Page 16 of Tortured Souls
SAXON
“You fucking raped her!” The roar that comes from my mouth sounds anything but my own. My fists connect with his face faster than I have time to process what my own body is doing. The color red is like a veil draped over my eyes. I can’t breathe properly, nor can I stop the vicious onset of destruction that I’m causing to this man’s face. What was once a normal distribution of facial features is now fast becoming a mangled mess of what I could only describe as loose flesh hanging and falling away from a skeletal structure.
“Alright, man, alright, you got him.” Saint’s voice is close, but I can’t stop my arms from rearing back again and again. It isn’t until Saint successfully pulls me off Damien’s now lifeless body that I see the state of him. I’m completely covered in red. Warm, sticky blood coats my hands, arms, face, and chest. The smell sticks in my nostrils as I suck in breath after breath.
“Fuck, man. You good?” Saint’s face comes into view as he places his hands on my shoulders, steadying my body that’s vibrating with so much energy, so much anger, I can’t control myself. Once air finally fills my lungs, I look down at the man I’ve just eliminated. The man I killed with only my hands. There’s nothing to identify the man that’s now slumped in the chair in front of me. If you didn’t know who he was before, you’d never know the man who is now dead in the basement. Good, he deserved worse.
“Saxon.” Saint’s voice is low, but I don’t miss the hint of concern as I follow his line of sight. Sky. She’s motionless, nothing showing on her face, her eyes fixed on Damien as she breathes slow and steady breaths. In and out.
“Untie her,” I whisper to Saint, and we both step up to her sitting utterly still.
“Sky. Sky, look at me,” I say in my calmest voice. Not wanting to scare her any more than she already is. Or at least, I think she’s scared. Numb, maybe? She doesn’t even blink. When her arms and legs are untied, she remains in the chair, her body slack and eyes still on the dead man.
“Baby. Look at me,” I say again, my hand cupping her cheek, and she closes her eyes at my touch. Blood coats her flawless skin. Fuck, my hands are still saturated in blood, but I can’t focus on that. I need to bring Sky back from whatever trance she’s currently in. Removing my hand from her face, I grab the legs of her chair and spin her around so Damien’s no longer in her line of sight.
“Sky. Look at me right now.” My tone gets more demanding, but I need her to look at me. I need to see that she’s still here with me and not trapped in a dark memory. My skin begins tingling, and my nerves quickly come to the forefront of my mind when she finally speaks.
“You ruined everything,” she whispers. Her small voice is laced with so much pain and so much agony, but I can’t understand what she’s talking about. I ruined what?
“Skylar, what?—”
“You took this from me.” I’m still so confused about what she’s referring to.
“You’re going to have to elaborate for me a bit more.”
“Damien. He was supposed to be mine. My closure, my kill!” Her voice cracks with a shout that echoes around the concrete walls. She finally looks at me. Her eyes are full of unshed tears and devastation that sends a sharp stab to my chest.
“I was supposed to kill him. This was supposed to be my revenge!” I look up at Saint, who’s standing to my side, looking down on Sky as he tries to understand what she means.
“You wanted to kill him yourself?” I ask, but deep down, I know her answer.
“You took my closure.” Her voice is filled with so much hurt. Standing from her chair, she shoves me hard, forcing me to take a few steps back. Saint immediately grabs her waist, holding her in front of me. Her arms swing out in front of her, trying to connect with my face. Anger and rage overflow from her small frame. Deep red paints her face as she curses me for killing Damien. I’m currently her enemy, her next victim. I wave off Saint, and the moment he lets her go, she lunges for me. Pounding against my chest as she continues to repeat herself over and over again. “He was mine to kill! Mine!”
I let her release her fury on me, her hits growing weaker and weaker as she starts to lose her energy. She’s crumbling,breaking into pieces right before my eyes. When she finally falls to her knees, I bend down with her. My hands resting against her thighs as she appears to be dissociating from everything that just happened. While she was frantic a moment ago, she quickly becomes a shell of herself. Focusing on her breaths, she keeps her head lowered as she falls into a numb trance, mentally traveling far away from this basement.
Fuck me, she needed this kill to close the chapter of her life he stole from her. I hadn’t intended to kill Damien in this way, but the moment he revealed his little secret, I couldn’t stop. Standing, I step to the wall with Saint at my side. It’s all becoming painfully clear that she has, or rather, had, no genuine relationship with his man like I’d thought. He was her monster, the nightmare from her past. I’m torn between my perception of her as my enemy, and this broken woman who may be more than I’d given her credit for. Maybe sheisrunning from them. The two halves of my brain are at war—on one side, she is the enemy and always will be. And on the other side, she’s just a shattered soul who lost a piece of herself while living within the walls of the Hellstorms. Fuck, I wish my father were here. He’d know what to believe.
“What the fuck is she talking about?” Saint asks before I can even explain. Letting out a sigh, I rub my hand down my face, then instantly regret it, forgetting my hands are still covered in blood.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about her, Saint. I’ve been watching her for a while.” I look over my shoulder to check that Sky can’t hear what I’m about to say next. “I’ve placed cameras in the club and in her apartment. I needed to know what she was up to in case she is still running with her family’s crew.” Not a total lie, but not 100 percent honest. “I’ve seen her do some things to other men. Almost like she’s eliminating certain people for some type of revenge.”
He gives me an incredulous look, his head tipping to the side as I continue.
“She’s just as much a killer as we are, man. She’s done some unthinkable things, and I think she wanted to kill Damien herself to get revenge for what he did to her. And I just stole that from her.” Saint nods once in understanding. Guilt seeps into my core as I fully acknowledge what I’d taken from her.
“What now?” Saint whispers.
“We dump his body. In the quarry.”
“What about her?” Saint asks. I’m already going to her.
“I’m taking her home first.”
SKYLAR
I watch as the guys wrap up Damien’s body in a black tarp. The plastic material is secured around his body so tightly it’s undeniable that there’s a body beneath its cover. I thought I would feel different after he was dead. I thought I’d feel this sense of uplifting weightlessness, but that never came. Even when he stopped breathing. For a man that took away a piece of my soul, I’d hoped that watching the life leave his body would make me whole again. It didn’t. In fact, I don’t feel any different at all.
My chest is still heavy, an iron fist with its fingers wrapped around my beating organ, slowly and painfully constricting between breaths. I’ve spent the last few years dreaming of this moment. The moment where this constant pain would disappear. He’s dead now, so why do I still hurt? Why is this pain still there? A deep bruise that’s never healed. The pain is a constant reminder of that day. Gone is the man that used, abused, stole, and degraded me at such a young age, so why is he still burrowed in the depths of my skin? Forever present.