Page 7 of Beyond Hate (Beyond #3)

London

S omething awful was happening. I didn’t know the man in the room with me, but I’d heard him every night this week crying. Nightmares—violent nightmares that made him thrash. His voice changed when he had them, it went deeper. Rougher.

He sounded terrified.

He sounded terrifying…

And Otto’s arms around me had been the only thing that kept me from going crazy listening to it.

Now, though, Otto couldn’t distract me from what was happening in front of my eyes.

The man jerked when they put the needle into his neck, and then he went limp.

The two women who’d come into the room left silently, and for a while there was nothing but the sound of our breathing—mine, a sharp gasp of panic, Otto’s, calm and even.

The man chained to the wall took short, shallow pants…

and in the corner, the one who I was pretty sure was dying barely rattled a breath at all.

And then there was the clink of chains as the man on the wall spasmed. It was so violent it made me recoil, and I realized a second too late that I hadn’t crawled away.

I’d moved closer to Otto, and his arms sliding around me were too strong to resist. The feel of him holding me tethered me as something impossible unfolded in front of me.

The man’s lids flew open, and I watched in confusion as his dark irises burst — the color flew through the whites of his eyes, and when it shrank back down as he gasped like he was taking his first breath, his pupils were ringed with a circle of blue.

Bright blue.

The same blue as my eyes.

“Wh…” His eyes darted around the room and his wrists jerked against his chains. “What’s going on?”

It wasn’t the soft voice I’d occasionally heard him use before.

It was deep.

Rough.

The voice he’d spoken in while he was dreaming…

Past lives. A needle to make you disappear.

The man stared at me like he didn’t recognize me—like we hadn’t shared moments of terror and horror together. His eyes were different. His voice was different… but it wasn’t just that. His entire posture was different. He’d been curled in on himself and broken before.

Now…

Now he stood straight, fierce. A little afraid, but…

“What’s going on?” He finally snapped the question out again and surged forward, baring his teeth at both of us. “I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll…”

The arms around me tightened enough to punch the breath from my chest… and then they went loose.

“Hello, Warren.”

Warren. I was pretty sure I’d heard the people who came in before call him Vince. I…

Another life.

Fuck… Fucking shit. Had he been telling the truth? Had Otto actually been telling the truth when he said there were past lives and this was what he wanted to do to me?

“Who the fuck are you?”

Otto’s arms fell from my body, though his fingers still danced across the back of my knuckles as he spoke in a cool, dangerous voice I didn’t recognize. “Don’t you recognize your family, Warren?” I’d seen him look like a different person when he was torturing Marco… but this…

This was like a completely different man was sitting beside me. Touching me.

“Family? My family is dead, I…” The man in chains trailed off slowly, and his eyes widened in shock.

Maybe a hint of recognition.

“Otto?”

“Bingo.” He stood as he said it, throwing me a look over his shoulder. “Otto and Nikki. I’m afraid Marco’s a bit… incapacitated.” His eyes flicked to the almost dead man in the corner, and Warren’s followed.

“What the fuck did you do, Otto? You’re dead . I saw our mother kill you, I—” I whimpered when his gaze suddenly swung to me. Dangerous. Dark. Furious. “Nikki?”

“I’m not—”

“You were the last thing I saw before… before I woke up here, I…” That fury made me tremble, and the trembling drew me back on the bed… brought my knees to my chest. Otto stood between me and the chained man, and I still didn’t feel safe. “You don’t look right.”

“N… not… I’m not Nikki. I’m—”

“Listen, Warren.” Otto stepped completely between the two of us, his shoulders straight, his posture loose as he pulled the same knife he’d used on Marco from his side.

“Don’t worry about him right now. I want you to look at me…

and I want you to think of every time you put a knife to my skin. Every time your hands were on me.”

“I didn’t—”

“I think today we’ll just work on you learning to tell me the truth.

Confession is good for the soul.” Otto threw me one more look over his shoulder, and the cool, dead expression on his face flickered for just a second when he saw me.

It came and went so quickly that I wondered if I’d imagined it.

“Let’s prove the impossible is possible, right? ”

Me…

This was because of me again .

Because he wanted to prove that what he’d told me was true, and I…

“Otto…”

“Shhh, London. Do you know when we were small, every time he fucked up, he blamed it on you?”

“You’re both fucked up,” Warren snarled from his chains.

“You were both always bitches. I don’t know why Mom brought you in off the streets, but you were never part of our family, Otto.

And you…” I could almost feel his eyes trying to find me, even though Otto still stood between us.

“She should have killed you when she killed him. You’re a waste of air. ”

The man speaking was not the man who’d been in the room with me before. I couldn’t ignore it, I couldn’t deny it… so in a way, Otto had won.

This was impossible, but it was there in front of me, and I… I couldn’t escape it as Otto tilted his head and started across the room.

“God, Warren. You always were all talk. Let’s see if we can turn that into something more palatable.”

I saw Warren’s expression then, the anger and defensiveness falling away at whatever he saw on Otto’s face.

“You’re different too. You’re…” He shuddered, trying to recoil, trying to jerk his arms free. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Death does funny things to a man. Torture is worse. Don’t worry, you’ll understand soon enough.” His lyrical voice sounding so cruel was almost paralyzing. It left me frozen to the bed, incapable of escaping, unable to look away when the man’s face went pale and he swallowed hard.

“Otto, wait…”

“Come on, Warren. How many months did you torture me? How many times did you leave me begging to die?”

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie. It won’t do you any good.” I stared in silent horror as the man who was definitely someone different started to scream.

When Otto pressed his lips to my temple after he was done, I was a shivering, shaking mess.

He smelled like blood, and the heat of his arms wrapping around me couldn’t quite erase the cold feeling tearing through my body.

He’d tortured Warren. He’d made him scream—in the end, he’d made him beg—but he didn’t stop. It was different this time, though.

Every cut came with words—exact details of what Warren had done to him.

How he’d hurt him.

How he’d broken him.

And something inside me was at war. I was terrified at the blood, at the screams, at the pain.

And I was drowning in Otto’s pain. His past. In the things that had been done to him. In the guilty knowledge that if I’d been a worse person, I’d almost say the man chained to the wall deserved what was happening to him… which made me wonder if I deserved what was happening to me too.

If he was telling the truth… If past lives really were real…

What had I done to break Otto into the monster he was now?

The thought fucked with me more than it should have.

He didn’t stop until Warren fainted, and Otto was trembling when he turned to face me.

It almost felt like his arms wrapping around me were for his sake more than mine this time.

He held me against his chest until I stopped shaking, until my breath evened out…

until I let the monster who’d terrified me soothe the fear he’d caused…

But Otto was still shaking when he pulled back.

A soft tremor that the cold, dispassionate tone of his voice didn’t mirror.

“He liked to make me cry. He’d stay until I did, and I always broke because it hurt so much.

” His fingers trailed slowly along my arm, brushing up and down in the ghost of a touch that made me shiver.

He’d been messy enough this time that it left smears of blood on my skin, soft proof that somewhere between when he’d started and ended, Otto had lost control.

“Why doesn’t it feel any different, London? ”

I frowned, turning my head up to look at him. I didn’t understand what he was asking. I could barely think around the horrific sounds still playing in my ears from what I’d just seen, yet…

“What do you mean?”

“I broke him the way he broke me, but nothing feels different.” His eyes narrowed and his hand lifted. When Otto trailed his fingers through my hair, I froze under his touch. Those hands had opened a man up.

Those hands were the only thing making me not fly apart.

And I…

“What did you expect to happen?” I spoke softly, my voice a little unsure.

When I moved, Otto watched me with suspicious eyes…

but I just ghosted my fingers over his wrist, avoiding the streak of blood on his tan skin.

I didn’t understand why I wanted to touch him, why some part of me wanted to draw him close and wrap my arms around him.

He wasn’t exactly vulnerable … but it was like a part of him was broken. A part of him was shattered.

I didn’t understand why I felt the need to gather up those pieces like I’d been the one who’d thrown the stone.

“I don’t know.” He searched my face like the answers to questions I didn’t even understand would be there.

“I thought hurting him would…” Otto’s lips twitched, and his eyes drifted to the side like he was seeing things I couldn’t see.

“I thought it would be… satisfying. But it’s not.

He was still a fucking asshole, and I’m still empty…

The only thing different in any of this… is you.”

His eyes came back to mine then, and there was real danger there. That same cold expression I’d seen on his face when Warren spoke.

“I…”

“Why are you the only thing that’s different?”

His fingers twitched roughly against my skin, drawing a small sound of pain from my chest. It seemed to spark something in his gaze. Darker. Even more dangerous.

And I didn’t know what else to do.

“Because I’m not them. I’m not Nikki. You can feel that.”

Otto’s eyes narrowed.

“I can’t feel anything.”

Fuck. Fuck , I didn’t like the tone of his voice.

I didn’t like the way he looked so angry.

I didn’t like that his arms around me felt dangerous.

It was almost like he was caught up in everything he’d just done, in the person he turned into when he was hurting people.

That Otto and the Otto who wrapped his arms around me at night were different .

That Otto was the one who’d said he was going to hurt me in the alley when we’d first met.

I needed the other Otto back.

“You’re a liar, Otto.”

And I was an idiot, because I did the only thing I could think to do. I leaned forward, pressing my lips to his. His fingers on me tightened at the contact. Painful. Angry and dangerous and deadly… and then they slowly relaxed when I opened for him.

I could almost feel the frantic energy in his body spilling out from his mouth to mine. I could feel it in the way his teeth sank into my bottom lip, and in the way his hands almost clawed against my skin in his desperation to hold me.

I could feel it in the way he suddenly pulled me close enough that it crushed the air from my lungs… made my body ache.

He kissed me like he was trying to find absolution for what he’d just done in the center of my chest, like he could lick it from my mouth and find purity in my moans.

Then, just as quickly as he’d started, he shoved me away.

Otto’s eyes were burning when they searched my face, and I was almost afraid to speak.

Almost, but…

“You could feel that, right?”

Could he feel my terror, my confusion?

My guilt.

If he could, he didn’t say anything. He just pushed back from the bed and straightened his clothing. His eyes drifted down to my lips, then back to the bleeding man in the corner of the room.

“They’ll be coming to clean him up soon.”

“Otto, wait—”

He was already moving, though, his brows drawn together, his expression a tangled web of fury and lust as he left the room.

I didn’t know if I’d made things better or worse… I just knew my lips were burning, and I could smell blood as I fell back against the bed in confusion.