Page 91 of Hellebore

I let them pass, my breath steady and shallow in the gloom. The bodyguard is short, no more than five-nine, the compact kind whose coiled danger often cuts deeper than the lumbering fools. My jaw tightens; there is no fucking way I am crawling back to Briar marked and bruised. The woman trailing them is younger—closer to Briar’s age than Archibald’s—her dark hair catching what little light spills from the lamps, her steps light but laced with that same entitled poison.

They drift into the living room, oblivious to the shadows that have already claimed me. Archibald pours himself a drink at the bar cart, the crystal clinking like brittle bones in the quiet. The woman sinks onto the silk couch with a sigh, peeling off her ten-inch heels, her bare feet sinking into the rug. The bodyguard stations himself near the tall window, his silhouette framed against the rain-streaked glass where the night presses cold and heavy against the panes.

No more waiting. My pulse thrums with lethal clarity. I ease the study door open on silent hinges and step into the room, my boots whispering across the threshold as the space seems to shrink around me. The woman’s scream tears through the air first—high, piercing, raw terror clawing at the high ceilings and echoing off the walls. The bodyguard’s hand flies to his holster, but I am already moving, the gun rising and the silenced shot punches through his chest, a wet thud that drops him where he stands. Blood blooms dark across his shirt, spreading in a slow, glistening tide over the floorboards.

She screams again, scrambling back on the couch, eyes wide with animal panic. My gaze snags on the necklace at her throat—pearls gleaming obscenely against her skin.

That bitch.

Fury ignites, flooding my veins like black ice. I fire once more, the bullet parting her forehead with clinical grace. Her body crumples forward, lifeless weight slamming into the expensive white rug with a heavy, final thump. Crimson soaks into the pristine fibers, pooling beneath her splayed hair, the metallic tang already thickening the air.

Archibald has dropped behind the bar counter, knees cracking against the hardwood, a pathetic coward who didn’t even reach for his own woman. I cross the room in three unhurried strides, my boots leaving faint prints in the spreading blood, the gun steady in my grip as the living room’s opulent decay closes in. I crouch beside her corpse, fingers closing around the necklace. The pearls are still warm from her skin, now smeared with red. I tear it free with a sharp yank and rise, turning toward the trembling bastard.

“You motherfucker,” I growl, my voice low and ragged, laced with the weight of long-buried rage. I walk toward him, the gun trained on his skull, the floorboards groaning beneath me like the house itself is recoiling from what I am. “This is Briar’s mother’s necklace, and you gave it to that bitch instead of your own daughter?”

Briar’s mother always wore that white pearl necklace, the small locket holding her baby picture. I open it with one hand, the gun never wavering, and stare at the photograph inside—some stranger’s face staring back. The wrongness of it burns through me.

“Where is the fucking picture, Archibald?” I demand, leaning in close, my shadow swallowing him whole as he kneels there, hands clasped in pathetic prayer.

“Please—I’ll give you anything you want. Money, gold—” he begs, voice cracking.

“I want your daughter,” I say, the words slipping out in anger.

He stares up at me, the bastard crying like a broken child. “Briar? Yes, I can get her here.”

Motherfucker.

I slam the gun across his forehead. Blood spills warm and immediate from the gash, trickling down his face as he reels. “Selling your daughter again?” I hiss, stepping closer, the copper stench rising between us. “Who did you sell her virginity to?”

His eyes widen, but I see the lie already forming. “I didn’t⁠—”

I drive the gun into his mouth this time, the impact shattering a tooth. Blood sprays everywhere, splattering the counter and my sleeve. “Try again, Archibald.” I sing his name, my fury unraveling.

“I—” He sobs, broken and wet. “I was in danger—they were going to kill me.”

“So you sold your daughter?” I step even closer, grabbing a fistful of his hair, the strands greasy under my fingers. I slam his face into the cabinet door with a sickening crack. More blood pools around us, warm and sticky against the soles of my boots. “Do you know what they did to her? They raped her. They destroyed her⁠—”

“She’s still alive—” he screams, the words garbled through blood and terror. “I would have been tortured. I owed money to dangerous men. My gambling… we would have lost the house.”

This motherfucker really thinks what he did is justified because she survived? The sheer delusion of it coils through me, tightening until my vision narrows to the pathetic wreck bleeding at my feet. Are you fucking kidding me?

“She had her life all figured out,” I grunt, the words scraping raw from my throat as I tower over him, the bedroom’s heavy velvet curtains swallowing what little light dares to filter through the rain-lashed windows. “Her college. She worked so fucking hard⁠—”

“How do you know that? Who the fuck are you?” he screams, his hands clawing uselessly at the blood pouring from his mouth, nose, and forehead, smearing it across his expensive suit like war paint on a coward.

“I’m her fucking guardian,” I spit, the taste of copper thick on my tongue from the violence already spilled tonight.

“Like a guardian angel?” He sobs harder now, snot and tears mixing with the mess on his face, his body trembling against the cold hardwood floor of the bedroom we’ve dragged ourselves into.

I chuckle darkly, the sound rumbling low from my chest like distant thunder trapped inside these decaying walls. “More like her Devil.” My fingers twist deeper into his greasy hair, and I drag him behind me across the room, his knees scraping against the floorboards that groan in protest. The door slams shut with a heavy finality that echoes through the space, sealing us in this tomb of silk sheets and forgotten luxuries, the air growing thicker, heavier with the metallic reek of his fear and blood.

“Now, where is the picture from the locket?” I demand, my voice a low growl that fills the intimate confines of the bedroom.

He points a shaking finger toward a small jewelry box on the vanity, its polished surface catching the faint glow from a bedside lamp. I open it, and recognition hits me like a blade between the ribs—most of these pieces I know too well, the ones that once adorned Briar’s mother. This fucker had kept all his wife’s jewels only to drape them around that bitch bleeding out on the living room rug. My gaze locks onto the small oval photograph of little Briar, her innocent eyes staring back at me. I snatch it up, the paper cool and fragile against my calloused palm, and shove the entire box deep into my cargo pants, pressing it close to my body where it belongs.

“To whom did you sell her?” I ask again, kneeling in front of him now, my massive frame crowding the space until the room feels smaller, suffocating, the weight of my presence pressing down on his broken body.

“I—” He keeps crying, snot and blood mingling in a glistening trail down his chin. “I don’t know. It was a man around thirty-five. He came with a proposition… offered to pay all my debts and give me some more.”