Violent Heart: A Dark Reverse Harem (A Death So Sweet Book 3)

by Candace Wondrak

  His face had bleeding eyes now, a grotesque thing. With just his eyelids gone, he looked like a monster, and it was literally the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I’d never seen anyone without eyelids before, and with blood leaking onto my brother’s face, he looked like a scary clown, like he was wearing a mask or something. It was quite entertaining.

  After tossing his second eyelid away, I said, “There. Now you won’t go closing those eyes again, huh?” A moment before I added, “That’s all I wanted, you know, for you to keep your eyes open. And for you to stop raping me, but I guess we don’t always get what we want. That’s life, as everyone says.”

  I lifted the knife to my face. Its serrated edge had a bit of blood on it, but not too much. After what I would do next, the steel would be covered.

  Still, because I had my brother’s full attention now, I lowered my mask and brought the knife to my mouth. My tongue flicked out, and I dragged it along the knife, licking up his blood. All metallic and warm, his very life essence.

  Tasted like shit, but I think he got the picture. The girl with the metal mask and knife in her hands wasn’t sane at all. She liked spilling blood, and she wasn’t afraid of tasting it.

  After putting my mask back on, I set the knife in the center of the blood cross I’d drawn. Usually, when doctors marked you up before surgery, they used dotted lines, I think. But I wasn’t a doctor, and this wasn’t surgery in the form of me diving in to fix something. No, I was just going to take it all out, because my brother was gutless.

  Gutless. Heartless. Spineless.

  I’d leave him the way nature intended, all right. I would make this room his tomb, and when I was finished with him, he would be completely unrecognizable. He wouldn’t even look human.

  My nerves were on fire when I pressed down with the knife, digging deeper than I ever had. The serrated steel pierced his flesh and dug down, past his muscle. Aiden let out a loud scream, but I was in my own world as I tugged the knife down along the line I’d marked. From just below his chest to his belly button, probably an inch or so deep.

  Ooh, it had to hurt, and that fact brought me a type of pleasure even the world’s best orgasm couldn’t. There were just some things better than sex out there, and torturing and killing your brother who’d fucked you up for years was one of them.

  Fresh blood appeared on the line, but I kept going, cutting him from side to side now, just as deep. I felt the knife graze his ribs, the hard obstruction of bone stopping me from going deeper in that direction.

  For now.

  The last line I cut was the one from his collarbone to the middle of the cross. By that time, my brother might’ve been in shock, or his adrenaline was pumping. Either way, he didn’t cry out too much.

  Hell, or maybe he was just numb because his entire torso was on fire with pain. Who could say?

  I chuckled to myself, laying my flat palm against the center of the cross, where all the cut lines intersected. “I’ve never skinned an animal before, but how hard could it be?” Surely it couldn’t be too hard. I mean, all you had to do was peel the skin back, right? Cut it when necessary.

  Was I going too far? Was this too much?

  You know what? I didn’t fucking care. I deserved this, as did he. He would drown in his pain and blood and regret while I got off on making his last living moments complete hell.

  I took one corner of skin, starting to peel it back. The sound it made in the air was gooey and slick, and then I got to work, using the knife to saw through whatever was keeping his skin attached. I wasn’t a doctor, so I might’ve gone a bit too deep in my initial cut, but hey, it was my first time. Give me a break.

  Aiden mumbled something, but whatever it was, it was incoherent and I wasn’t really listening to him. His face was bloody and hideous, and it looked like his eyes were starting to roll back into his skull, like he was going to pass out from me skinning his stomach or something. Come on. Man the fuck up.

  Whatever. I was too enthralled with what he looked like underneath to pay much attention to him and what he was doing. All I knew was he was still breathing, which meant he was still alive. He wouldn’t be for long, I had the feeling.

  What did he look like underneath? It was all red and tendon-y, some parts pinker than others. Bloody and beautiful, that’s for sure. Inch by inch I worked on him, peeling one quarter of the cross back before doing another. Soon I had half of it done, and soon after that, the entire thing. Yes, the skin on his entire torso was peeled back.

  The sight was beautiful to me, but the damned skin folds kept slipping, like they didn’t want to stay open. I eventually had to tell Sylvester and Maddox to find something to weigh them down, because I wanted to get to work on his guts. Aiden had passed out a while ago, which was unfortunate, but it happened, especially when you were being skinned alive after having your eyelids cut off.

  Yeah. Yeah, his last memories of life sure weren’t good ones. Let me pause to pat myself on the back for a few seconds.

  They came back with more knives from the kitchen, and I grinned at them behind my mask. “Thank you,” I purred out, taking them. I used the new knives to pin the peeled flesh in place, piercing the skin and the bed in order to do so. But hey, it worked.

  My brother was still alive, but barely. I knew once I continued, he wouldn’t last much longer. Besides the pain, he’d lost quite a lot of blood already. The bed was doused in red, and we’d barely begun. A beautiful sight.

  Me? I had some blood on me, on my mask, but that came with the territory of killing someone in such a gruesome, horrific way.

  I’d cut my mother’s throat. I’d stabbed my father dozens of times. Now I would literally peel my brother apart and tear out his insides and make them outsides instead.

  I started with his guts, because they were the easiest to get to. A bit more cutting, past the musculature and the tendons, and I was there, inside his gut, able to see it all wiggling around, gooey and nasty. Holding the knife to the side, I plunged my hand down, right into his intestines. It felt… it felt like wet, slimy, warm sausages.

  A laugh escaped me, and I spoke, “Now I’m inside you.” A quick glance up to his face, and I saw how pale he was, how he wasn’t moving.

  Dead. My dear brother was dead. I realized it with a hand in his gut, and for a moment, I froze. He was gone, finally, after all these years. Aiden Harding would never walk the streets again, never hurt anyone else.

  Of course, I had no idea if he’d ever hurt anyone other than me, but it didn’t matter. The number of victims didn’t matter when it came to abuse. It was what it was, and what it was was horrible. No one should have to go through what I did, no girl should have to grow up in fear of her own family, the family who was supposed to love and protect her and teach her how to protect herself from the world.

  My parents had failed. Aiden had failed. Everyone had failed me, and now look at where I was: wrist-deep into my brother’s gut, about to decorate the room with his organs.

  My fingers curled around some of the intestines, and I started to pull them out. Had to drop my knife and go at it with two hands since intestines were literally just a mess of human sausage links—and there were a lot of them. Who knew the body hid so much? I mean, I guess doctors did, but still, it was shocking to me just how much of his gut was taken up by his intestines.

  I had to set the heapings of intestines off to the side on the bed and pick up my knife to cut it from whatever it led to in the body, and then I carried on. His spleen, his kidneys, his liver and his stomach. They each had their own shapes and colors, and though I wasn’t sure which was which, I could not shake the glee inside of me as I took each one out.

  My hands were coated in red goo, my clothes doused in blood. I looked a mess, I knew, but my audience couldn’t stop staring at me. I brought one of my hands to my mask, smearing some of Aiden’s blood onto its teeth, giggling.

  Oh, this night was spectacular. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

  I thought abou
t painting the room with his organs, but I knew there were still a few more tucked away beneath his ribcage up top. His lungs. His heart. You know, the most important organ of them all.

  Getting to it was a little rough. I didn’t have the strength or the right tool to cut through his ribcage, so I went up from beneath it, feeling around in there. Once I felt something that fit snugly in the palm of my hand, I curled my fingers around it and yanked it out.

  My own heart beat a bit faster as I lifted it up, and I stared at my brother’s heart, a smile wide on my face. Such a small thing to be what kept us all alive. I had one, Sylvester and Maddox each had one. The heart was so small compared to the rest of the body, and yet it was responsible for so much. It was amazing when you thought about it.

  As I stared at the bloodied organ in my hand, I pictured my brother. His face, the words he’d whisper into my ear during the nights he crept into my bed. How his hands would feel as they roamed across me, stifling me, promising me everything would be fine, that he loved me.

  A lie. It was all a lie.

  My fingers clenched together, digging into the soft tissue of the heart, nails piercing the fleshy thing. I held onto it with a fist now, my hand trembling. Beneath my mask, I bared my teeth, wishing he was still alive so I could feed it to him, make Aiden eat his own heart. I would never be right, never be normal and sane, all because of him.

  “Look who’s laughing now,” I spoke, my voice nothing but a bare whisper. I spoke it to Aiden even though he was dead, even though he couldn’t hear me. I didn’t know if I believed in heaven and hell, if I really thought Aiden was locked away in some torturous place for all eternity. Seemed too good to be true, you know? Like, with our mortality constantly in question, we wanted to believe there was something more, something after this terrible world, that the good guys would be rewarded and the bad ones would be punished.

  Regardless of whether or not places like that existed, it was too good for him. I wished I could’ve made him suffer more. If things were different, if everything hadn’t gone to shit all at once, I would’ve made him. I would’ve done so much more to him.

  But, alas, the circumstances around tonight could not be changed, so here we were. At least the fucker was dead. At least he was gone.

  I turned away from Maddox and Sylvester, whipping the heart at the wall. It landed on the wall with a thud, spraying some blood with its collision before sliding to the floor, leaving a red smear in its wake. I breathed hard, knowing I should feel relieved, knowing I should feel happier that he was gone.

  What was it I felt? It wasn’t relief, and it sure as shit wasn’t happiness. It was almost… bittersweet?

  But that couldn’t be right. I was supposed to feel at peace after all these years. I was supposed to feel like I’d finally closed the door on the chapter that was my childhood. I didn’t, though. I didn’t feel any of those things. I… I had no idea what I felt, only that it was wrong.

  My rage at myself blinded me, and for the next few moments, I was uncontrollable. I threw all of his organs. I clawed at the bloodied bedding, grunting, crying out, trying to find that magical feeling, the feeling of closure. But it wouldn’t come. The relief never fully formed inside of me, and maybe that’s why I felt like I was losing it.

  My brother was dead, yes. He would never hurt anyone else, it was true, but did that mean there weren’t thousands—or maybe even millions—of men who would do the same? No, this world was filled with monsters, and no matter how long I lived, no matter how many I’d taken off the streets… there would always be more.

  More, more, more. More girls to lose it all. More victims to be silenced. More confessions that would never be believed. It would never stop. Never, not until the world itself and all humanity ceased to exist.

  I picked up the knife I’d used to cut into my brother, and I started to stab him. His neck, his throat, his shoulders and his arms. I cut into him even though he hardly bled—no heart, after all. Nothing to create more blood to spill. I was so blinded by my rage that I forgot I wasn’t alone in the room, so when hands suddenly gripped my arms and pulled me off the corpse of my brother, I lashed out, cutting whoever it was right on the face.

  I struggled so much I was taken to the floor, pinned down as he gripped my wrist and slammed it down on the floor over and over until I lost hold of the knife. Once I let it go, the other one kicked it away. Whoever was on top of me was strong, and he was ticked off that I’d cut him.

  Why couldn’t he leave me the fuck alone? Why didn’t I feel better after killing Aiden?

  I met the dark eyes of the one I’d cut—a long line down his cheek—and it finally hit me: Maddox. Shit. The cut was diagonal on his cheek, a thin line of blood oozing out of the fresh wound. His dark brows were furrowed, eyes narrowed down at me. His wide chest rose and fell with heavy, pissed off breaths, and I ceased my struggling, laying my head down as I stared at those black, soulless eyes.

  Eyes like that whispered lies, just like my brother’s had, only his were different. His might radiate a coldness, but I was not afraid of it. Gazing into those eyes did not instill knots in my belly or fear in my heart, didn’t give me anxiety to the point where I couldn’t see straight. Looking into Maddox’s eyes only did one thing: and that was calm me down.

  Maddox glanced at Sylvester, saying, “Give me the knife.” His voice came out gruff and ragged, and I suddenly was very aware of how his body felt on top of mine, his midsection pressed down hard against me, his legs pinning mine down.

  “Maddox,” Sylvester started, making no moves to do so.

  “Give me the fucking knife!” Maddox shouted, and Sylvester relented, kicking the knife back towards us, though Maddox’s hand was the one that picked it up off the floor. It dripped with my brother’s blood—though I supposed some of it was now his.

  File that one under oopsies.

  “Now,” Maddox growled out, the blood from his face dripping onto mine; on my cheek, on my mask. “Leave us.”

  Sylvester didn’t appear as if he wanted to go, but when I met those pretty blue eyes and gave him a slight nod, he went. His footsteps were heavy as he left the room, leaving Maddox and me alone with my brother’s corpse.

  Maddox’s face hovered above mine, just an inch or so above my mask. He didn’t seem too fazed by it, his lips curling into a scowl. “You lost yourself for a bit there, Lola,” he spoke, the words coming out husky, “and you took a swipe at me. Tsk-tsk-tsk. What am I going to do with you now?”

  The old me, the me who was new to Maddox and his family, would’ve said he was going to kill me, to hurt me in equal measure, to mar up my pretty face with a cut ten times worse than his. But the me of today, the me that knew my heart belonged to him and his to me, knew differently.

  Also, I could feel the hardness pressing against my lower half, and I didn’t just mean his muscles.

  His dick. I meant his dick. His rock-hard cock that had probably turned to steel while watching me go at my brother like a psycho. Oh, I wasn’t the only one who got off on inflicting pain.

  It was because of that I whispered, “You’re going to fuck me with that knife, and then you’re going to pick me up and fuck me with your cock on the bed.” I mean, it wasn’t an order; more like a suggestion… but I knew it was a suggestion Maddox would never be able to say no to.

  The wild glint in his black eyes, the line of blood trailing down his cheek, the ragged breaths that managed to escape his thunderous chest… oh, Maddox looked like an animal in that moment, a handsome, sexy, psychotic animal who was going to do exactly what I’d told him to.

  “You dirty girl,” he whispered, moving his face to my neck, where the mask ended. I could feel his lips brushing against the tender skin there as he dragged the knife down my side. Its sharp metal caught on my shirt’s fabric, but that didn’t stop him. “You want to be fucked? I’ll fuck you. I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll see stars amongst all this blood.”

  Blood. Amongst my brother’s blood. Because t
hat’s where we were: in the room I’d just slain my brother in, his corpse laying on the bed, his organs strewn about haphazardly. Maddox didn’t care, and neither did I. What would make someone else queasy or uncomfortable was nothing to us. We were two fucked up peas in a pod.

  He didn’t move to take off my mask, but his mouth did leave my neck as he worked on tugging down my pants. Couldn’t cut them off because we still had to walk out of this hotel afterward—albeit I’d be covered in blood, but I think covered in blood was better than being naked in front of strangers, along with my two guys who just might massacre everyone in the lobby for seeing me naked.

  The floor was wet with blood that had dripped off the sheets, and my bare ass was laid down on it after he’d torn off my pants. I wore no panties, because panties just seemed to hinder the good stuff. No thanks to that. Not right now.

  Maddox did it all while holding the knife handle in his mouth, his expression intent and ravenous. Goosebumps rose on my flesh when he took that knife out of his mouth and grinned a wicked smirk in my direction.

  Oh, oh this was going to be fun. Who cared if I didn’t feel as good as I thought I would after killing my brother? He was gone, and I could be at peace with that… and then Maddox could fuck my brains out and make tonight even more memorable.

  He took the bloody knife to my inner thighs, and I felt the sharp blade being dragged lightly across my skin. Just a bit more pressure, and he’d cut me. He’d cut me inches away from my apex, but knowing him, he’d like it. If things weren’t as they were, if we would’ve had more time to lose ourselves in each other—and therefore more time to recuperate after—I might just let him mark me up a bit.

  Alas, we were pressed for time in that after this, we had to return to the cabin in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and then decide on what we were doing to get back at the Bloody Princess and her crew. No time for extreme knife play right now, unfortunately, for I’d need to be in tip top shape to get back at that fucking bitch.