“I knew you were daft, but I didn’t think you’d be this daft, Rory.” I kick his shins and he falls on his knees so that he has to look up at me as if I’m his god. At this moment, I might as well be. “You of all people should know by now that I can destroy you and your entire fucking family if you get in my way. Aside from the information I have on you, I can gather more dirt and figure out weaknesses that you have no idea existed, and I would use them one by each one to ruin you until I make you go bloody insane.”
I punch him again and blood explodes in his split lip and drips on his T-shirt and the floor. Rory snarls with bloodied teeth like an injured animal. “You should’ve kept your part of the deal and stopped ignoring us like we were an afterthought.”
“News flash, motherfucker. You are an afterthought. In fact, you’re so fucking useless that I forget you exist sometimes. The Elites is a club I started for my own entertainment and every one of you is a fucking pawn on my chessboard, so when I tell you to jump, you ask how high. When I tell you to throw yourself down a well, you do that with eyes wide open, like you’ve been doing all along.”
“You fucking…” He starts to stand up, but with my merciless grip on him, he only manages to make it halfway. “You said we were partners.”
“And you believed it? But then again, you were never that bright, were you, Rory?”
“I was bright enough to make your girl’s acquaintance. She was soft and delicate. I can see why you’re so obsessed with her.”
Blind rage rushes to my head and I lift him up, then wrap my hands around his neck and push him back against the railing so that he’s hanging halfway outside. “You don’t seem to have any self-preservation neurons in your barren brain, so I’ll make your suicidal wishes come true.”
His fingers claw at my hands with frantic, desperate movements, but they do nothing to make me loosen my grip. If anything, I tighten my fingers incrementally. First, he gasps and chokes on nonexistent breaths. Then, his face transforms to a deep red, his bloodied lips turning blue.
I can feel the dire gurgles of his last breaths beneath my fingers as his body fights for a chance to live.
Kill him.
Finish his miserable life for daring to touch what’s yours.
The voices grow in intensity, clashing and mounting until they’re all I can hear.
But I ignore and loosen my hold on Rory’s neck. Death is still too good for the twat and I refuse to let him go down in peace.
I keep him on the edge, hanging, close to falling ten stories and losing his miserable life as I say, “You’ll leave the island and will never, and I mean never, show your fucking face here again or else we’ll have problems. And by we, I mean you.”
He nods countless times like a broken toy, and I pull him up, then release him.
I kick him one last time, then turn around to leave.
“I left you a souvenir with Mia. Hope you like it.”
I stop dead in my tracks and release a long sigh. Seems that he truly is in the mood to fuck with me today. What am I if not a good sport?
Let’s hope this rage will be dissipated once I’m done with Rory.
Otherwise, Mia will be in deep fucking trouble.
31
MIA
After I reach the haunted house, I realize with a bit of shame that I don’t actually have a key.
Well, screw that.
I’m not going back home now that I’m here.
After a slight maneuver, I park my car near the gate, hop on top of the hood, then climb the metal bars and jump down on the other side.
My legs take the hit, but I’m good. I stare at my phone one last time in case Landon has graced me with a reply.
Nope.
Nothing.
My feet come to a slow halt at the front garden. My flowers are slowly growing. One of them, a lone blue gentian flower, is blooming.
It’s not a coincidence.
I can’t believe Landon, who proudly confessed that he’s the enemy of everything flora and fauna, has not only been watering the flowers, but he’s also trimmed the grass around it and removed the parasites.
I crouch in front of them and gently run my fingers along the seams of a bloom, my heart squeezing for an unknown reason.
Why do I feel so embarrassingly hollow all of a sudden?
After I apologize to the flowers for not visiting sooner, I head to the door and reach into the deep hole in the tree where Landon hides the spare key.
A smile pulls on my lips when I find it, then use it to get inside. My mouth hangs open when I see the interior of the house.
Or more like, renovated interior.
Aside from the new furniture, there’s a new wooden floor, windows, and elegant muslin curtains.
The renovated Victorian balcony overlooks a newly mowed back garden. The fallen branches and grotesque trees have disappeared. Instead, the view is much more manicured, elegant, even.
The fact that Landon still made these changes even though I was boycotting this place warms my heart.
I walk into his studio, expecting to find new creations. However, the place is creepily the same as I left it over three weeks ago.
The same half-finished statue of a woman fighting a demon. A man screaming into his own ear. A demon drowning in a pool of his disfigured face.
Landon’s art is the same as the man himself. Unpredictable, thought-provoking, and, most importantly, intense.
The only thing different is a statue in the corner, covered by a white sheet.
I remove it with an unsteady hand. Sure enough, I’m staring at myself.
Standing only in panties, I’m glaring down and holding up two middle fingers. My lips part when I realize Lan replicated my look from when he first chased me up to the roof.
I get closer, my heart beating so loud, I hear the rush of blood in my ears. His attention to the details grips me in a merciless chokehold.
He didn’t miss a single element from that day. Not my curved lashes, the ribbons tangled in my hair, the lines of my collarbone, the slope of my breasts, the hard nipples, the creases in my panties, and even the chains on my boots.
The closer I study it, the deeper I’m pulled into the lethal beauty that stares back at me. This feeling isn’t because I’m looking at myself. No. It’s because Landon’s hands made this.
I don’t even know when he had the time to perfect this…I have no clue what to call it. A masterpiece seems too generic. Too little to encompass the meaning behind what his hands made.
I touch her cheek to make sure it’s real and I’m not, in fact, imagining myself as a statue.
I never knew art could bring about these strong emotions.
“What are you doing here?”
I startle and nearly knock the statue over. I catch it at the last second, my heart nearly splattering on the floor.
Slowly, I turn around to find Landon standing at the entrance, a hand shoved in his pocket and his face a map of colossal darkness.
My eyes fly to the splashes of blood on the collar of his white shirt and a dash of panic slithers its way to the base of my stomach.
“What happened?” I sign and point at his shirt.
He doesn’t even look at it. “You didn’t answer my question, Mia. What are you doing here after you made it perfectly clear that we won’t be meeting on my territory anymore?”
It's not only his territory. It’s mine, too.
Also, what’s with his increasingly somber voice? I wished I was only imagining it earlier, but no. His tone is as dark as the blue pools of his eyes.
It’s been a long time since Landon looked at me with such disapproval.
I realize with a heavy heart that he only looked at me like this after I bathed him in pig blood and he was out for revenge.
Only, now, there’s no trace of his taunting smirk and godlike confidence that can’t even be rivaled by the devil.
“I texted you that I wanted to see the statue. You didn’t reply,” I sign, holding on to my calm by a thread.
“Oh?” He pushes off the wall and an urgent need to run away slaps me in the face. I don’t, though, and choose to stand in the path of the deadly storm.
“So you do know how to text, and here I thought you were ghosting me again.”
I track his deliberate stalking, my heartbeat escalating with each step he takes forward. “I wasn’t.”
“Why not? I thought we weren’t supposed to meet today, because we apparently met our quota, no?”
“I changed my mind.”
“Hmm.”