Page 72 of He Sees You

He offers me the knife.

It's heavier than expected, warm with Jake's blood.

"Where?" I ask.

"Wherever feels right."

I kneel beside Jake's ruined body.

He's trying to speak, maybe begging, but blood bubbles from his mouth with each word.

I think about all the years of looks, comments, "accidental" touches.

All the women he's hurt that we don't even know about.

All the women he would have hurt if Cain hadn't stopped him.

I think about Sarah, seventeen years old, trying to report what Jake did to her.

My father convincing her to drop the charges.

The system protecting Jake instead of his victims.

"You thought my books were just porn," I tell him. "But they were prophecies. I was writing about the man who would save me from men like you."

I press the blade to his throat.

Not deep enough to kill quickly, just enough to open the carotid.

Jake has maybe minutes, probably less.

Blood fountains up, spraying across my face, warm and metallic.

"A unicorn," Cain says when he's done sewing. "The last of his kind. Or maybe not the last, but definitely one fewer."

Jake stops moving somewhere during the final stitches.

His blind eyes stare at nothing, his mouth frozen in a final scream.

He looks like something from a nightmare, or from one of my books.

A monster turned into art, a predator transformed into a warning.

"We need to deal with this," I say, surprising myself with how steady my voice is.

"Yes." Cain stands, pulls me against him, examining my split lip with gentle fingers. His thumb traces the bruise forming on my cheekbone. "He hurt you."

"Not as much as he wanted to."

"Still too much." He kisses my forehead, soft and reverent. "No one will ever hurt you again."

"I know."

We stand there for a moment, surrounded by blood and death, holding each other.

This should be the moment I break down, realize what I've become, run screaming.

Instead, I feel... free.