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I shrugged and kept holding his hand, playing my part even though I’d have to wash my own fingers about ten times before eating. My nails dug into his palm, but he didn’t even flinch. Girls watched us walk by, eyeing him despite me claiming him. It pissed me off so much that I got even closer to him. It was rude. I didn’t want him, but they didn’t know that.
I blinked up at him. “You would really prefer a quick death?”
He stopped walking, jerking me against him so hard, I nearly slammed my head against his chin.
Ivan’s messy dark hair was tousled from the movement, causing it to fall across his eyes in a way that had me itching to pull it, but probably not in a friendly way. I gulped and looked up.
His jaw was clenched. “Well, I just figured that it was smarter to get taken out fast, just like my Family, don’t you think? I mean, history so often repeats itself, Bella.”
There was darkness in his eyes. I’d always told my dad it was there, lurking, and of course, my dad always said I was crazy, that Ivan would never turn on us. But I knew what was in his soul.
If he even had one.
My throat went dry. “Careful Ivan, it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead.”
“Careful Bella, murder is a crime punishable by law, but I highly doubt your Family really cares. And yeah, I’d choose to go out the way they did, maybe it’s the only way I can honor the innocent.”
I kicked him in the shin and shoved him away from me with all the force I had. “Take it back!”
“Never.” He scoffed, then spit on the ground to prove his point. “You still killed innocents, and that’s on your Family’s line, that’s your karma, not mine. Cleanse a family line? That’s bullshit and you know it, do you even know how young my cousin was when he was pulled from his house?”
I wanted to cover my ears. I never asked. I didn’t want to know.
Maybe because deep down I knew, the Families will always do what needs to be done to protect their own.
Ivan’s nostrils flared. “Fourteen, Bella. He was fourteen.”
“He shouldn’t have run.”
“He shouldn’t have fucking died!” Ivan roared, quickly gaining attention from people around us. “And what fourteen-year-old doesn’t run? What fourteen-year-old doesn’t still cry! They don’t even know how to control their dick, let alone their legs, when someone has a gun! I don’t care what sort of Family he grew up in, I don’t care that his dad was evil, there is no excuse for killing someone who was too busy picking out his outfit for school and filming it for TikTok just because the blood that ran through his veins was filled with betrayal.” He grabbed me by the neck and walked me backward toward the forest by the back fence and slammed me up against it.
My head made a knocking sound as it collided with the tough bark. Blood pumped through my body, adrenaline followed. He wasn’t just pissed, he was livid.
He leaned down, and with each inch he got closer, he wrapped more and more hair around his fingers until my scalp burned from the sensation of being pinned on the tree and pulled by his hand. “What makes your blood better than mine?” His green eyes were so unfocused it was hard to breathe. “What makes you think it wouldn’t be so easy for me, to snap this pretty neck, to make it look like an accident? What makes you think”—he leaned in until his teeth grazed the skin below my ear—“that I won’t love it past the point of obsession, the sound, the feel, the loss of life in my hands, followed by the power? What makes you think you wouldn’t feel the same?” He pulled back, my hair slowly fell to my chest from his fingertips. “We’re all monsters Bella, all of us, you’re an even bigger idiot if you don’t believe that your Family is any different than mine. The only difference is some of us own our rage—while others pretend it doesn’t exist. But go ahead, smile at mass, shake hands, nod at all the politicians and higher ups, put on some lipstick, and show your ass, I’m sure that will hide everything, maybe even donate some money to the school for those less fortunate, but in the end, you’re the one that has to look in the mirror Bella, you’re the one that has to come to terms with what you are. Ugly to the core. Just. Like. Me.”
My teeth clenched so hard my jaw sounded like it was clicking, it probably looked like I was angry—but I was sad, so sad, that I was afraid that if I took a breath he’d pounce, he’d be able to tell, he always could when it came to me, he always predicted the broken moments and attacked when he could.
The same guy who saved me and kissed me was the same guy who wouldn’t think twice about killing me and believed I’d do the same.
The worst part about all of it, I thought as I followed a few feet behind him to the parking lot.
He was right.
He was right.
Shit. He was right.
Monsters, after all, stick together—until it’s time to fight.
CHAPTER NINE
“We rarely see ourselves for who we truly are, instead we rely on others to tell us what we’re afraid to face, most ignore that too, until it’s too late, until, in our work, the blood… tells all.” —King Campisi
Ivan
I compared the car ride home to the coldest day I’d ever seen in Chicago, where it got down to negative twenty and I wanted to sit on a campfire just so my ass wouldn’t fall off.
That was Bella right now.
