Page 216 of What We Become

He whimpers.

Movement blooms between the pilings.

It happens exactly the way it did the first time—like a nightmare replayed with better lighting. One second it’s just me and Stephen and the sea and the jetty overhead. The next, they step out from behind the pilings one by one, silent and huge and masked, shadows made solid. Late evening light catches on eerie skull masks, black hoods, broad shoulders, gloved hands. Five beautiful, terrible men.

Mine.

My men.

The rope drops around his neck and Stephen makes a sound behind the gag that spikes sharp with terror. Then he’s flying up into the air, legs kicking, eyes bulging as the rope goes taut and wrenches a choked scream through his nose.

His legs kick uselessly above the sand. His bound hands strain behind him. The gag is already wet with spit and terror. He twists, trying to find footing that isn’t there, trying to breathe around the noose biting into his throat, and for one beautiful second all I can see is Brock.

The moonlight. The salt. The animal panic.

The reckoning.

I rise slowly to my feet.

The rope is secured. Around him, my men stand in silence. Black-clad, masked, implacable. A tribunal of monsters. Knox braces a shoulder against a piling, his splinted leg stiff. Milo keeps his weight on his good leg. Holden has one hand pressed to his side.

None of them looks away.

The ocean moves behind them in long dark breaths, and the old version of me—the girl who thought this place was where she died—feels very far away.

I step closer until Stephen’s frantic gaze locks on mine again.

Then I turn to Knox and crouch beside his good leg, reaching down to his boot.

His knife slides free with a soft metallic whisper.

The sound alone makes Stephen start fighting harder, his body jerking against the rope, a frantic pendulum of fear. I straighten with the blade in my hand and move back in front of Stephen, testing the weight of it. My pulse drums slow and deep.

I smile at him.

“This,” I say softly, almost fondly, “was the best part.”

He makes a broken, pleading noise.

I don’t hesitate.

The first plunge goes straight into his dick.

The knife sinks into soft flesh, and Stephen convulses so violently the rope above him jerks. A muffled scream tears out of him. Hot blood spills over my hand. I pull the blade free and stab again. And again. Lower, deeper. I keep going until there’s no pattern left to his body.

The blade punches in and out of him with wet, ugly sounds, and every time I drag it free, more heat spills over my fingers. His crotch disappears first beneath blood and shredded fabric. Then his stomach. I carve through him the same way I did Brock, reducing him to torn meat and ruptured skin and all the terror he spent months earning. He jerks on the rope less and less, his muffled screams collapsing into gargled nothing, head lolling, knees twitching uselessly against the pull at his neck.

I don’t stop when I think he’s dying.

I stop when he’s dead.

When there’s no more fight left in him. No more frantic kick of his legs. No more pulse of sound behind the gag. Just a body hanging there, split open and dripping into the sand while the tide breathes and the men around us stand like dark gods and witnesses.

My chest heaves.

My hand is slick and red around the knife hilt.

Blood drenches my face and dress.