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His heart beat, just once, in my grip.

“Look at it, Brandon. This is all you ever had. You wasted it. You wasted everything.”

But he couldn’t look, because he was gone.

I stuffed the heart into the glass jar. Perfect fit. The lid snapped on, sealing the blood inside. I stood over his ruined body, chest heaving. My own heartbeat thudded in my veins like fists on a drum. I looked around and admired my work. The splattered walls. The twitching limbs. The broken furniture.

This was how you showed you cared. This was love. This was redemption.

I took the jar and wiped my hands on his shirt. I staggered to the kitchen sink, hosed the blood off my face. Didn’t want to scare her too fast when I brought her the present.

My eyes burned. I felt tears again, but I knew they weren’t for him.

They were for my bluebird.

Chapter 42

What Have You Done?

Starla

There were footsteps outside of the door. I pulled the hospital blanket higher and sunk myself low into the mattress. The door swung open, and I feared it was Brandon coming to finish me off.

A shadow moved into my vision. The door closed, darkness washed over me. The footsteps came closer and closer. I opened my mouth to scream, but a hand shot out and clamped over my mouth.

“Hush, bluebird. I’m here to save you.”

Malakar.

The lamp turned off. Malakar stood there, covered in blood. In his hand was a jar.

What the fuck?

“Malakar,” I whispered. “What did you do?”

He smiled and held up the jar. It was an innocent and boyish thing. As if he were showing me a painting that he crafted. “I did this for you, bluebird. He hurt you, he hurt our baby, so I made sure he couldn’t hurt you ever again.”

My eyes widened and I put my hand over my mouth in shock. I stared at the jar, and stared at the heart inside of the jar. I looked at the blood on his clothes again and put the pieces together.

“You killed him?”

He nodded and set the jar on the table beside the bed. Malakar sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand. “He deserved it. He was a bad man, so I made him go away. I cut out his heart for you to keep.”

Chills ran across my arms. He killed for me. He took away the biggest threat in my life. Should I thank him? Should I cry? Should I feel afraid?

He seemed truly proud of himself, as if he believed that he did the right thing. As if murder was always the answer. Ultimately, it wasn’t the answer.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” I touched his arm. “I appreciate what you did for me, but you can’t just go around killing people, Malakar. Brandon was a terrible person, but he didn’t deserve that!”

So much had happened in the past day and I couldn’t process it. My emotions were all over the place and I was on a path to completely having a mental breakdown. Everything inside of me was going into shutdown mode.

The vision of Brandon on the ground with his heart being cut out of his chest fucking horrified me. But then again, he did save me from Brandon by taking him out of the picture.

But did he have to kill him so brutally?

My eyes stayed glued to the jar. I couldn’t stop staring. The heart was red and wet inside the glass, the blood swirling at the bottom like paint.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Tried again. “Why did you…why did you do that?”