A Thousand Cuts (Underworld Kings)

And as I watched him, as I let his words sink in, I couldn’t find it in me to fight it.

So Felix trained me.

Every fucking morning.

He didn’t go easy on me.

Cristian had lied.

He would not be the only man to mark me.

After the first session, my body was peppered with evidence of just how ruthless Felix was. How little he cared that I was still wearing the marks of being attacked in the kitchen. His hands were cold. Glacial. Like he was a fucking vampire.

And it set me on fire.

The fact that Pete had died violently in the same basement I was training in didn’t bother me. I didn’t lose sleep over it. Barely thought of him. I didn’t grieve him. Wasn’t disgusted by Cristian’s touch. There was something fundamentally wrong with me.

But I already knew that.

I loved and hated the sessions with Felix. Dreaded and looked forward to them. Because I knew Felix was going to hurt me. And I liked that. I also liked the new feeling in my body. A growing strength. Everything in me was growing. My need for Cristian, increasing to a point of insanity. He took me in the middle of cooking dinner. The second I walked in the door from work. When I was drinking coffee in the garden.

And, of course, every morning. He took me every fucking morning with a different kind of intensity. A kind of fervor. He wouldn’t let me shower either. So I’d gone down to Felix smelling like him. Like us. With my face red and my eyes bright.

Cristian did that on purpose. Because he watched me. Knew me. Understood the infatuation I had for Felix. In moments, when he’d pinned me to the floor, his body covering mine and eyes searing into my skin, I suspected he had a kind of infatuation for me too.

Cristian never mentioned it. Nor did he stop the sessions. I suspected some part of him liked that infatuation. Knew it was turning me into something darker, uglier, more suited to the role of his wife.

I knew that too.

Because I had done one half-assed search of his office and hadn’t attempted anything further, despite having numerous opportunities to do so. I’d moved the files to a locked drawer in my desk at work and there they stayed, despite Harris calling almost daily, trying to set up a meet to exchange them. I’d told him I was being followed. His responses were getting more and more hostile, with the latest call being the worst.

“You know, Sienna, it’s starting to look like you changed your mind.” He’d spoken in a clipped tone. “Which would make you an accessory, at best. At worst, if someone happens to inform Romano of our relationship, you’ll be dead in hours.”

My heart stuttered, and I gripped the phone until my palms ached. “It sounds to me, Detective Harris, like an officer of the law is threatening a high-risk informant,” I rebuked after a few beats, my voice completely controlled and impassive. “The aforementioned informant who is currently closest to the most dangerous man in the city, a man who has your superiors on speed dial and who would likely have you taken care of without the opportunity to spout lies about his fiancée. So I would remember who you’re talking to before you spout any veiled threats.”

Street noise filtered through the phone as Harris mulled over what I had just said. It occurred to me that my threat wasn’t empty. Not even a little. This was about my survival. Jessica and Eli’s. I’d known from the start that Harris didn’t give a shit about me. Not really. That all he wanted was Cristian, and he’d take him down by any means possible.

I didn’t doubt my ability to go to Cristian, lie to him about my relationship with the detective, do it convincingly enough for Cristian to have him killed. I’d changed over the past month. I’d turned into something wicked, without morals or conscience. The speed at which this change had happened should’ve shocked me. But it didn’t. Not when I knew it wasn’t truly a change at all. This was who I’d always been, just hiding under a façade of lies.

Harris cleared his throat. “I’m not threatening you, Sienna. Just reminding you the stakes of the game you’re playing. There is no happy ending here. Someone is going to end up dead.”

His words rang through my ears like an omen.

“I’m well aware of the stakes, Detective,” I deadpanned. “I’ll be in touch when I can.”

Then I hung up on him.

It had almost been a month to the day since I’d first sat in Cristian’s office and the trajectory of my life changed forever.

A month. We were at the end of the timeline Cristian had created. Tomorrow, the wedding planning was going to start. I couldn’t imagine that Cristian wanted a long engagement, so we could very possibly be married by the end of the year.