Soulless (Starcrossed Lovers Trilogy 2)

The knives were sharp. I picked the one Lucian had used so well for the salami the night before. I ran it over my thumb to check it, and it was good enough. Sharp enough. It would cut me just fine.

Dear Lord, if only those memories would fuck off and die instead of me. I sat down with my back to the cupboard, taking deep breaths as I prepared myself. There was no point denying the obvious, those memories kept on coming. Eating me up.

Please, don’t touch me like that!

I nicked my thigh, just enough to feel the sting.

Please, Uncle Lionel, please. Don’t let them!

The next cut was longer, deeper.

Ow, it hurts. Please, no. No. Not there!

Yes. Blood. Just enough blood that I could feel the release.

I’ll be a good girl, just don’t hurt me, please!

My thighs were dripping just right. The rush of pain and relief was so soothing.

I’ll be a good girl and put you in my mouth. I’ll be a good girl and put my hand between my legs.

Thank fuck for self-harm and the relief it brings. I tipped my head back against the cupboard and enjoyed the sensation. Fresh cuts on scars. Lucian would punish me for them, for sure, but I didn’t care. I would welcome that punishment, remember my manners and thank the fucker for it.

I may have been thinking a few hours earlier that I wanted to stay alive but I was kidding myself. I’d always be kidding myself. I was a silly bitch for thinking I’d ever want to stay alive in this hell hole of a world. The real hell would have nothing on some of the things I’d been through.

If only I was brave enough to slit my wrists and set myself free, but I wasn’t. I’d never been brave enough to do that. If I’d have been brave enough to do that I’d have already been dead when Lucian Morelli came for me that night.

If only I’d been sane enough to want to damn Lucian Morelli to a hell of his own, then I’d never have left the note about the Power Brothers on my kitchen counter.14LucianElaine was a butterfly with wings of so many wonderful fucked-up colors they could blind a man if he looked too deep. I didn’t understand her. I shouldn’t want to. She shouldn’t transfix me like some kind of fucked-up fool.

I was back in the Merc like a man possessed before I could stop myself as the day reached its close, heading out alongside everyone with a regular day job, even though I’d already faced the wrath from my father.

“What the fuck is happening to you, Lucian? Why are you abandoning Holdings?”

Abandoning was a severe way of looking at a few shorter days at the office, but he was right. As pitiful as it was, he was right. My brain was not as committed to Morelli Holdings this morning as it had been every other day I’d been in power.

I only wished I’d have had more acceptable truth to be able to share with my father. His promise to eradicate me as corporate leader if I didn’t sort out my actions was full of venom. So was his questioning about Elaine Constantine and just what the fuck I knew about her disappearance. Again, I had no acceptable truth I could share with him, so my answers were all vague nothings, at odds with every core aspect of my soul.

It was his truth to share with me that had my senses reeling beyond all recognition.

“Elaine Constantine told her family directly that it was the Power Brothers waiting for her outside. By letter. She told them by letter. A hand scrawled letter on her kitchen counter.

Now we have to pick a side, boy. The Power Brothers or the Constantines. Only you’ve gone and fucked it for us. You’ve been digging into the Power Brothers about the silly bitch they’ve taken, and they don’t trust our loyalty. We could have paired up with them, Lucian. We could have paired up with them and used our combined strength to destroy those Constantine cunts for good.”

Yes, we could have. Yes, we should have. Yet more fucking should’ves to consider.

My course of action was clear and determined as I pulled up into my pathetic driveway at Kington Peak. I was going to get to the bottom of Elaine’s crazy letter game and what the fuck she was thinking, and then I was going to destroy her for good. I was going to take that sweet little virgin cunt of hers as mine while she spat out all her filthy secrets and then wipe her out. Enough thinking, and talking, and threatening. Action.

I was expecting a presentation of her usual impudence as soon as I stepped over the threshold, but she wasn’t parading about the place waiting to give me shit. She wasn’t in the hallway and she wasn’t in the living room, even though the TV was still blaring out with her face on the screen. I had a flash of panic that she’d smashed a window and got the fuck out. But she was in the kitchen, and the sight of her caught my breath – sitting down on the floor with her knees up to her chest, lost to the world around her.