Page 42 of Promise of Destruction (Destruction & Vengeance Duet #1)

forty

Soren

I don’t roll to face 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. That is 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 even know your 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.

I’m flat on the bed in the next instant, the complete reversal of our previous position. One of his hands presses the blade against my throat, the other grinds both of my hands into the headboard behind me.

I wasn’t sure I could use the knife against him.

I have no doubt that he could use it against me. But that thought doesn’t scare me. What scares me is staying here, trapped in a cycle of pain and misery, questions without answers.

Death honestly would be a wonderful reprieve.

That’s why I laugh.

“You crazy bitch,” he shakes his head.

There’s no venom in his tone. In fact, he almost sounds in awe of me.

“Go ahead,” I urge him. “Finish what you started, Declan.”

He laughs now too. “I didn’t kill your husband.” His eyes search me. He doesn’t bother trying to hide the hunger in them. His desire for something more than what we’re doing is tangible. “Did you?”

I chuckle again, the blade bobbing against my throat as my body shakes with the laughter bubbling out of me.

Declan sets his jaw, his eyes assessing me.

I laugh harder, until I wonder if maybe I did do it.

Maybe that’s why I have no memory of that night.

Maybe I snapped and did something so horrific that my brain blocked it out.

I’ve wondered it before. I quit taking all of the things that were meant to keep me sane and functional because I didn’t want to harm the baby.

But what if that caused me to break from reality. What if I really did do it?

“Fuck.” Declan mutters. It’s a throaty sound, almost pained.

I’m too busy soaking in my delirium to immediately realize the source of his discomfort, until I feel it.

He’s hard.

Something about that makes me laugh harder. I dissolve into a fit of giggles and Declan groans. Deciding he can’t take it anymore, he rolls his hips off of me and releases his grip on my hands. I’m free, but it takes me a moment to come down from the hilarity.

When I do, he’s glaring at me like I ran over his puppy.

“I didn’t kill my husband.” I tell him.

He raises a brow in disbelief. “Then who did?”

I close my eyes, because the laughter suddenly feels like it’s turning to tears. “I thought you did.”