“Ugh!”
His eyes traveled down his body. I looked curiously at my hand wondering what I had just done when I saw the knife had been deeply embedded into his stomach.
“Fuck, Neve! Fuck!” Arsen yelled, trying to push me off of him. I quickly pulled the knife out as Jareth sank to the floor holding the gaping wound in his stomach and put it shakily back to Arsen’s throat.
“What did you do to my cousin?” I asked again. “Tell me!”
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I killed her, but I didn’t mean to! I swear!”
“How?” I asked, through gritted teeth.
“I snapped her neck,” he admitted.
I pulled the knife away from his throat and turned my attention to Max.
“Are you still rolling?” I asked.
I saw him nod before I turned my attention back to Arsen. I took a deep breath and looked into the beautiful eyes that for a brief time meant something to me. The eyes that kindly greeted me when I sat alone in New York on the Devil’s Den lot and the eyes that jealously watched me having my business lunch with Jareth.
Then I thought of Addie. My cousin, my best fucking friend, dead all because of these jackals looking to make a quick buck.
In an instant I turned the knife around and held it by the blade. I brought it over my head and brought it down as hard as I could against his Adam’s apple. Blow after blow, each strike I foolishly hoped would bring Addie back to life, until there was almost nothing left of his neck.
The gurgling sounds would haunt me for the rest of my life as would the desperation in his eyes as I started to crush his throat, but if it was good enough for Addie, then it would be good enough for him.
I pushed myself off of his body, leaving him struggling for air and went over to Jareth who was still gripping his stomach trying to stop the bleeding.
I crouched down and raised his face to mine with the hilt of the knife. My fingers were aching from the pain of being cut over and over, but I was going to make a fucking point.
When our eyes connected, I drove the knife back into the open wound in his stomach and twisted it around, his screams louder than anything I had ever heard in my life.
I finally decided that he had lived long enough and pulled the knife out of his stomach and drove it into his neck. Once, twice, three times, until he fell over as robbed of life as Addie was.
CHAPTER18
12:14 am
Max told me that the money he would make on the ‘film’ we had just shot would rival anything other. He picked up the bodies and told me to wait where I was while he took them to an incinerator that was off the property.
I sat on the dirty floor of the makeshift bedroom, covered in blood and sweat, wondering what I had just done. Foolish actions had just condemned me in ways I wasn’t prepared to handle or deal with.
I’d never see New York again, but worse still, I would never see Adesynne either. Max returned thirty minutes later and began to break down his camera equipment, while I sat on the ground watching him, the knife still firmly gripped in my hand.
“Max?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah, babe?”
“Whose idea was this? These murder films?”
“Jareth. He said there was good money for them on the black market and he was right.”
“And how do you pick who’s going to be in the films?” I asked, getting to my feet.
“Usually it’s actors that have aged out in my company. We don’t do it very often,” he replied with a shrug. “Why do you ask?”
“I was wondering who chose Addie.”
“Jareth again. He said he didn’t like the way she could potentially take your mind off of your work so he sent her an invite for a job. Got her phone number off of your reference list,” he explained, leaning on his camera.