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And that’s what made her so fucking beautiful—a motherfucking queen. Her devious, filthy fucking soul stole the air from my lungs.

I wanted her forever under my compulsion.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Maybe it was all a dream.

And then I sat up and realized how badly I wished it was.

My legs were on fire. My vagina lips were so swollen I wasn’t sure my clit was even attached to my body. There was an inverted cross tattooed on my inner thigh.

The entire night before was a blur in the background of a raging headache. I wanted to lie back down but knew I needed to get up.

Stumbling out of the bed I didn’t remember being put in, I made it to Romero’s dresser and tugged open the upper drawer.

Propping my head up with one hand, I lazily dug through, looking for a shirt that would cover all my bruised assets.

My fingers slid over something metal and broken. Shoving clothes out of the way, I picked up the frame and flipped it around to see what was inside. Popping the back off, I removed the photo and studied it.

There was a tightening in my chest, and my throat constricted when I tried to swallow. Suddenly, the clarity of where I’d seen the skeleton ring before came rushing back to me.

Tilly had it on when this picture was taken, and she’d had it on when I first met her through the border fence. All of them were pictured together: Cobra, Grimm, Romero, Tilly, and a brunette.

“What are you doing?”

I turned, still holding the picture in my hand. I opened my mouth to say something, unable to find words.

His dead eyes looked at the picture, then back at my face with an understanding so clear I almost believed he was a mind reader, forgetting that fast how well he knew me.

“That’s the girl.”

“Tilly. She has—had—a name,” I bit out.

His brows raised and he laughed. “Her name sure as fuck wasn’t Tilly. Her name was Tiffany and she was one of the most fucked up bitches I’ve ever met.”

Tiffany?

“She wasn’t, she was good,” I refuted.

“No, she was an unstable and untrustworthy narcissist who happened to be obsessed with me. The problem was her thinking she was better at mind games than I was. She ended up being the perfect puppet. She was not anything remotely good.”

I knew in my gut he wasn’t lying, which meant she had, like everyone always did. I let the picture flutter down and tried to move past him.

“Shit, Cali, I didn’t know, baby.” He wrapped his arms around me and smothered me into his chest.

I didn’t want to find comfort in his embrace, not when there was an ocean between us and so much that hadn’t been said. I shoved away, almost falling on my ass.

“What the hell is this? Last night, us, and now this? Who the fuck are you?”

My brain felt like it was going to split in two. I never wanted to unravel, never wanted him to see I was weak, never wanted any of the bad shit that happened to me. I wanted to live. I wanted the yesterdays full of happiness back.

I angrily swiped at my face, feeling the first tears spill over.

“Who are you?”

“Yours.”

That made it worse.