Twisted (Never After #4)(66)

I walk away from him and over to the edge of the strung-up makeshift plastic room, where I have my other tools laid out on the ground. I drop my staff in order to pick up my knife. When I turn back around, Officer Tate has tears streaking down his pathetic face and snot dripping from his broken nose, coating his upper lip and oozing down over the gag in his mouth.

My fingers wrap tightly around the handle of the blade, and I bend down, my free hand gripping the back of his neck.

“Your second mistake,” I whisper, “was disrespecting my wife.”

The knife cuts through his eye like butter, digging through soft and squishy cornea until it hits the back of his socket. Naturally, his yelling starts up again, more guttural this time, as though the pain is being wrought from the deepest parts of his fucked-up soul.

I revel in his screams while I bathe in his blood, and eventually he quiets for good.

Two hours later, both the room and I are clean, my hair still damp from a shower where I scrubbed remnants of Officer Tate off my skin.

My neck cracks as I let out a sigh of relief, the anxiety of my upcoming visit with my mother temporarily muted from the pleasant buzz that’s left over after a kill.

Isabella hisses and I stare down at her in the enclosure.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I say when her beady eyes meet mine. “I warned him what would happen. It’s a matter of respect.”

Tate’s body is splayed out in the bottom of her home, a few mice laid on top. She slithers over to it and slowly coils her body around the length of his torso, constricting tightly, not realizing that I’ve already incapacitated her prey, her jaw unhinging as she starts to swallow him whole.

I wait until her stomach is bulged from the large meal before I leave the room, making sure to lock the door behind me. I hadn’t meant for Yasmin to see Isabella, and while I don’t mind that she did, I don’t want her asking questions about what type of meal is making her stomach extend the way it is.

Heading to the front of the house, I walk into my office, pouring myself a glass of scotch before sitting in one of the cushioned chairs by the window, soaking in the peace and quiet and trying to enjoy the last few minutes of peace before my mother undoubtedly ruins my mood.

My phone vibrates where I set it next to me and I glance down at the lock screen.

Razul: On our way





Sighing, I run a hand through my hair, tilting my head to the side until the entire length of my neck cracks again, and I guzzle the rest of the scotch.

If my mother finds out from someone else I’ve married, I’ll never hear the end of it. And the guilt she already piles on is enough to bury even the strongest kind of man, so it isn’t worth taking the chance.

Besides, I want to see how Yasmin fares against her. She’s been so docile and well-behaved; it will be interesting to see how she reacts to my mother, who will undoubtedly insult her.

My dick jerks when I think about her acting out, imagining bringing her back home and showing her what happens to naughty girls who step out of line.

I shake my head from the vision, willing my cock to go back down.

See, this is why I need the reminder. My body continues to play tricks on my mind, making me think Yasmin is here for my pleasure. That she’s bound to me for me. But that’s not the case. She’s a means to an end, a loose thread that I’m going to unravel until there’s nothing left and then toss in the fire to burn. And that means I shouldn’t care if someone disrespects her or get angry at the audacity of the pathetic boy who keeps making her look so sad.

I shouldn’t care at all.

And I need to figure out a way to remind myself that I don’t.





Chapter 28





Yasmin





“Stop fidgeting.”

I frown over at Julian as I finish straightening my black pencil skirt. “It’s crooked. I can’t go into your mother’s house with a crooked skirt.”

“Well, it’s fixed now, and you’re distracting me,” he bites.

“What crawled up your ass?” I scrunch my nose. “You’re extra bitchy tonight.”

His eyes narrow and his lips purse but he ignores me, walking up the sidewalk to a large home that backs up to a lake, with a brick exterior and stone archways. There’s a chandelier in the high window above the front door, and purple plants are growing in the garden outside the bay window to the left.

“This is beautiful,” I say, tripping over my feet as I try to keep up with him. “Does your mom live here alone?”

He doesn’t answer, stopping when we reach the door.

Honestly, I’m kind of nervous about the entire situation, not sure what to expect from the woman who raised a man like Julian Faraci and not sure how I’m supposed to act. He’s so touchy about his past, and I know that this is another opportunity for me to peer into the personal life of my husband, to see who he is and if there are any weak spots I can dig into and rip apart.

The burner phone Riya gave me is sitting underneath a pile of my clothes in my dresser drawer back at the house, a string of text messages with Randy Gazim waiting for me to get back to them and keep the conversation going.

He says he’ll help me, that once I inherit Sultans, he’ll draft up an annulment, help me go public against Julian and find both Aidan and myself protection so that we can be safe. He said that doing it now would be better, but I want to make sure my father doesn’t know the lengths that his right-hand man would go to in order to betray him. He should be at peace when he passes, not worried about things that can be handled after he’s gone.