Page 158 of Only for Him

I should. I fuckingshould.I should torture him, shove the knife up his fucking ass, tear his tongue out and feed it back to him. I should make him feel every ounce of pain I’ve had to live with.

But when I look at Russo, I can’t see whoever he was when he raped Serena, or orchestrated her kidnapping and murder.

I can only see the man I’ve grown to love, and the family he’s brought me into: I see his wife, who knows I love her maple-roasted carrots and makes them every time I come over for dinner. I see his son, pressing a sticky game controller into my hand and begging me to play with him.

I still remember the Russo I first met, the one who called me G and stayed late to help me with paperwork. The one who helped me move into this very fucking apartment. He carried my mattress upstairs, grumbling the whole way about his bad back.

My eyes land on the back of the picture frame that holds my photo of Serena. It’s still facing the wall.

Thank God for that. I don’t want her to have to look at her rapist. But even more, I don’t want her to see what I’ve become.

Maybe everything I’ve been doing hasn’t been to bring her peace. Maybe I’ve just been dragging her through my fucking hell.

For a second, something flickers behind Russo’s tears.

Hope.

“Please,” he whispers. “Don’t do this. It’s not right, G.”

He’s wrong. Itisthe right thing to do. But I still can’t kill him.

Not because of him. Not because of his pathetic little whimpers. But because he isn’t some faceless monster.

I don’t want Ida and Teddy to have to sit in the witness box at my trial.

I don’t want to watch Mrs. Russo sniffle into a wadded-up tissue.

I don’t want to have to crumple up and throw away the picture of the precinct his son drew because it reminds me that I couldn’t draw the line between justice and destruction.

I don’t want to kill someone in the same place I spend my sleepless nights, in the room where my sister’s picture and memory lives.

His blood on my hands? Unbearable.

Except… Couldn’t I have said the same about so many of those other men? Some of them did less than Russo. They just drove a van, or watched a door, or paid for a girl.

And I killed them anyway.

I was happy to make their wives widows and make their kids attend their funerals.

I did it all… and not even for Serena.

For fuckingRoman.

“I’m so sorry, just please… Please tell me you forgive me,” Russo blubbers, but I can barely hear him. Or, I can’t bear to listen. Either way, he’s not going to get what he wants from me. Not now. Not ever again.

Roman must see how impossible this is for me. He’s finally brought me to the edge of everything, expecting me to leap off the abyss with him.

But I won’t. I can’t.

Will he be upset that I can’t do it? Disappointed, maybe? Maybe he’ll see this as a final betrayal.

I don’t care. Fuck this, and fuck him for asking it of me!

Fuck him for bringing Russohere,to my fucking home, so that I have to think of this every time I sit on the goddamn couch.

I let the knife fall from my hand, and Roman’s face hardens. He picks it back up and stands.

I watch through a haze of tears as he stalks towards Russo.