Page 202 of Bleed with Me

Every remaining piece of reason vanished, and I swung the shovel. The flat side smashed into Sonny’s shoulder, making him scream. I brought it down across his chest. A wet crack filled the warehouse.

“Nina, stop!” He curled inward, gasping.

I struck him again. His knee. His arm. Every place that carried enough strength to hurt me. He tried shielding his head, but the shovel broke through his useless defenses.

“You wanted me?” I screamed, tears blurring my vision. “You took my child because you wanted me?”

The blade struck his chest. He choked, blood bubbling between his lips, but I barely saw him anymore.

I saw Aryna crying.

I saw the gun against her temple.

I saw every bruise he had ever left on my body.

Another strike. And another. His pleas dissolved into guttural sounds, then into silence. Still, I couldn’t stop.

Not until his body lay motionless beneath me. Not until the warehouse became so quiet that I heard my own ragged breathing and the faint clatter of the shovel slipping from my blood-slicked hands.

Sonny stared upward with unseeing eyes. All his arrogance was gone.

I stood over what remained of the man who once believed I belonged to him.

“You wanted me badly enough to destroy everything in your path,” I whispered, my chest rising and falling painfully. “You got exactly what you came for.” I leaned closer, letting him take the truth into whatever darkness awaited him. “The real me.”

-79-

Dorian

The first sign that something was wrong was the sudden commotion behind the glass. I glanced toward the observation gallery above the operating theater while the resident continued suctioning blood from the patient’s abdomen. Two security guards stood in the doorway, attempting to block someone from entering. Then Zyon shoved past them.

He appeared behind the glass in his black suit, his expression so dark that my hands stopped moving before my brain registered the reaction. He slammed his palm against the intercom button.

“Dorian.” His voice boomed through the operating theater, freezing everyone on the spot.

“What?” I stared at him over my mask.

“Nina and Aryna disappeared.”

The words didn’t make sense. My mind rejected them completely, as if they belonged to another language.

“What do you mean?” I blinked in confusion. “Disappeared?”

“They’re gone,” he stated firmly.

“Kidnapped?” one of the nurses whispered.

“No,” Zyon snapped through the speaker, his lethal gaze sweeping over the room. “They disappeared. And no one in this hospital heard anything different.”

I looked down at the open abdomen in front of me, my brain refusing to understand what my brother just said. They couldn’t be gone. Aryna was at school. Nina was at work. It had to be a mistake.

“Dorian!” Zyon’s voice made me flinch. “Your girls. We need to move.”

Still, my body refused to follow through. Instead, a memory exploded behind my eyes. Twisted metal, blood covering my hands, a train disappearing down the tracks.

“Doctor?” the resident asked carefully, disturbing my thoughts. I forced air into my lungs, blinking rapidly to push the painful image away.

“The perforation is repaired,” I said, though my voice sounded distant. “Complete the washout. Check the bowel once more before closing.”