Page 51 of The Kiss Of Death
Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia. Dalia.
Her name was being carved in my mind all over.
Her eyes were etched in my pupils like a cigarette stain that would never stop burning.
I would have liked to extract her from my soul.
I let out a thin laugh in the middle of the fucking silence. Using Dalia to silence my mother’s ghost. Breaking her, piece by piece, so she would remember me forever. Bringing down her asshole father because he was the ultimate and last person on my list who had to pay.
All my plans were redesigned in the face of the new goal taking shape.
Watching her wasn’t enough.
Haunting her wasn’t enough.
“Oh, Dalia, you’ll wish we’d never have met.”
Dalia Mercier would be mine.
Completelymine.
“How are you doing, Amelia?” I asked, dutch braiding my hair with a lavender ribbon in front of the fencing locker room’s mirror.
“Dreadful,” she said, slipping on her black fencing glove. “Almost like that time the teacher forced us to dissect a mouse in class, but the only animal corpses I would like to touch are the ones of humans, especially men.”
Uproarious laughter, cheers, and curses from the boys’ locker room seeped through the wall.
Amelia grimaced at the sound, and Tara barged into the locker room, one hand firmly planted on her hip. “Stop hiding in here, losers. Class is about to start.”
“Hello to you too, Tara,” I beamed, determined to get on Tara’s good side one day.
“Sucker,” she groaned, storming back to where she came from.
“Being kind to her is a waste of time,” Amelia said as we exited the locker room to warm up in the fencing gym.
After a few laps, we gathered around the teacher. I dreaded one person in particular. My tormentor. My mistake. My insanity.
The same one who emerged at this exact instant from his locker room with the other guys. But while they were all smiling and joking around, he couldn’t have looked more bored in his white fencing attire. His sharp eyes locked onto mine as if hehad a radar for my presence. He was so magnetic, merciless, and undeniably… him.
A black swan with a black soul.
He was beautiful the same way pain was. Intense and captivating, but it also elicited a tug at the heartstrings every time I saw him.
I swallowed hard. I’d ignored him the best I could for the past few days and resolved never to kiss Levi Delombre again. Our first kiss ended in tragedy, the second sealed my redemption, but the third never existed. I wanted to help him, not become a mindless zombie, consumed by thoughts of human flesh, with Levi being my particular craving. I didn’t trust my heart around him, not knowing his full intentions, but one thing was for sure—I should not let my guard down.
“Levi has nice bone structure,” Amelia commented out of the blue as though it were the most normal observation.
“That’s the only nice thing about him,” I retorted, struggling to keep my composure in his presence. Thankfully, at least six or seven people stood between us.
“Female frogs fake deaths to avoid unwanted attention from the males. Too bad we can’t do that too,” Amelia said.
Even death would not be enough for him to stop.
“I’m swamped.” Sylas arrived by our side, connecting his foil and body wires to the spools on the fencing strip. “Our fathers say hi to you, by the way. They’re delighted we get along so well. I’ve never seen either of them smile like that before.”
“My dad really likes you.” I grinned and refrained from saying he’d never liked any boys before him. “But if he were to know everything that happens here, I probably would be shipped back home in a second, so I’m thankful you didn’t tell him everything.”
Everything, meaning Levi Delombre’s existence.
