Page 137 of That Sik Luv

“You know we check all weapons at the door,” Nox comments with a toothy grin, smiling proudly at us. “Men like you, clean guys who have others do their dirty work, don’t even realize when the weight of their guns change.” He laughs hysterically, gazing admirably at Briony and me. “Fuck, I love these two.”

My man, Nox. He really came through for me. Yes, he thought I was crazy when I’d suggested the entire plan, knowing they’d need a place to take me that was off limits once they finally caught me. It was a setup they never saw coming.

Callum appears light-headed as his hand meets his forehead, and his eyes dart around the room with pure panic at the realization. He checks his gun, noticing it’s empty as well, and Nox winks, holding his weapon to his head.

Alastor throws his gun at Briony, sending me into another fit of rage as I attempt to free myself, but she dodges it with a quick dip of her head and a hauntingly beautiful smile.

“You worthless waste of a good fu—“

The explosive sound of the gunshot interrupts his sentence. Briony pulls the trigger, effectively blowing off the top of his skull as promised. Alastor’s body hits the pole beside me before dropping hard to the concrete behind me. But my eyes remained focused on the delectable magnificence before me. Ethereal and decisive in her actions. My intellectual, yet ruthless King.God is most certainly a woman scorned.

Nox’s mouth drops open, a beguiled gaze taking over his face. He’s enjoying every bit of this show she’s directing, just as I am. Baret’s numbed stare peers on from afar as Bishop Caldwell’s eyes swell to horrified saucers.

“He talked too much,” she shrugs. “And yet, had nothing worth saying.”

After grabbing the handcuff keys from his limp and bleeding corpse, she uncuffs my wrists. Helping me to stand, I stumble into her, and she catches me, attempting to hold my weak body upright. Her hands mold to my shattered and torn face, and her loving gaze finds mine.

“Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and please the widow’s cause,” she quotes eloquently from the Bible.

My heart hammers in my chest for this woman. Whenever she’s in my presence, I feel it like a gravitational pull, siphoning two lost souls together with formidable strength. I see my past, my present, and the future I’d never known in those blue eyes. The same eyes I’d promised my life to all those years ago in that alleyway. I see the faces of traumatic horrors erased by her captivating beauty. Her selfless love, eradicating the hatred from my bones entirely, cleaning me of the past that haunts me.

She fills me with what they could never take away.

Faith. Hope.

Love.

Everything. All at once.

“You allowed me my voice, Aero,” her soft, angelic tone cuts through my thoughts.

I nod in her hands, embracing that gentle touch I once denied myself.

Her eyes cut hard through mine, and the strength within her being empowers me with a feeling of worth like nothing ever has.

Her gaze drops to Alastor’s corpse behind me, then to Callum and Nox, and finally to a quivering Bishop Caldwell on the floor beneath Baret, behind us.

I gave her the revenge she didn’t know she needed, and in this moment, she’s giving me mine.

She faces me, her vision gazing down at my lips before that dark, devious look rises to find mine again. She pulls a knife from beneath her shirt between us, tucked into the confines of her bra.

It’s the knife I’d gifted her. She’s kept it all this time. For me. An exchange of power from the one I’m on my knees, offering my life to.

Her lip pulls at the corner into a vicious little smirk, and my eyes light up with cruel fascination.

“Now take away theirs.”

Chapter fifty-nine

Ours to Own

I’dalwaysknown.

Somewhere deep within myself, the voice of intuition spoke loud and clear.

I’d been given the clues, the answers, the truth by my own discovery without the deception of being told.

The Devil’s Doll.

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