A Thousand Cuts (Underworld Kings)

“You are going to be different than her.” His eyes ran over me as he rounded the island, him on one end, me on the other. “I cannot wait to—"

My hand slipped in and out of my purse before he finished his sentence, raising the gun to the man who killed the girl my husband had once loved. Who had inadvertently given me a life I loved. One I wouldn’t let be taken from me.

I didn’t hesitate pulling the trigger. Twice.

Cristian

Sienna was pregnant.

She hadn’t told me yet, but I knew. I knew the cycles of her body. I knew every inch of her. I noticed her nipples grow, darken, her breasts getting heavier with each day. It was likely, very likely, that it happened the week of the wedding. The wedding day. It could be mine. The chances were very high. But it also could be Felix’s. Time would tell. Whether or not that baby came out with my eyes, my jaw, my hair, or with Felix’s, I would love it all the same.

My blood turned as we drove up to the gates.

The open gates.

My mind stuttered as a memory, long buried, crashed into the present. Felix was luckily not burdened by the past, by the pain of it. He floored it the second he noticed something was wrong, the car screeching up the driveway.

It took mere seconds to make it to the front door.

Not short enough. Not if she was already gone.

I was out of the car before Felix came to a stop, sprinting inside as two gunshots echoed in quick succession.

The story could not end this way. Not so similar to how it started.

But it could. It most definitely could.

Life was plenty cruel enough for that.

But I forgot...

This could not end similar to how it started.

Because I was not with a girl like the one I had fallen in love with another lifetime ago.

No.

Sienna was nothing like her.

So I found blood when I entered the kitchen.

But it didn’t belong to my woman.

It was the second time I’d come into the room to find my wife with a gun. Having shot a man who did her harm. The second time I lost the chance to save her because she’d already saved herself.

As much as the petty, juvenile part of me wanted to be the one to save her, I knew that it was impossible to save her from this world.

And she was proving that she didn’t need saving. Proving that she was nothing like Isabella. She was not a victim.

“You fucking bitch!” Marco laid on the floor in a pool of blood, screaming at Sienna who was leaning against the kitchen counter eating string cheese.

Fucking string cheese.

My eyes went from her to Marco. The man I’d known since I was little more than a boy.

Who everyone trusted, looked over. Because next to men like Dominic, like Felix, he was harmless.

It all clicked now. I was so fucking blind. All these years, I’d been tearing families apart looking for some stranger, some outsider. We’d been so sure we’d scrutinized everyone so completely. Vincentius would be heartbroken. Ruined.

“I figured you’d want to finish him,” Sienna commented, jerking me from my thoughts. “That you’d want to make his death slow.”

I thought on it. I’d spent years thinking of all the things I’d do to the man responsible for Isabella’s death. Lost sleep over it. Gone mad over it.

My steps echoed across the kitchen as I found my way to Marco.

“Please, Cristian—”

I didn’t give him an opportunity to waste a second more of my time. I shot him in the face then didn’t hesitate to turn to my wife, crossing the distance between us to take her in my arms.

She was not pale. Not shaking. Not prone to hysterics in the face of murder. No, my wife did not scare easily.

“I thought it would last much longer than that,” she commented.

I searched her face, overcome with how much control this woman had over me. How fully she owned me. “It’s lasted twenty-five years.” I laid my lips against hers. “It’s time for an ending.”

Epilogue

Five Months Later

Sienna

“Cristian?” I called out.

There was no answer. He was not a man to call back to me. But his low footfalls echoed off the walls, so I knew he was coming.

He’d just got back from Desolation. From a meeting with The Ruin. They were a crime collective, as I’d come to understand. He met with them every now and then, to talk about guns, body cleanup, drugs. Any and all criminal enterprise.

He’d told me this, because he told me everything these days.

“Why is Lucia tied up in the basement?” I asked sweetly when he entered the room.

Cristian’s expression stayed blank. “Lorenzo took a liking to her.”

I blew out a heavy breath. “And his solution to that was tying her up in our basement?”