Chapter 21

Olivia Bennett

Halloween

T he ceremony was in the grand ballroom. It was beautifully Gothic, just like the bride wanted. I had spent all morning making it the perfect Halloween wedding.

Johnathan had looked into the bride and groom. As of now, they didn't have anything solid on their records. A lot of the younger crowd here tonight didn't. Liam and I were only after those on his list. They seemed to be the worst of the bunch anyway. The leaders. Maybe if we took them out, the entire crime ladder would collapse for the Croix family. Only time would tell.

The music started. I took my seat in the very back next to Liam, who looked even sexier in his suit than he did in the one he used for work, as if that were even possible. The things I would do to him once this was over…

He grinned at me as if he knew exactly where my thoughts had gone. The wedding party came down the aisle one by one until it was time for the bride. Her dad would be dying tonight, but at least she got to experience this first. Even that seemed like a small mercy for such a heartless man. The rest of the ceremony was quick and beautiful, and then everyone moved to one of the smaller rooms for the open bar and music. It was time to put our plan in motion.

I watched as Liam made his way around the room, asking each of the men on his list to come upstairs for the nice brandy and cigars for the special occasion. One by one, they followed him. I was giddy with excitement watching them head upstairs. I waited. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen.

I passed the DJ and told him to turn up the music, just in case any guns went off, and then I headed up the stairs. When I walked in, everyone was laughing, seeming to be enjoying themselves. Then the room slowly began to quiet. The eldest went down first. I had put enough drugs in the brandy to take down a few horses. They wouldn’t be upright much longer. The paralytic would kick in soon, leaving them awake but unable to move or scream. It was undetectable on an autopsy too, I made sure of it, but they'd feel everything though. And they deserved to. Every ounce of the pain they’d inflicted on others would come back to haunt them before they burned.

“You mother fucker,” one of them shouted, reaching for his gun. “Y-you poisoned us.” He pulled his gun, but I pulled first and blew out his kneecaps. He cried out in pain. The rest of them tried and failed to grab their weapons, already too disoriented to do anything.

“We have about thirty minutes, baby. What do you want to do to them?” I asked Liam. My knife burned a hole in my thigh with how badly I wanted to use it. I kept it strapped there, under my dress.

“I'll take most of them out quickly, but him…” He pointed to Caleb Croix. The main man involved with killing his family. “He’s mine.”

I studied Liam's face. His eyes were cold, his usual charm stripped away. This was the man beneath the mask, the one driven by a need for revenge. The room smelled of expensive leather and the acrid bite of the brandy. The men slumped in their chairs, breathing heavy and irregular. My heart pounded with the bass from the downstairs music.

I ran my fingers over the blade, imagining the way it would slice through flesh, the warm rush of blood. This wasn't my first time, but the excitement filled me the same way regardless.

“Who sliced up your back?” I asked, glancing at all of them around the room. Liam nodded to one trembling in the corner, Ryan Croix. His name was the last on the list. He was the least important to Liam because this was the man that had hurt him—not his mother or his sister. He was so worried about getting his revenge that he put himself at the bottom of the ladder. But that was okay because Ryan was at the top of my list . I’d make him pay.

“He's mine,” I said with a smile on my face as I pointed the knife in Ryan’s direction. The blade gleamed in the dim light, sharp as a whisper. I could almost hear his pulse, see the fear in his eyes as I took slow, deliberate steps toward him.

“Please. I have a family,” he muttered, but the drugs were already taking effect.

I paused, the knife point playing on my fingertip. “A family? Like the one you killed?” I looked back at Liam. He watched with an unreadable expression, arms crossed, not wanting to miss a moment of this. The Croix man flinched as I traced a line down his chest, the knife leaving a trail of white fear in its wake.

“Tell me,” I said, leaning in close enough to feel his ragged breath on my cheek. “Which do you think hurts more? The cut or the waiting for it?”

He sobbed, a broken sound, and my stomach twisted happily. I loved watching them wait, the anticipation, the endless hours of my victims not knowing when my blade would finally kill them. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that kind of time today. My grip on the knife tightened as I shoved it into his gut and pulled up. His garbled screams were drowned out by the bass and weighed down by the drugs taking hold of him. He fell forward in a slump, and it was the perfect position to create a roadmap of pain on his back. I glanced over at Liam, who watched me hungrily. As if we shared a darkness that only the other could understand.

Liam and I made the room fill with weak screams until the drugs or death completely dragged them under. Whichever came first. We killed them, making the ones still alive watch. And then one by one, we finished them off. Once they were all taken care of, we pulled gallons of gasoline from the closet and doused the room. I made sure to take a small lock of hair from each of them as my last souvenirs, my final kills as the executioner. Cynthia would look so beautiful once I was finally finished with her. When I was done, Liam pulled the fire alarm and we set the place ablaze.

Downstairs, people rushed out as Derek shouted over a megaphone, directing them to exits. Once the haunted house was mostly cleared, Liam and I ran to the office. On the way, he let two of his back teeth fall to the floor that we had pulled out when we planned all of this. We’d make them believe he’d been burned alive in this place with everyone else.

In the office, I cleaned my knife thoroughly, then handed it to him. He gripped it, leaving his fingerprints, and tossed it into his safe along with some journal entries, contracts, bookings —anything pinning the murders to him—and closed it. It was fireproof, so we were sure the evidence would survive.

Smoke curled and barreled through the room, as the fire consumed the mansion with a hungry roar. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a reminder of how real this was—how fast everything was falling together. How well the plan had gone.

We moved down the stairs, seeing Derek cool as ever, tossing more gasoline over the burning remains like it was just another day. The flames reflected in his eyes when he looked at us—wild, untamed. My stomach twisted with anticipation. Excitement.

We had done it.

“Liam,” I whispered, my voice tight with an emotion I felt but hadn’t spoken, but he was ahead of me, already grabbing my hand and moving to get us out of here. We stepped outside through the back exit, Derek close behind us, the heat of the flames licking at our heels. Liam didn’t look back—there was nothing left for him inside that mansion. But still, I felt it. The fire. The destruction. The freedom in his gaze as his eyes found mine and he gave me a grin full of satisfaction. The same emotion I felt seemed to swirl in his green eyes, but I could only smile back at him as he leaned in to kiss me.

“Another time, guys! We have to go!” Derek shouted, already opening the driver’s side of the getaway car and shooing Bones over into the passenger seat. We couldn’t leave the family haunted house cat behind, no matter how much trouble he caused. Liam pulled back and grabbed my hand again as we rushed to the car, slipping into the back seat as Derek floored it.