Page 137 of Uprising

He leans back in the chair, glancing at the gouge I’ve left. “I know Rose but you won’t get me to talk. The only way I’ll tell you is if you get me out of here. Get me away from them.”

I laugh. It’s so pathetic. The way he’s trying to control this situation now. The way he thinks he can outsmart me. Manipulate me. As if I’m that same girl he fucked over six years ago. That same stupid, naïve idiot I was before.

“For so long I feared you.” I say. “For so long I allowed you to dictate my life, control it, use me as some sort of instrument but not anymore.”

“No?” He muses.

“No.” I repeat. “You don’t have that power anymore.”

He laughs. The bastard laughs.

But I see red, I see all my pain, every agonising moment of my life that he has been the cause of, that he has inflicted on me. I grip the knife, all but throwing myself at him.

And I stab. Over and over, slicing through his flesh, slicing through his arms, his hands, his stomach, his legs. I drive the blade in over and over, feeling his blood splattering me, hearing not only his cries of pain but my own screams as I lose myself in a pain so deep and agonising that I have to exorcise it like a demon.

I have to get it out.

The door crashes open. I don’t look around. I’m too lost in the frenzy of my attack. In the bitter twisted emotions that I’m finally getting out.

“Rose.”

Someone yanks me back, pulls the knife from my hand, and it’s so slick with blood I can barely fight it.

I stumble, only just keeping on my feet. I’m drenched. Soaked. I’m covered from head to toe.

I blink, staring at my father, seeing his body slumped, seeing his shirt completely crimson with blood.

“Rose?”

I turn my eyes looking at Roman. I’m not ashamed. I don’t regret a second of it. But I’m waiting for him to admonish me. To state all the reasons why I shouldn’t have just done what I did.

Only, instead of admonishment he cups my cheek and I feel that warm blood pooling between our skin.

“He’s dead.” Someone says echoing the same scene, what feels like months ago, when I killed the man who’d hurt Lara, when I’d beaten him to death.

I glance back at him, at where there’s two men crouched down, cutting him free, making sure the bastard really is gone.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” Roman murmurs.

I let him lead me from the room, let him guide my arm and I’m curious to know what he thinks about this, what he thinks of me now.

Does he see me as a monster? Does he see all the darkness that’s twisted inside?

He meets my gaze, doesn’t even seem fazed as he guides me into a bathroom and turns the shower on.

Roman

She’s covered in blood.

Drenched.

On one hand I’m pissed that he’s dead, that we haven’t even been able to question him but I understand that need, that drive to make him pay. It matches to the same deep need in myself. It matches to my very soul.

We’re in a bathroom. Not mine. I couldn’t exactly bring her back to my room with Lara there. I couldn’t let our daughter see her like this.

“He doesn’t know.” She says cutting through the silence that’s hung between us since I all but dragged her out.

“Know what?” I ask.