it was for heartache.
And betrayal.
“I wasn’t worthy?” I whispered through the jagged shards of glass in my throat.
Like he’d looked into Medusa’s eyes, Alexander’s body froze. Big and solid and filled with barely constrained power. After a long moment, his brow furrowed. “What?”
“You didn’t think I was worthy of mercy, but you helped,” I shook the bloody shirt, “whoever this was?”
I didn’t want to die anymore. It wasn’t about that.
It was jealousy. Anger. The pain came from not being good enough. That he’d found me lacking.
I was always lacking.
“That’s not what this is,” Alexander claimed.
Lied?
I wasn’t sure.
I couldn’t read him the way he read me.
“Did you touch them like you touched me? Did you push your hand against their pussy while you sliced?”
“Briar—” he tried.
“Did you make them come? Make them forget their pain?” My stomach retched as jealousy slid through me worse than any poison or toxin that had rotted my insides.
He was going to kill me after all.
Painfully.
Horribly.
Without mercy.
But not with a knife.
He was going to kill me by breaking—no, by obliterating—my heart.
How messed up am I that it isn’t him snuffing out a life that bothers me, but the idea of him touching someone else?
“Briar, listen to—”
“Is this your kink? Do you get off on…” a sob wracked my body, “making them feel normal and happy for the first time in their miserable lives?”
Alexander stalked toward me so quickly, I didn’t have the chance to move that time. He wrapped his large hands around my upper arms to make sure I couldn’t. “He was a piece of shit.”
It was my turn to freeze. “Wait, what?”
“He put a hit on his pregnant wife.”
“Then why would you help him?”
“I didn’t help him. I killed him. He deserved a painful death for the fucked-up shit he did. Same as the others.”
Others.
The others?
“But you’re an angel of mercy.” I was working to piece together the puzzle, but it was hard when I had no clue what the picture could possibly be.
“No. I’m not.”
“But you kill people?”
“People who deserve it. Rapists. Murderers. Pedophiles. The scum of the earth who make that same earth a better place by not walking it anymore.”
That helped the picture come together, but the implication of it made me sick.
“I’m none of those things, I swear,” I rushed out, reaching up to clutch his forearms. I was a mess, but never anything like that.
“I know, flower. I told you from the beginning, you were different. With you, it was about mercy and peace. A reward, not a punishment.”
“Then why didn’t you follow through?”
“Because I’m selfish. Obsessed. I couldn’t bring myself to do it because I want to spend the rest of my life showing you how good it is to be alive.”
It may not have taken the rest of his life, but he’d already succeeded in that.
I tried to wrap my brain around what he was saying. “So you kill bad people? How? Why?”
His words came out in an earnest rush, like his life depended on me believing him. “When the bastard who killed my parents got off with court ordered rehab, I hacked into his computer to delete shit, post screenshots, whatever I could find to make his life hell. But then I saw he was talking with his friends about partying and joking about driving since buying his way out of trouble was cheaper than an Uber. He’d killed my parents and was fucking joking about it.”
Every time I’d told him I was sorry about his parents’ death, he’d said it was a long time ago. The stark rage and pain that coated his features proved that didn’t matter. Time hadn’t lessened his pain.
“I went to confront him, and he was wasted. He didn’t learn a single thing. But I did. I learned how easy it was to make a murder look like an accidental OD.”
If this were a TV show, ominous music would’ve begun playing in the background before everything faded to black.
But we weren’t actors in a drama. Life wasn’t scripted so the bag guy always lost in the end. I knew that for a fact because I’d grown up around those same kind of entitled assholes who thought they were above rules and consequences.
“When I started my company, I’d find shit on people’s hard drives that they thought was gone forever. I’d tried going to the cops with it, but life isn’t a TV show.” He echoed my own knowledge. “Things don’t get wrapped up in a satisfying bow at the end of