Page 46 of Bitter Burn
On the way to the airport, Goran had given me a short biography of Jovian, as relayed by Hugo’s security team. The feckless failson of some real estate baron out west, an “entrepreneur” with a string of stupid ideas and bankrupted ventures behind him, Jovian has had a lifetime of being cushioned from consequences. Until now, that’s mostly been unlimited money and some substance issues being swept under the rug, but that changed when he met Isabella. The boy who’d never been told no grew into a man who could only hear yes. He wanted Isabella, and he’d gotten everything he’d ever wanted, so when he told her in a scene that she should quit Armorica and move in with him and be only his forever, he must have expected that she would give him what he asked for, especially when he was asking so very nicely.
That she didn’t, that she found his invitation frightening instead of wonderful…that Hugo had the nerve to strip him of his membership and tell him that he no longer belonged… It might have been the first real no that Jovian had ever heard.
It seems to have cut the last link he had to reality.
“Jovian,” I say, steadying my voice. “You don’t want to do this. You’re a good guy, I know that. And a good guy wouldn’t want to scare Isabella right now.”
I think I sound convincing. Maybe I’ve finally learned how to lie?
But it doesn’t matter. The tip of Jovian’s knife drops a little, closer to Isabella’s waist. His voice is nervy. Quavering. “It didn’t have to be like this. You should have let me keep seeing her at least. I didn’t want this to be hard. You assholes in this stupid fucking club were the ones who made it hard!”
“We can make it real easy right now,” I say soothingly. As soothing as I can be while I’m standing in a modified Weaver stance with both hands on my gun and my finger on the trigger. “Just set down the knife, and everyone gets to walk away.”
“I thought about making her less pretty,” says Jovian, and underneath the quaking words slithers a chilling soullessness. “I could cut up her face. No one else would want her then, but I would. Then she’d have to go with me. Be grateful that I’d still take her.”
Isabella is trying so hard not to make any noise, not to move, but she can’t help the guttural moan of fear that leaves her.
I could kill him for that alone. For rending that noise out of someone who does her puzzles from the inside out, who made herself build one last good bridge before she left a job that traumatized her, who is kind and open with everyone. It’s like terrorizing a baby rabbit or a daisy.
“I should have done that from the start,” says Jovian slowly. He lets go of the rope around Isabella’s wrist to grab her hair and turn her face toward the wall.
I shift forward, my pulse thumping in hard, steady beats. “Put the knife down.”
“It’ll hurt, but only for a while.”
“Jovian—”
“I’ll leave one eye. I don’t want her blind?—”
A sob from Isabella.
Another flinch from her attacker, and then an expression of frustrated rage, like how dare she not want this?—
“Jovian—”
The knife jerks sideways.
I squeeze my trigger finger as I move forward. I squeeze again, and then a third time.
Pop pop pop—heavy, loud, final.
There’s an obnoxious whine in my ears as I drop to a knee and shove Jovian’s limp body off Isabella, grabbing the knife and using it to saw at the rope binding her wrists.
When I finally get her free and sitting up, she’s crying so hard that I can’t make sense of what she’s saying. It isn’t until I see her bare hand that I understand it has something to do with her missing glove. That her hand being exposed is somehow the last thing she can bear right now.
I sit back against the wall and pull her into my chest, taking her naked hand and deliberately trapping it between us, gloving it with our bodies. And then I crush her against me, shushing and soothing, staring at Jovian’s unlikable, unmemorable face as it starts taking on that masklike quality that comes after death.
I wait for the rotten fruit feeling to come, the one that came after I killed those two men in the basement of Lyonesse, the one that followed the realization that leaving the Army hadn’t meant leaving death behind. But it doesn’t come.
I don’t feel conflicted. I would do it again.
I can’t stand the things I can stand to do, Mark told me in that closet, and I know what he meant now, because I can stand to do this, I can stand it easily, and that’s more upsetting than the fresh corpse by the cane rack. I don’t want to be someone who finds killing easy to do. Maybe I’m more like Mark and Isolde than I thought.
When what feels like the entire club—frantically searching for the source of the gunshots—finds us, Hugo sinks to his knees next to me and pulls me and Isabella both into a desperate, clutching embrace, his own tears coming fast and unashamed.
Kayden takes immediate control of the room, his friendliness hardening into the certainty of a soldier as he checks Jovian’s neck for a pulse, notes the time on his watch, and starts delegating calls to emergency services and to other staff members so they can start shutting down the club.
Inside the shared ring of my arms and Hugo’s, Isabella clutches at my shirt, quaking so hard that I’m worried about shock, whispering the same two words over and over again.
