Page 78 of Cruel When He Smiles (Sinners of Blackthorne U #3)

I keep walking until I’m standing directly in front of her. Her posture is still too good, even while restrained, and she’s still too proud to look helpless. But I see the panic under her skin now, crawling in the tightness around her mouth and the subtle twitch in her fingers.

“You don’t get a monologue,” I say flatly.

“You don’t get last words or confessions.

You’ve already told your story a thousand times, and none of it ever belonged to you.

It was about control. It was about obedience.

It was about making me so afraid of disappointing you that I forgot what it felt like to breathe on my own. ”

She glares, lips parting in preparation to interrupt, but I keep going.

“I’m not going to stand here and tell you how much you hurt me. That would be giving you what you want—validation. Reflection. Proof that you left a scar deep enough to matter.”

I crouch in front of her, knife still in my hand, held low at my side like it doesn’t mean anything.

“I could tell you how many nights I spent curled up in a bathroom trying to convince myself your voice wasn’t real. I could tell you how many years I spent asking strangers to love me in the ways you never would. But I’m done giving you the satisfaction.”

Those truths aren’t for her. They’re mine now, and I’m done bleeding them out for her benefit. Her eyes flick to the knife, and I see when she starts putting things together in her mind.

“I’m a med student,” I continue, calm as I’ve ever been. “You know that. You know I’ve studied anatomy long enough to know exactly where to cut to make it last. Where to nick to make you bleed out slowly. Where to slice so your body goes into shock and your brain takes minutes to fade.”

Her nostrils flare and her hands pull against the restraints, but she still doesn’t speak.

“I know every nerve that would make you scream. Every artery I could graze to make you feel what you made me live with. But I’m not interested in that.”

I stand slowly, lifting the knife into her line of sight. Her eyes lock on it again, but I keep mine on her face.

“I don’t want you to suffer, Evelyn. Not the way you made me. I don’t want to give you the satisfaction of thinking you’re worth that much of my time. I just want you gone.”

Her lips part, and that’s when I lift my hand and drive the knife into her jugular with surgical precision.

Blood pulses down the front of her blouse. The knife slid in so cleanly that it takes a moment for her brain to process what’s happened.

The sound is faint at first—the wet, uneven hitch of her breath, the subtle gurgle as blood fills her throat. It should be louder, messier, but all I hear is my own pulse steady in my ears.

She’s still staring at me like she’s trying to find a thread of control, some last pull to yank me back into place. But there’s nothing left. The machine she spent years constructing is gone, and for once, she’s the one trapped inside the silence.

Her eyes start to go glassy, her breathing rattles once, then slows; and still, I don’t look away.

I watch as the life drains out of her eyes, making sure the last face she sees is mine—the boy she thought she could program.

The boy she built from obedience and fear, crafted like a weapon and polished like a mirror so he’d reflect only what she wanted to see.

That boy is gone. There’s no submission in my spine anymore. No cracked edges for her to wedge her claws into.

Then I twist the knife.

Her pupils dilate, and the whites of her eyes start to bleed red.

Her jaw tenses once, then slackens. The pulse in her neck flutters against the blade like a final twitch of defiance, but it doesn’t last. I know exactly how long it takes.

I counted for weeks during my rotation in trauma, dissecting how long the brain can function without oxygen.

It’s less about death and more about the process—the absence, the retreat. I wait for it.

I wait until the twitching stops.

Then I exhale.

It isn’t relief that fills my lungs. It isn’t pride or grief, or any of the shit books and movies say you’re supposed to feel when you finally kill your abuser.

It’s clarity—cold, clean clarity. The kind that only comes from knowing you’ve just done what no one else could.

I gave her the one thing she never gave me: a quiet ending.

Liam is behind me again before I’ve registered his movement. His hand closes over mine, fingers gently prying the knife away. I let it go, not because I’m finished, but because he’s asking me to.

He tosses the knife aside, and it clatters once before settling in the blood-covered tarp. Then he turns me around to face him, and his eyes are wild with heat and pride.

“You did that beautifully,” he says, his voice a low hum meant just for me. There’s no false praise in it, no patronizing pat on the head. It’s pure, unfiltered approval.

And then he kisses me.

It’s the kind of kiss that says you belong to me now —and I know it because I feel it in my ribs, in my spine, in the way he tilts my chin and seals his mouth to mine like he wants to breathe my first real moment of freedom.

His hands fist in my shirt, and he drags me closer until I feel every inch of his chest against mine, every muscle tight with pride and hunger.

I kiss him back hard, blood still warm on my hands, but I don’t care. There’s nothing in the world I want more than him right now. Him and the way he saw me before I even knew how to see myself. The boy who untied the knots in my head and whispered me into clarity.

When he pulls back, his breath is ragged, his forehead pressed to mine, and I swear to God I’ve never seen anyone look more unhinged and beautiful.

The chair is still behind me, her body still slumped in it, but it might as well be miles away. The only things that matter are his hands on me, his mouth against mine, and the quiet, unshakable truth that she’s gone.

Gone, and I’m still here.