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KAI

“What’s happening here?” Elijah’s booming voice shatters the silence, causing Iris to freeze like a deer caught in headlights.

“I… umm…”

Iris tries to speak, but I am transfixed, unable to move as I absorb the scene before me.

The scene is a gruesome sight, with blood splattered everywhere as if a war had ravaged the area, cementing Iris as the Goddess responsible for their demise.

And she looks magnificent.

I glance at Arch’s parents, their bodies slumped and motionless, chained to the bottom of the cross, their hands covered in blood with a half-empty bottle of whisky lying discarded between them.

My gaze shifts to the jar near them filled with their severed pinky fingers.

What did she do?

I brace myself and draw in a long breath before finally mustering the courage to look at my father.

I haven’t seen him since I was 12, and the lingering fear of his presence still grips me tightly.

From the now prominent scar on his nose to the sagging skin on his cheek and the lingering burn in the centre of his chest, not to mention his missing finger.

A perfect replica of what he did to me.

She did that.

She carefully took note of everything I shared with her and replicated his actions exactly as he did them to me.

I feel paralysed, my muscles stiff with fear, and all I can hear is a muffled silence as if I’m submerged in water.

Until an icy hand touches my cheek.

“He can’t hurt you anymore.” My eyes lock with her mesmerising ones. “Do you hear me? He cannot hurt you anymore. It’s the end.”

She places her knife between my trembling fingers and urges me towards him.

Even though he is barely conscious, he makes an effort to open his eyes just enough to meet my gaze.

His voice trembles as he utters, “Kaiden.” The pain is evident in every breath. “Son.”

The word “son” on his lips fills me with disgust, and it serves as the perfect wake-up call.

“A father doesn’t hit his son,” I spit out. “A father doesn’t correct his son with burns. You lost your son the first time you laid a finger on him. Every scratch. Every hit. Every burn. Every touch… You should’ve died long ago.”

“It was for your own good,” he pleads, but his words fall on deaf ears.

“My own good?” My voice raises in the silence. I have twenty-five years of resentment towards this man. “Was it really for my own good that I had to hide in a wardrobe to avoid your wrath after hitting Mum? Was it for my own good for me to clean up the mess you created, over and over again, until my fingers bled?”

“Yes. It made you the man you are today. You should be thanking me.”

“YOU FUCKING RAPED ME COUNTLESS TIMES WHEN I WAS A FUCKING CHILD, AND YOU’RE ASKING ME TO THANK YOU?”

My anger is so intense that I can feel my blood boiling as if my veins are about to burst out of my skin.

I glance at Iris, and her eyes are filled with shimmering tears.

She did that for me. For Arch and I.

She’s handing me my father’s life on a silver platter, urging me to end it.

“I’m no longer a child, and I no longer fear you.”

In one swift movement, I carve through his throat, over and over, until his carotid artery is revealed and his head splits apart.

I watch as the blood gushes forcefully from his throat, and I feel a strange calmness wash over me.

It’s over.

He’s gone.

The sound of my pounding heart fills my ears as Iris approaches me before she wraps her hand around mine. I bob my head, and I can’t tear my gaze away from our blood-stained hands clenched together.

I don’t need to thank her for what she did.

I don’t need to talk.

She knows.

She understands me.

Her hand grabs my hair, pulling me towards her as she presses her lips against mine.

She doesn’t fight. She lets me take what I need.

It’s us. The woman that I want to kill with the same intensity I want to fuck.

She is unaware of it, but she has just granted me something that I have never received from anyone else before.

She put me first and gave me revenge.