Page 66 of Butterfly
This is my fault. It’s my fault for not taking care of it earlier… and I don’t trust the world well enough to make sure that if they catch him, the fucker is going to actually pay for what he did.
I have to make sure he can never do something like this again.
I have to do this for Iggy.
The problem with living in a city is that there are a few abandoned buildings close to the water, so I spend half the night searching before I finally find one that has the chains to the door cut and a light on.
Iggy’s dad is a fucking asshole, and he isn’t smart—he should have been out of the city by now, since the police were looking for him.
By the time I’m finished, he’ll be leaving in pieces. By the time I’m done, he’ll never be able to hurt Iggy again.
My breath comes out in a curl of white escaping my lips, and it takes me a moment to realize the puffs are coming a little too fast, too rapid.
It takes me a second to realize my eyes are burning with tears.
I force myself to take a deep breath and pull up my hood, dragging on my gloves so I can at leasttryto do this cleanly.
I’m not even sure if I’m at the right place. There’s every chance more than one person squats in these abandoned buildings by the water. I’m going on instinct alone—instinct and the fact that when I push open the door, I see Iggy’s painting on the wall. Small streaks made by his fingertips, heavy blacks and reds, because he noticed that’s what I use.
Something inside me fractures, and I pull out my knife and move forward without thinking.
It’s not careful.
It’s not planned.
It’s the image of Iggy’s art on these dingy, dirty walls and the thought of his tiny body lying in a hospital bed, hooked to wires.
Mybody in a hospital bed, hooked up to wires after my dad…
Fuck.
“Fuck,” I hiss as soon as I see the man come around the corner. He’s easily as tall as Donovan and all muscle covered in fat.
I know at that moment that if I didn’t have the element of surprise, I’d die here.
So I do the only thing I can do… I fling myself forward before he realizes what’s happening and slam my knife as hard as I can into his inner thigh. There’s no way I’m climbing him to slit his throat… but the femoral artery is right there. Nearly fucking eye level with how tall he is.
That still leaves me with two minutes of his drug-fueled adrenaline as he swings at me, his huge fist taking me in the side hard enough that the air punches out of my lungs, and I wonder if he broke a rib.
“Who the fuck are you?” he snarls, but I see him sway as red starts to pool against the light color of his jeans. When he stumbles for me again, I do my best to swing out my knife. It catches him across the forearm… but the fact is, I’m small. I’m not some high-class assassin in a book, capable of taking out people twice my size without breaking a sweat.
I’m usually good at the element of surprise and turning a situation in my favor.
But my anger… my emotions? Everything I’ve worked my entire life to pretend I couldn’t feel?
It’s going to be my undoing, and I know it when he picks me up and throws me across the room hard enough that my head rings and my vision goes hazy. By the time it’s back, he’s on me. His hands are around my throat, and my knife is somewhereon the floor… and I think the only reason he hasn’t killed me is because I didn’t answer his question.
“Who thefuckare you?”
I look up into his blue eyes, and all I can see is my dad—my dad standing over my mother’s dead body… my dad with a knife, trying to make sure he ties up all the loose ends.
My dad… my body… hospital rooms. Iggy laid up in a hospital room, probably with this fucking face as the last thing he saw.
“Iggy deserves better than you.” I manage to get it out around the squeeze of his fingers, then I dig my hand into my pocket. I come out with the key ring Donovan gave me earlier. Fuck, what would my sweet boyfriend think of me now?
“You little—fuck!” He screams the last word when I lift the key to Donovan’s apartment and jam it as hard as I can into his eye. It’s enough to send him toppling back. That and the blood loss make him stumble, tripping over a chair so he’s flat on his back.
Even though I’m in pain, even though my head is spinning… I recognize an opportunity when I see it. I scoop my knife from the ground and fling myself onto his chest.
