I don’t think I was the only one struggling. I looked away from the group to check on Dion. He was sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, staring blankly across the room, lost inside his own troubled thoughts. His thin rimmed glasses twirled within the tight grasp of his fingers.

  I searched for words that would comfort him, but they all sounded empty in my head. He’d been like this since we’d reconvened, and he realized his girlfriend still wasn’t anywhere in sight. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth, that Morrigan was more than likely dead and thanks to none other than the group of men who had ironically come to our rescue. Keeping secrets seemed to be a rapidly developing habit of mine and I wasn’t too proud about it.

  My attention shifted to the door we’d come through after ditching our ride. A long piece of steel with a monster sized deadbolt, surrounded by a high ceiling and four walls that may as well have been made of glass. This place wasn’t somewhere we were meant to have gone, which meant it was more dangerous than anywhere we should’ve.

  A bottle of water abruptly appeared in front of my face. I flinched away from it and then realized who the tanned, tattooed hand offering me the plastic beverage belonged to.

  “Drink this.”

  Ignoring the chills his masculine voice elicited, my eyes drifted upward, moving over his solid body until they clashed with the pair peering down at me. Eerily familiar and color of smooth whiskey, they’d become a deep source of confliction for me.

  “Is it safe?” Ew. I sounded as if I’d been chewing on sandpaper.

  “Would I be handing it to you otherwise?”

  I couldn’t reply to that with a simple yes or no. Careful not to let our fingers touch, fearing that small connection would be enough to blow my cover, I accepted the water and tore my gaze away from his before I gave too much away.

  He remained off to the side of the sofa, continuing to watch me. His attention wreaked havoc on my mental barriers. I concentrated on unscrewing the bottle cap to distract myself from his intrusive stare.

  Did he I know I knew something Mel and Lana didn’t? Could he see that there were fragments of memories that should have been shredded into indiscernible pieces floating within a riptide of the turmoil that was currently my mind?

  It was hard not to demand answers and explanations when faced with someone that more than likely had them, but I wasn’t going to out myself—not right now. I wouldn’t until he gave the slightest hint, he knew I’d remembered anything. There was no way of knowing what the blowback would be. I wasn’t sure how to say what I needed to or if I should speak up at all. A small part of me wondered if I’d completely lost my mind.

  “Come join us,” he urged authoritatively at my silence.

  Joining the ‘survival’ talk was exactly what I didn’t want to do right now but if I acted too strangely, I’d draw unnecessary attention and even more concern from Mel and Lana. I suppressed a frown and chugged enough water to chase away the scratchiness lingering in my throat before rising from the sofa.

  “What about, him?” I recapped the bottle and nodded my head in Dion’s direction.

  “I’m only here for you.”

  CARMINE

  Dark MFM Standalone

  CALAMITY

  Dark NA Suspense

  Read an excerpt below!

  I knew he could be cruel.

  I’d witnessed it more times than I could count on one hand, but he had me hooked. There was something about him that made it impossible for me to let him go. I kept coming back again and again, ignoring the objections of all my friends.

  I wanted to save him somehow, turn something bad good. I wanted him to change for me. I was so confident I could make everything better. God, I was such an idiot. A helplessly pathetic idiot. Even now, covered in my mom’s blood with tears blurring my vision begging him to stop, my heart was his.

  I still loved this vile, heartless boy.

  “Xavier, please.” With my hands shaking, I reached for his bloody shoe.

  It was the only part of him I dared touch while in this position, down on my knees in nothing but a tank top and underwear still damp with his come.

  “Holy fucking shit. She gets more pathetic by the minute. I don’t know if I can handle any more of this.”

  I whimpered at the cutting truth those words carried. I didn’t know the people he’d brought with him, only that I watched them kill both of my parents when they failed to entertain their sick demands.

  The shutter of a camera had me stifling another whimper. They were taking pictures of this horrific moment as if they needed a memento, something to look back on later.

  “Why are you doing this to me? What did I do wrong? I love you so much. I don't understand."

  Xavier tilted his head to the side and regarded me with a passive expression before crouching down. He gently took my jaw into his hands.

  “You still love me?” His voice was soft and quiet. A fresh set of tears rolled down my cheeks and I nodded.

  “What a stupid bitch that makes you then.” He roughly pushed my face away, causing me to fall backward and land beside my father’s body.

  My brother screamed in outrage behind his gag, rocking in the chair he’d been bound to.

  “Can we hurry this along? It's not fun anymore,” another one of the strangers he’d brought with him complained.

  “Yeah, let’s wrap things up.” Xavier circled around my trembling form with slow, even steps. “I’m going to give you one last chance to live, princess. If you want to leave here by my side all you need to do is go over there and slit your brother’s throat.”

  “What?” My eyes widened and I immediately began shaking my head back and forth.

  “Aw, come on just one cut. I’ll even hand you the knife.”

  “I-I can’t do that. I won’t.”

  “Then you both die,” he replied flatly.

  My heart clenched and another sob traveled through my chest.

  He was asking the impossible of me. I swung my gaze to my brother’s bloodshot eyes. He nodded, telling me without words to do it, take his life to save mine. My mind warred back and forth with indecision. There had to be a way out of this where we both lived.

  I looked to Xavier.

  “And you’ll let me go?”

  He smiled, his gaze softening. “Promise.”

  THE END

  More Dark New Adult

  Start the A Game of Villains series

  A twisted mfm stepbrother ‘romance’

  Devil’s Playground

  (contains gore/scenes of horror. Think Saw meets the Purge)

  Memoir of a dead girl Duet

  Calamity/Misery

  Sick Venom

  (RH Romantic Horror)

  Crime families

  Old Money Trilogy

  Maelstrom-coming soon

  Pretty Lies, Ugly Truths

  Blood Money Empire-coming soon

  Dark Stuff

  The Badlands

  Dahlia Saga

  Devil’s With Halos

  Broken Crowns-PNR

  Bride of Demonio-PNR/RH

  Stygian Isle

  Deviant Games Duet

  Coveting Delirium Duet

  THE SECT

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  CONTENT WARNING

  Gruesome violence.

  Vulgarity.

  Blood-play.

  Morally grey characters that wholly support (sometimes senseless) murder.

 

 

  Natalie Bennett, Judicium (Devil's Playground Book 3)

 

 

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