Tacet a Mortuis (The Elite King's Club 3)

“So I’ll make this easier for you and tell you the big firework kicker!” he yells, laughing hysterically. Leaning down, I pause, my heavy breathing the only thing breaking the silence.

“You—”

A gun fires and Lucan screams, his hand loosening from around my mouth as he falls to the ground.

I freeze, static buzzing in my ears from the gunshot.

Pain.

Anger.

Rage.

Rage.

Rage.

Heat rises inside of me as I think over everything. His touch when I was a kid. What he made me do to Brantley. And what he made Brantley do to me as a kid.

“Stop!” I scream, my eyes unblinking and fixed on the car in front of me.

Silence.

I slowly turn around, noticing Bishop is beside me, kneeling down next to Lucan, who is bleeding out on the road.

I look at Lucan, tilting my head. Smiling, I whisper, “Seeing you in pain soothes my anger.”

Lucan looks at me square in the eye. “I will live in your memories, Silver. Forever.”

Squaring my jaw, I bend down to Bishop’s level, bringing my hand to his boot. I feel up toward where I know he keeps a knife. I feel him freeze, realizing what I’m about to do, but before he can stop me—if he was going to stop me—I unclip the holster and pull out the large hunting knife and slowly raise it into the air. Lucan’s eyes follow it slowly.

“You see this?” I run my pointer finger down the blunt side of the knife. “It’s a Fallkniven A1Pro Survival Knife.” I smirk, admiring how the boys—except for Bishop, he’s still crouching beside me—watch me with awe, or fear, or a combination of both, and are all standing behind me. They have my back—but I won’t need it. I launch the knife into Lucan’s pelvis area until I feel his bones crunching against the blade. He screams out, a loud, curdling scream, his back arching and tears pouring down his face.

I bend down to his ear, running my lips over the lobe like he did to me not long ago. Feeling his blood spilling over my hand, I grin and whisper, “You know, since you love to be theatrical… this knife is a survival knife.” I circle the blade, my hand sticky with his blood. It blankets my anger, soothing it like an ice pack on a burn. Putting out the pain.

Pulling the knife out of him, I inch backward, both hands wrapped around the blade, ready to stab it into his head. Needing it to finally put out the burn I have inside me. The burn has only been temporarily eased when Brantley appears, snatches the knife out of my hand, and stabs it right between Lucan’s eyes. Blood sprays all over me, the tang of blood overpowering every taste bud in my mouth.

Brantley screams, veins popping out from his neck, his eyeballs almost bulging from their sockets. He has anger; I was right. He has anger just like I did, if not more, because Lucan was his father.

My breathing slows, and when Lucan’s head drops to the side, his death stinking up the air, I collapse into Bishop, my head resting on his shoulder.

He wraps his arm around me, kissing me on the head as Brantley pulls the knife out of his dad and launches it back into him again. And again. And again. I flinch, burying my face into Bishop. His smell, his just—Bishop. The only sound I can hear is Brantley slicing into Lucan. Again and again.

“Come on, baby,” Bishop says into my hair when he sees Brantley isn’t stopping anytime soon.

“Well,” Hector says, and I turn in Bishop’s grip to face him but away from Brantley making dues with his abusive dad. “This is all lovely, but do any of you fuckers want to tell me what the fuck is going on and why my right-hand man is dead? Brantley, hear that? He’s dead so you can stop that now.” Hector pauses, looking at the mess Brantley has created and then shrugs like he sees that type of shit daily. He probably does. Actually, all of them seem unbothered by it.

Bishop squeezes me into him. “Lucan would rape Madison when she was a little girl.”

Hector sucks from his cigar, but just there, below the surface, I can see it enrages him somewhat, and that surprises me because he’s Hector Hayes. I wouldn’t think something like that would bother him. He must catch my notice in him, because he laughs.

“Don’t take it to heart, sugar. I personally don’t like you, for a lot of reasons.” He looks at his son and then back to me. “But I don’t condone rape.”

“And…” Bishop pauses but then continues, “…and Brantley.”

The stabbing sound has stopped; now it’s sobbing. Not the quiet sobbing, it’s the ugly kind, and I turn in Bishop’s embrace, finally bracing myself to look toward Brantley.