Page 56 of Ricochet
“Just imagine,” he continued, “her broken body, echoes of her cries… Might even fuck her while I’m at it. I heard she’s—”
He didn’t get to finish the sentence. I advanced on him, seeing red.
Red.
Red.
Motherfucking red and nothing else.
Not my brother, not our plan, but just the need to kill him for talking about her in such a way. That monster inside me roared to life, begging to be released. Begging me to take his neck into my hands, to stop the intake of breath, to take his life. Tristan jumped behind me, pulling me backwards, as I struggled in his hold.
“What did I tell you, Tristan?” He sneered at me. “He would never be able to do it. Even after everything, he’s still choosing her over his own family.”
“Go to hell, Cillian.”
“We are all already in hell, brother!” he screamed at me. “I can’t even remember the time when we weren’t in one. Why isn’t she tied up, K? Huh? Why isn’t she already dead? It’s been five fucking days, and we’ve done nothing. What happened to our plan?”
“Let go of me, Tristan.” I kept trying to get my arms free from him, but his grip just increased.
“What happened to cutting her guts out? What happened to making her fucking pay? Are you thinking with your dick or with your head?” Cillian kept shouting, his frantic eyes locked on mine.
My anger was rising with every taunting word he said. He was right, but also so, so wrong. I wanted her, I would never deny that, but I also wanted to see her neck broken. I wanted to see the same dagger she stabbed my sister with protruding from her, from that heart of darkness she was so fucking proud of. I needed to hate her because that was the only thing I learned in all of those years together.
But I needed more time.
I needed time to figure her out. I needed to know why she did it. Did she ever really love me, or was it all just a lie? The stolen moments, and all of the kisses, did she ever really mean them? Every singleI love youembedded in my mind, and I couldn’t trust a single one of them now. How foolish of me to think that a soulless person could feel something.
“Will you both just cut the crap?” Tristan pulled me behind him, standing between the two of us. “We have serious shit going on, and you two are fighting like high school boys.”
“We are not—” I tried.
“I don’t wanna fucking hear it, okay?” Cillian kept his mouth shut as Tristan started pacing between us, lost in thought. I stood in the place, scowling at Cillian. Our youngest brother started again, “Father called.”
Those two words were enough to redirect my line of thought from what was happening at the moment, to my innate need to erase said person from existence. When the people who were supposed to protect you from everything bad in this world, are in fact the same terrifying things they warned us about when we were kids, there was no other choice but to become like them. They shape you. They make you think what you’re doing is the right thing, and you aren’t as bad as everybody else thinks you are.
Truth to be told, our father was a fucking fairy godmother compared to Nikolai Aster, but the lesser evil didn’t always mean a better one. The only reason why we accepted this job was because we wanted to see all of them pay. One big plus in all of this was getting our hands on Ophelia and getting our own revenge.
“What the fuck does he want?” Cillian asked. Out of the three of us, he was the one who hated our father the most, but he played along. He knew very well that you can’t kill the king without going through all the pawns first. And the pawns, they were still way out of our reach.
“He wanted to know if the job was done, and—”
“What did you tell him?” I interrupted. If our father knew Ophelia was still alive, he wouldn’t be a happy camper. In fact, I was halfway expecting him to barge in here and tell us how incapable we were.
“I told him we are working on it.”
Cillian scoffed and went back to his seat. “You should’ve told him that his favorite son can’t get his dick out of our prisoner, which is why we still have nothing.”
“Go and suck a dick, Cillian. You would’ve killed her on the first day if it was up to you and your psychotic tendencies. And then what? We would’ve still been left with nothing.”
“There’s only one psychopath in this house, and she’s currently downstairs. Probably munching on the food we are providing her.”
Tristan started rubbing his temples, frustration more than obvious on his face. “Guys, we need to focus.” He looked at me. “Did she tell you anything?”
“You mean, did he ask her anything while he was rearranging her womb with his dick?”
I chose to ignore my twin, and focused on Tristan instead, trying to think of anything.
“Not really, but looking at her, it doesn’t seem that she is part of Syndicate anymore.”
