblivious. My cock aches just watching her, imagining slipping between her thighs while she dreams, filling her until her body recognizes me even if her mind can’t.
Maybe that makes me sick. Maybe I don’t care. Watching her used to be all I had—photos, stolen moments, her beauty caught in frames like a goddess I could never touch. And now? Now she’s mine in the flesh. Warm. Breathing. Within reach. I could ruin her in a thousand ways and she’d still crawl back for more. It’s the kind of heady dream come true that I’d bleed for.
“Lex. We need to talk.”
Gio’s voice cuts through my haze like broken glass. I drag my attention from Juliet’s sleeping form and find him at the end of the hall, his expression carved from stone. He jerks his chin toward the living room and disappears.
Grinding my teeth, I shut the door on Juliet’s beautiful face and follow.
Nolan lounges on the loveseat, an ankle crossed over a knee. He lifts a brow when I step in. “What’s this about?”
Gio doesn’t waste words. He pulls a crumpled envelope from his back pocket and drops it onto the coffee table. It lands with a lightthapas if there’s something more than paper inside, but it doesn’t have much weight to it. There’s no writing on the face. It looks like any other envelope one might find at an office store.
“This was left on my car when I was out with the girls today,” Gio says flatly. “Didn’t feel right opening it alone.”
Nolan leans forward, dropping his leg down to the floor as he picks up the envelope. He frowns at the empty surface before he retrieves a pocketknife from his jeans and slices the top open. Turning it over on the coffee table, a flash drive tumbles free along with a folded note.
I grab the note first and spread it out flat on the wood. Ink stains the page in nasty, jagged red letters.
WHORES DESERVE TO DIE.
Beneath it,there are more words, a few sentences even—scribbled in angry, block letters. As if the person who left this note was out of control when they wrote them and needed an outlet for their rage.
She killed them!She’ll kill you too.
Bitch.
Cunt.
She doesn’t deserve your protection.
Liar.
Murderer.
And most disturbingly ofall are the lines at the very bottom, written in a far more concise and normal manner.
You think she loves you?
Juliet Donovan is a user. She fucked her father’s best friend. She abandoned her parents. She is a liar. If you don’t believe me, then maybe some proof will show you the truth…
Heat spikes in my skull,rage so sharp I can taste iron on my tongue. My fingers curl around the paper, crushing it before I realize what I’m doing.
“Lex—” Nolan tries to pry the page out of my grip.
“I’m going to find whoever fucking wrote this,” I growl, releasing the paper to his hands. “I’ll rip their tongue out and feed it back to them.”
Gio bends down as he and Nolan scan the page for themselves, their brows creased. I don’t have the patience to wait for them to finish.
“Fuck this,” I mutter, snatching up the flash drive.
“Hey, wait a second, Lex—” Nolan says, but I’m already out of the room and moving up the short hall to my office.
My ass hits the seat with a thump and I have the flash drive shoved into place before they’ve reached me. I don’t give a shit if the damn thing has a virus or if it fries my system—Ineedto see what proof that asshole thinks they have.
