CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BELLA

He smirks at me.

“I believe you hate me, living dead girl. But I also know you love the way I fuck you.”

Getting up, and away from whoever the hell this dead guy is, I glare at Reaper with all the hatred I feel for him, straight to the very core of my soul.

Climbing off his knees, he tucks himself back into his pants and charges for me, like the monster he is. Reaching up, he touches the side of my face tenderly, and I hate it. I hate that I like it. What’s wrong with me? I’ll never admit it to him, but I know the truth, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

Reaper lowers his face so it’s close to mine, and speaks in a gravelly tone.

“Did he not deserve to die?”

I shake my head no.

“We don’t get to decide who lives and dies. You are not God, Nico.”

He barks out a laugh.

“Do you know what he would’ve done to you? Do you have any fucking clue?”

I cross my arms over my chest and shake my head again.

“Of course I don’t know, because I never met that man in my life.”

He narrows his gaze at me, before his face registers a pained expression.

“He would’ve started by raping you.”

I roll my eyes at his stupidity.

“Well, that would be nothing new, would it? ”

Nico places his thumb and forefinger on my chin, and lifts my head gently so my gaze is on his eyes, and a chill runs through my body. I’m unsure if it’s because of the way he’s staring at me, or the cool breeze blowing through my hair.

“I know you think that’s what I did to you, Bella. It’s not. Everything I’ve done to you would have been a walk in the park. He would have been brutal with you. And then he would have sliced you from head to toe. I would have found parts of your body scattered across my beach. He would have taken your eyes to punish me, but everything else would’ve been here. I know you think I’m wretched, but I promise you there are worse.”

I can’t help the gasp that escapes from my throat, because he paints a terrifying picture. Would that man have really hacked me up and spread my body parts on the beach?

“Who is he? Was he?” I correct myself.

“Vincent Abruzzo. I killed his baby brother, the golden child of their family. The Abruzzos are rivals. They’ve lost a lot of control over the past few years and have become desperate. The men in my family are not what you’d consider good men, Bella. The Abruzzos don’t simply kill like I do for the thrill of it. They torture. What I am capable of doing to you pales in comparison.”

I swallow hard, because someone worse than Reaper is hard to imagine, but his words come across as sincere and genuine. I believe him.

“Was there a reason you killed him?”

I already know Reaper kills to kill, but with him being from a rival family, I wonder if there’s more to it, because it seems like you might be more careful with who you kill, if he comes from such a powerful bloodline.

He shrugs with a smirk on his lips.

“He took my parking spot.”

“You’re insane, unhinged, and completely reckless.”

Reaper chuckles like he doesn’t have a care in the world .

“Now you sound like my brother.”

Narrowing his gaze at me, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone as he instructs me, “I have to call my brother. Don’t move. I will chase you. To the ends of the goddamn earth.”

“Bones,” he says, “Vincent Abruzzo is dead.”

Of course, I can only hear his side of the conversation, but it doesn’t take me long to gather that his brother isn’t happy.

“Did you expect me to allow him to kill me instead? Would that be the easier outcome for you, Bones?”

Bones?

I file that away for later, because now is clearly not the time.

“Yeah, well, he took my fucking parking spot. That’s disrespectful, Luca.”

His jaw clenches, and I think this is the first time I’ve seen Nico really mad.

“Well, it’s business, so I expect you to send someone to handle this corpse.”

He balls his free hand into a fist, as his eyes darken while continuing to argue with his brother.

“What do you think I’m going to do, Bones? If he sends another, I’ll kill him. If he sends one hundred, I’ll kill every last one of them. He was going to hurt my girl to get to me. How would you react if it were Athena?”

“On the beach,” he says before disconnecting the call.

“Let’s go, we’re going inside. Someone will be here to take care of this.”

Leaning down, he lifts me into his arms.

“I don’t want you to hurt your feet,” he says, when I arch an eyebrow in surprise.

He winks at me, with a devious grin on his impossibly handsome face.

“Put your arms around me, baby. ”

I huff in annoyance, but hold on to the back of his neck and warn him.

“Don’t try anything, Nico. I’m not fucking around.”

He chuckles as he squeezes my ass.

“I’m going to feed my sexy little killer before I do anything.”

There’s no doubt that this crazy man thinks what I did is wonderful, but I don’t agree. There’s nothing okay with taking someone’s life, even if they are a bad person. I hate what I did, and knowing I’ll probably need to do it again doesn’t sit well with me. It’s becoming clear that death is the only way I’ll ever get rid of Nico for more than a short time. He said he’d never let me go, and I’m beginning to believe him. I don’t get what it is, but he seems obsessed with me. None of it makes sense to me because he’s hot. He could easily find another crazy woman to kill through life with him, but I’m not her.

He walks, carrying me through the trees for what feels like hours, until I finally spot the lights in the house. Glancing around, I realize we are at the front of the house, as he carries me over the cobblestone around the massive fountain, and up the steps. He sets me down just inside the house, and I take in his stunning home.

The foyer is large, with red Spanish tile, and a giant crystal chandelier above my head, creating a soft glow over the area. As I follow him, we end up in a living room that feels too large to be called something so ordinary. It’s bigger than my entire apartment. The floor is white tile, but I can tell by a simple glance that it’s expensive. The walls are a moody looking blue, with a large painting of a little boy playing with a puppy. My eyes stay locked on the portrait, and it piques my curiosity, because it doesn’t look like something I’d expect to find in his home.

He stands beside me when he notices where my attention is.

“That’s me. My mom is a bit of an aesthete. We have a family friend that’s an artist, and he did this one. ”

I resist the urge to touch the amazing picture, but say, “You looked so normal. Happy.”

Turning to him, I watch him shrug, and he narrows his gaze at me.

“What’s normal, living dead girl? And I am happy. You think, because I enjoy ending lives, that I’m living some kind of miserable existence? I have demons as much as the next guy, but I’m not unhappy.”

While I hear the words coming out of his mouth, I still can’t agree with him. There must be some deep seated reason he does the things he does. People aren’t born into this world as serial killers. Something happens along the way, that shapes them into the evil creatures they are. I’m curious what his damage is, but I’m still more interested in getting away from him.

“Nico?”

He stares into my eyes like he is lost.

“Will you please let me go?”

He strokes his fingers down my cheek, causing a shiver to run down my spine.

“No. Never. Unless you kill me and, fuck, living dead girl, I hope you try.”

“Psycho,” I reply under my breath, which only makes him laugh again.

“That’s my brother.”

I arch an eyebrow in confusion and he explains.

“I have three brothers. Bones, Kage, and Psycho. We all get our nicknames from our way of handling things. Reaper is because I enjoy killing people. Bones likes to break the bones of his enemies. Kage likes to cage people like animals. Psycho is a complete, well, psycho. He is the oldest, but isn’t the head of the family, because he can’t or won’t control himself. Like myself, he tends to bring unhinged chaos wherever he goes. Neither of us think things through like Bones does. We are quick to react to a situation, instead of considering all the repercussions before making a move. That’s my family. Tell me about yours.”