Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 174623 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174623 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 698(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
"I won't," I vow. "I won't leave."
I know those words to be true. Every cell in my body knows that this confrontation is all it's going to take to keep me loyal and complacent for the rest of my life.
"I know you won't," he growls, his face a fit of rage.
The pain seems almost like an out-of-body experience. I can tell it's happening to me, but it's so foreign that it's almost as if my body is struggling to understand.
I reach up, trying to cover my shoulder, a futile attempt to stop the pain, but at the same moment, he pulls a knife back, slicing my hand.
I look down, red coating my skin and flowing down my fingertips.
None of this makes sense to me.
The red.
The pain.
The escalation of violence.
I've done research.
It starts with slaps or rough manhandling.
The violence isn't supposed to start with a stabbing.
"Graham," I whisper, looking up and trying to see him through the tears pouring from my eyes.
He's blurry at best, and I don't know if it's the tears or the pain I'm experiencing that makes him so hard to see.
He takes a step back, the knife still in his hand, and maybe this—the sight of the blood, the real pain I'm in—is what will change him. Maybe this is the step he needed to take to see just how wrong he's been treating me.
Through the pain and heartache, I feel a flicker of hope.
It doesn't last very long as I watch him look from my wounds to the knife in his hands.
He doesn't drop it as though disgusted with what he’s done.
He grips the handle tighter and rushes forward, sinking the blade to the hilt right into my stomach.
My eyes snap up to his, disbelief coating me.
I knew he was capable of terrible things, but I never let myself imagine him being the type of man who would do this.
"You'll never leave me," he growls, twisting the knife inside the wound.
I take a step back, the sear of pain radiating from the wound as the knife comes free from my body.
"The babies," I whisper as my knees give out under me.
My vision fills with darkness, the sound of the knife clattering to the floor like a bomb going off in the room.
The last thing I hear before my entire world fades to black is the sound of his footsteps carrying him away and the soft close of the front door.
Chapter 1
Nyx
I'm not a man who can change.
I've been who I am for well over twenty years, more than half my life.
I know I can't change, but what I hate is seeing other people change because of me.
I noticed those changes a very long time ago.
People smile.
I sneer.
They stop smiling at me.
I don't take pride in it.
It doesn't make me happy to see a friendly smile slip from someone's face. I don't sneer because I want people to fear me.
It's just who I am.
Or rather, who I had to become.
"You were saying?" Slick prods.
I glare at her, but we've had enough meetings to know that my sneer isn't going to pull the smile from her face.
The woman has too much to be happy about.
Dr. Brynn Aroca, Cerberus member and club psychologist, is happily married to another Cerberus member, and they recently celebrated the birth of their first child, a son they proudly named Joshua, after his father.
She has every reason to smile, and I have no reason to hate that she's smiling, except for the fact that she's smiling at me.
"Everyone around here is too happy," I mutter, keeping my eyes on hers because pulling them away would feel like a failure, like I've conceded in some way.
I know being rude and insolent won't get me kicked out of Cerberus, but not taking part and refusing their therapy requirement would have me out the front door quicker than anything else.
"They're just happy people," she says with an innocent shrug.
"There's too much evil in the world to be happy," I respond.
"Not everyone has faced what you had to face."
"The men and women in Cerberus have seen the evils in the world," I argue.
"I can't speak for others, but I've compartmentalized my personal and private lives."
It feels like a jab, as if I've somehow failed at keeping everything separate, but I know better than to think this woman would do something like that.
"Many, unlike you, haven't had much of a crossover," she clarifies. "They haven't looked into the evil eye of someone from whom they got their DNA."
I clear my throat, shifting my weight on the sofa in her office.
"Shared DNA," I mutter with a huff of exasperation.
"Is that a concern of yours?" she asks. "Are you worried that evil men make evil sons?"
I could lie, but the whole point of this shit is to make changes, and I vowed to give it a hundred percent when Cerberus gave me the option to either come here and work out my shit or hit the road.