He leaned in and kissed the skin that was stained red with his blood, I could smell it as it dripped off my cheek.
And then something cold was pressed into my hand. “Survive.”
“What?”
He moved out of the way. “A final test.”
“Test?” I repeated my brain numb as someone sat in the dark corner, a bag over the head. It was clearly a woman; she was in a professor’s uniform.
My brain didn’t have to do the calculations.
I knew exactly who it was.
The same professor who had defied them today.
Asher took a step toward me, but Chase stopped him.
“Italians are touchy,” Nikolai explained. “And you come from a Russian bloodline. Trust is everything, so prove whose side you’re on.”
“I can’t,” I whispered, “kill a person.”
“She’s not a person,” Nikolai fired back. “She lost the right to her humanity the day she tried to defy the Families. Besides, I wouldn’t make you kill her; that’s Asher’s job.” I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. “Your job, as part of his soul, is to stand by his side. And as a token of your loyalty, you shoot first.”
The gun shook in my hand. “I don’t—”
“—lie, and you’ll be next.” Nixon intervened. “You were taught to shoot, so shoot.”
I wanted to say years ago.
I wanted to tell them it was different when it was clay pigeons.
I didn’t.
I looked around the room.
Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
I lifted the gun and pulled the trigger aiming for the lower half of her body, hitting her in the right thigh.
She let out a scream. And I knew I would remember the noise forever.
Because it accompanied the way I felt all of the light leave my body.
An exchange took place that day.
My soul, hers.
For the living breathing monster that is, The Family.
“You can’t go back,” Asher whispered sadly.
“Why would I want to,” I responded in a harsh voice, realizing that I wasn’t the only one broken, still breaking, something shattered between us that day too.
I just wish I knew what it was.
I thought about it later that night when he held me in his arms, when he wiped away the tears I didn’t realize I still had.
When he kissed me like he was afraid I would disappear.
And when he told me he’d die in order for me to live.
Something was gone.
Missing.
I scrambled for it, mentally searching my thoughts, my actions.
And in the morning, I came up empty.
And realized sadly that it wasn’t missing.
It was still there.
It had just quieted.
Because it was broken.
Bloody and beaten, just like the professor.
Asher and I had done more than just break Junior and Serena’s hearts.
Mine was included in that scenario.
And I wondered in that moment, if Asher knew it all along, but did it anyway out of selfishness. Out of the need to have someone to share this life with.
And for one second, I hated him.
And then he was kissing me again as he woke up from a dead sleep, his hands on my body, his lips flush against mine, his hands sliding down my hips tilting me toward him like he needed my body in order to survive.
And I released the hate.
And clung to his love instead with full knowledge that if anything ever happened to him.
I would die too.
There was no other option.
Blood in. No out.
“You okay?” he asked against my mouth, his hands already pulling my clothes from my body.
His kisses drugged my common sense.
They made me forget about the death.
But my hands, they were still stained red.
I shook in his arms. His blue eyes flashed as he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to my chest.
I didn’t realize it until he left to report to his father an hour later.
But the minute I let him into my life, I welcomed death.
When he came back hours later, his sexy smirk didn’t do the same things it had done to me before, it made me afraid, fearful for what our future would look like, would we have kids and treat them the same way? Would he always look at me with love in his eyes? Or would a lifetime stuck with me only breed hatred after he realized his mistake?
Because things aren’t always what they seem, are they?
On the surface, I was Nikolai’s niece.
But beneath it all, I knew the truth.
I wasn’t for this world.
I was too human.
Too humane.
And I knew, in order to stay with him, to stay with them, I would have to do the unthinkable, and already, I was testing the word freedom on my lips and wondering if I was strong enough to embrace it even though it meant saying goodbye to Asher forever.
Maybe that was my weakness.
My own inability to walk away from him when I knew it was the smart move to make.
“I love you,” Asher took a long stride toward me, and then I was in his arms, and my thoughts were forgotten, replaced by a need to drink him in, because at least in the arms of my monster—I was numb.