Page 60 of Promise of Destruction

And what is wrong with me? Why does it bother me to see her hurt when it’s not from my touch? Why do I hate seeing her devastated over something that I didn’t cause?

Her breathing evens out and I stay still, afraid to move and wake her up.

I need sleep. I at least need to pretend that I’m capable of sleep, and I can’t do that here. I can’t do that now… not next to her, in her house. Not with the tangle of things in my head that I can’t begin to unknot.

Her voice stops me before my feet hit the floor.

“Did you do it?”

forty

Soren

Idon’trolltoface him until I hear him about to leave. It’s what I want—I can’t stomach the thought of him right now. The cheeseburger he coerced me into eating half of is threatening to come back up at the thought of him standing in my garage, holding the picture that meant so much to me.

“Did you do it?”

My voice is barely more than a whisper—it’s hoarse and broken, and I wonder just how much I screamed in his arms. When I try to think about what just happened, my brain feels like it skipped through it on fast forward.

It’s sick that he would try to comfort me when he’s the same person who tries to bring me misery. It’s sick that he would try to ease my pain when he’s the source of it.

He freezes before his feet touch the ground. The air around us is stale, lacking all the electricity I feel between us in the office.

“Do what?”

His ignorance is like a slap in the face. I recoil, stuff my hand against my mouth to stifle the cry. I’ve already fallen apart in front of him. He doesn’t get to see it happen again.

Pushing myself to sitting, I turn to face him.

The smirk, the knowing look, the teasing edge… it’s all gone. He simply stares at me, waiting for me to elaborate. So, I do.

“Did you kill my husband?”

There’s no malice or surprise on his face, which is blank when he stares at me. “What?”

I laugh at myself, stroking the blade I slipped under my pillow when I first crawled over to Vin’s side of the bed. I put it there my first night home from the hospital, where I would know it waited for me if my husband’s killer ever came back. It’s been there for nearly a year, my safety net just in case.

The decision is a split second one. The blade bites into the skin at his throat before he even gets a chance to realize what it is. Once recognition flickers in his dark eyes, it lights up something else too. Something that looks deceptively like excitement.

Pressing the flat edge against his skin, I drive him back ‘til he lays flat on my bed, his arms raised in a show of defenselessness.

He doesn’t look scared, but he also doesn’t seem to think I’m bluffing. I swing a leg over his chest, effectively straddling him.

He could throw me off of him easily, but I’m not delusional enough to think it’s my strength keeping him beneath me.Thatis courtesy of the cold metal pressing against his Adam’s apple.

I tilt my head, taking him in, enjoying his helplessness. I want to drink in the power flooding my veins, but I also want to get the answers I’ve been searching the better part of a year for.

“Did you kill my husband?”

He blinks, unbothered, and gestures for me to lower the knife so he can speak without the vibration of his words against the metal. I lower it just a little and flip it so that the point presses into the hollow of his neck. I don’t know if I have it in me to do it, but I am willing to find out.

“I didn’t evenknowyour husband.”

“Wrong answer.” I hiss, digging the point into his flesh until a growl rips from his throat.

Blood wells up on his skin, and it gives me a moment’s pause.

That is the moment Declan takes advantage of my hesitation, bucking me off of him and pinning my wrist in his hand. He squeezes hard enough that I drop the knife.