Page 92 of Twisted Little Game

What am I going to tell him? That I’ll snap my fingers and not have Bratva blood anymore?

His eyelashes flick up and down, and when he looks at my lips then my eyes like that, I feel like something in me is about to blow.

“Sleep in the bed tonight,” he says. “Not on the floor. Sleep with me. I can’t be alone tonight. You don’t understand, Roman. There’s so much…”

“If I’m in that bed with you, I will fuck you until the sun rises,” I say. “And then I’ll fuck you again after it does. Your ass will be raw and aching and you’ll still beg for me.”

“I’ve wanted that for weeks and now I’m so goddamn afraid we’ll be dead, Roman. Fuck⁠—”

It’s like the breath is knocked out of me all at once when I see the fear flash through his eyes.

All traces of anger are gone from his expression now.

And I’ve never seen his expression so scared.

Rain starts to fall in tiny, cool drops on my hair, the pattering sound hitting the leaves and the tops of the tents.

I draw him close, putting my arms around him and pulling him close.

“Hey. You’re okay,” I tell him. “Stay with me. Let’s walk home. What is going on?”

“I have to tell you something,” he says, his voice shaky.

I put my arm around him as the drizzle comes down along the walkway toward Red Row.

And I keep my arm there for the entire walk home, as Tate opens his phone and reads me things that break different pieces of my heart, one by one.

He reads every text message.

In detail.

He shakes, and looks up at me every once in a while, like he’s worried I’ll explode.

But I’m only thinking one thing.

I will kill him.

For making you this scared.

All of this needs to come to a brutal fucking end.

Immediately, after I hear all of the texts, I call Hunter, even as drops of water fall over my phone as we walk. Hunter checks through every single one of Lucian Farina’s accounts, and all of them still say he is in the city, hours and hours away from us here.

For now, we are safe.

But I’ve never been more certain that I’m no longer sticking to my duties of simply watching over Tate on campus.

I’m going to find the guy.

And eliminate him from the face of this Earth.

I'm also not surprised or even fucking bothered to hear about the police record. “There are ways to access crime records like this online. It’s not always easy, for the general public, but for a psychotic man addicted to the dark corners of the Internet, it’s not impossible. The document was meant to scare you, but it does not scare me.”

By the time we arrive outside Onyx House, both of us are soaked from the rain.

Tate pauses in the cobbled driveway, leaning his head against my chest. His hair glints with tiny water droplets in the low light.

“I don’t want to go inside yet,” he tells me. “I can’t be around other people right now.”