Page 34 of Beyond Hate (Beyond #3)

Otto

I don’t know why I hadn’t made the connection before. I’d been so convinced the person after us was someone from the facility, but Nathaniel West had obviously been running experiments behind my back.

Seeing how I would react to the woman who’d tortured me for years being alive and breathing again was one thing…

Not telling me about her was another.

And I realized too late that when I’d stepped forward to catch London from falling, I’d taken my eyes off her for a few seconds… and I’d learned in my past life that if I gave Elizabeth Blythe a chance to hurt me, she’d always take it.

She had a gun in her hand, a small thing that probably had enough firing power to kill either of us. Her eyes were trained on London, on his bloody hands and the pained expression on his face.

“It’s nice to see you so shocked, Nicholas. You didn’t look half as devastated when you killed me.”

Killed me.

My brows came together. Why would he have killed her?

Apparently she noticed my confusion, because her mouth turned up in a pretty smile.

“Oh, there’s so much you don’t know, Otto.

All the answers you could ever ask for are right here.

” She waved the little book she held in front of her like it was some kind of shield.

“Do you even care that you just got an innocent man killed?” London’s voice was full of pain, guilt, something too sweet for what was happening in this room. Elizabeth actually laughed.

“Why would I? I killed an innocent man to make him believe you were the one killing to begin with.”

“You killed the man who attacked me at the club?” London’s hands on me spasmed, and I didn’t know how to tell him he needed to step away from me so I could handle the woman standing in front of us without him getting hurt.

“When I was brought back, Dr. West was more than kind enough to tell me all about the activities Otto’s body participated in before he inhabited it.

I was going to feed the information to that poor officer so he could hunt Otto down, but when I realized he was with you…

that he was protecting you. ” She smirked.

“Well, I just couldn’t resist a little fun. ”

“Why?” I interrupted her little monologue with a flare of irritation in my voice. She’d been like this before too. She liked to listen to herself talk. She thought she was more important than she was.

I could probably use it to my advantage, but I couldn’t do anything while London was still plastered to my front like he was trying to be a bulletproof vest for me.

“She said I killed her.” London’s voice was soft, almost emotionless.

That brought me up short. “Why would you do that?”

“Oh, Otto. There’s so much you don’t know. The way I used our sweet Nicholas to get to you, the way I tortured him and threatened you to make sure he didn’t help.” Her words were like little needles prickling along my skin.

Lies. They had to be lies, but…

“He helped you.”

“Oh, he certainly did. By sheer accident, he led me to you. And then I made sure he watched every day while I hurt you. But…” Her gaze swung back to London. “He’s a little snake, isn’t he? He waited until I thought he was over his little infatuation with you and he killed me.”

None of it was making sense. He’d killed her?

She’d tortured him?

He’d…

Fuck, I could remember the way Nikki was in the room every time. The way he never took his eyes off me, even if he never helped. “Look at me, Otto . ” He’d said it before I’d died, like he wanted me to see something.

“What do you know?”

“Everything.” She held up the book again, and I suddenly got it. “All the answers are right here in his journal. Don’t you want to know what really happened, Otto?”

My eyes focused on the book. It really was the only way I would ever know—the answers were trapped in her head, in her hands. I couldn’t get them from London because losing him would be worse than never knowing.

But Elizabeth…

“What do you want?”

Her eyes flicked from my face to London in my arms. “Him. Come on, Otto. I know what your body wants to do. I know what your instincts demand. I want to see him suffer the same way he watched you suffer, the same way he made me suffer. I want revenge.” She smiled again, and the warmth of it made my stomach turn.

“In a way, you were more my son than he ever was, and I just didn’t know it.

Come on…” She took a few steps back, carefully keeping the gun trained on us as she went. “We can both win this game.”

If she’d actually read the journal, if what she was saying was true and Nikki had nothing to do with killing me… how could she think this was still a game? If she realized I was with London, if she realized I’d protected him…

How could she think this was something she could win?

Still, when she took a few more steps back and I realized she was making her way to a lit fireplace, something in my chest squeezed tight.

“Why don’t you let him go? Tell him to walk over here, or all the answers are going to go up in smoke.” Elizabeth turned the book in her hand, half gesturing toward the flames.

How many lifetimes had I hunted Nikki down for these answers—how many people had I killed trying to understand what had happened to me, to fill up the hole it had left torn in my soul?

Everything I’d wanted was between those pages.

At least… everything I’d wanted before.

Now…

“Don’t.” London’s voice was a soft, desperate sound, and he pushed away from me in a quick motion.

The blood on his hands, slicking his arms, made it easier for him to slide out of my grip, and the gun Elizabeth held swung in his direction.

“Don’t… don’t. I’ll do whatever you want.

Just… fuck. Stop hurting him. You’ve done that enough, haven’t you? ”

“We’ve both hurt him, don’t you think, Nicholas?” The sound of her calling him that made my head spin. I’d done it when we’d first met… but that felt like another life. Everything was a jumbled mess with her standing here, impossible and almost inevitable.

It almost felt like it had to come to this moment, like it had to circle back around to where it had ended…

“I’ll give you whatever you want. Just put down the book.”

London’s eyes weren’t on the book, though—they were on the gun that had swung from my head to his, and I realized exactly what he was doing.

He’d killed a man for me, and now it seemed like he was willing to sacrifice himself to make sure I was out of harm’s way.

It’s what we’d both been doing… trying to step in front of the other.

“London.” My voice was soft, careful. If she was telling the truth, and he’d never betrayed me in any life… then how it was before was still true. “Stay with me,” I whispered. He’d asked me the same thing before… and I needed him to give me the same answer now that I’d given then.

We were better together than alone—I trusted him to stand beside me.

“Of course,” he answered, and his eyes tore from the monster in front of us to swing back to me. “In every life.”

“How sweet, but I—” London threw himself forward without giving her a chance to keep up with the shitty monologue.

The sound of her gun going off sent a streak of pain along my cheek, against my ear.

Pain… but I didn’t have time to think about it because London had thrown himself at her and knocked her to the ground.

He wrenched the journal out of her hand and there was a loud crack as Elizabeth’s nose blossomed into blood.

And then another one when he brought the corner of the heavy book down against her face again.

She was already twisting her gun to aim at him, even though she was gurgling on the blood spilling down her throat.

I’d imagined this moment a thousand times, and it had been so different—I’d have her strapped down somewhere. I’d be able to torture her the same way she’d tortured me. I could have asked her a thousand questions.

I could have gotten all the answers.

And I could finally have gotten my revenge.

But it seemed like this was going the same way it had gone with London—there was no precise revenge, no movie-scene moment where everything unfolded perfectly. There was just London straddling her waist and crying while he bashed a book against her skull, and Elizabeth raising her gun to shoot him.

Reality and fantasy were two different things, and if I wanted the only fantasy that had ever mattered, I needed to end this now.

“London, move ,” I snarled, and he threw himself back the second I spoke. Her fingers were shaking when she tried to lift her gun, and my bullet took her in the center of her already ruined face.

Reality and fantasy. I’d wanted years of torture, but Elizabeth Blythe was dead in seconds, before I’d had a chance to ask her anything, before there was time for me to get any kind of revenge.

She’d died fast and messy… and I realized that was just the way the world worked… and I was fine with it. I was fine as I fell to my knees beside London, and fine when I pried the book from his shaking fingers and dropped it to the ground as her blood pooled around us.

I didn’t need some fucked-up fantasy revenge. I needed to make sure London was okay. The sharp sounds of his breath coming in desperate gasps pulled me forward, even though my vision was a haze of red and black spots. I hurt .

Then again, I’d never been around Elizabeth Blythe when I didn’t hurt. It was just different this time…

Different because it was the last time.

Different because I was standing on the other side of that pain, alive, and London was looking at me with desperate, wild eyes, like he wasn’t sure I was still whole, still real in front of him.

All the anger and rage I’d seen pulsing through him seemed to be spilling out now in tears that streaked through the blood on his cheeks and left his eyes wet and haunted.

“You’re bleeding.” He started to raise his hand to touch my face, then jerked back. His fingers were soaked in blood—Elizabeth’s and that cop’s—and he looked between me and the bodies in the room around us in a panic. “You’re… are you okay? I… oh, fuck. I killed them. I killed them and I—”

I tangled my fingers in his hair and tugged the strands lightly, pulling his mouth to mine so I could stop him from working himself up even more than he already had.

The kiss was soft at first, leaving enough room for me to pull back. “It’s okay. I’m already so stained in blood, rabbit. I’m just sorry it finally spilled over to you.”

He came up on his knees and pressed his mouth to mine again, kissing me hard enough that for a second I forgot where we were. I forgot what had just happened.

I forgot everything but the taste of London’s tongue and the way his small body fit perfectly against mine… because in the end, he was the only thing that had ever mattered.

Revenge had somehow brought me here. I’d made a vessel out of my hate and sailed through an ocean of blood and rage… and adrift in that sea, London was the lighthouse that had finally led me to shore.