Under Your Scars (Under Your Scars, #1)

by Ariel N. Anderson

Meridian City, and all its crime-ridden glory, has something else that makes it absolutely unbelievable. The Meridian City Silencer.

The wanted posters don’t do him justice. Not his beauty, nor the malice in his eyes.

“You’re begging, angel, but you’re begging for the wrong thing.” He runs a finger over my bottom lip and it makes me shiver. “Such a pretty mouth.”

“I’m not going to make you do anything,” he sneers. “You’re going to do it because it’s the polite thing to do.”

“You can thank me with your mouth or with your blood.” He pulls a knife from his thigh and flips it in his hand for emphasis.

“It means that I’m going to make you want me as bad as I want you. I’m going to make you fantasize about how it feels to have my fingers in your greedy little cunt.

I’m going to make you beg for my tongue against your clit. I’m going to make you so wet and needy for me that you’ll do anything to get me to relieve that hot, achy feeling inside you.

I know there’s a part of you, deep down, that’s upset I don’t have you bent over my lap right now, punishing you for letting another man touch what’s mine.”

I lean down to whisper in his ear. “You were wrong. I didn’t think about you. I thought about him,” I purr,

“Sounds like I need to teach you a goddamn lesson,” he growls, sheathing the knife.

“I don’t want to kill you, angel. I want to keep you all to myself. You’d better take off those rose-colored glasses and accept that the only place you belong is in my black heart.”

“If you don’t tell me the truth right now, I will find out myself by burning this fucking city to the ground.”

“They need to know what happens when they touch what’s mine, Elena.

They’re going to convert religions, because they won’t be praying to God, they’ll be praying to me.

“If you’re so concerned about my humanity, Elena, then reach into my soul and find it, because I’m not sure I have any left.”

I stand in front of the carnage I just inflicted on five men for touching my angel, and I wish I was a good man.

I wish I could say I felt any semblance of guilt, or remorse, or hell, even nothing. I’d take feeling numb over loving the taste of death.

I’m so clouded by pleasure that I’ve forgotten the alphabet. I’ve forgotten his name. I’ve forgotten my name.

“God, you’re so fucking wet, angel.”

“Baby, we’ve got somewhere to be in a few minutes and my dick thinks that somewhere is buried inside you.”

It’s easy for him to stand up when he didn’t get railed all night by eight inches of steel.

Me: My fingers don’t feel the same as yours.

I pair the text with a quick photo I snapped of my fingers just under the waistline of my underwear,

As I walk past the door to the office, it flies open, and Christian grabs me by the scruff of my neck and forces me to my knees

“Take off my belt,” he growls down at me, his eyes dark and his jaw tight. “Now.”

“I used to get off on the thought of breaking you, but now it fills me with fear. I have to be gentle with you now. If I break you one more time, I may never find all the pieces again.”

“What if I want you to break me?” I ask, my eyes not leaving his. “What if I don’t want you to be gentle?”

“I love you.” I say through gritted teeth, her hair wrapped tight around my fist. “I love you so much it makes me insane.

I love you so much it makes me dangerous. I love you so much that I would burn this world for you and all the people in it just to keep you all to myself.

“When I told you that you made me believe in soulmates, I didn’t just mean in this lifetime, or even in this universe.

My heart has always belonged to you, even if I didn’t know it at first. I would love you even if I had no heart to give you, because you are the sole reason for my existence.

He gives me a wicked smile. “Good girl,” he growls. “Such a good fucking girl.

“Please, angel. Please, baby. Be a good girl for me and suck my cock.”

He gives her a sad smile. “You asked me to chase away the monsters under your bed. But the monster was never under your bed, was it? It was in your heart.”

She shakes her head again, this time from denial. “Dad, you tried to kill him. You killed mom.”

“I just wanted to save you.”

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t realize until this very moment that killing him won’t save you.” The gulps. “The only way I can save you is by letting you go.”

“How’s this for misery?” He reaches for the gun Elena dropped, and before I have a chance to comprehend what he’s doing, he places it at her temple. And he pulls the trigger.

My only working sense is sight, and I watch in horror, unable to move as Elliot lets Elena go, and her lifeless body slumps directly into my lap. I see her dead eyes staring straight up at the ceiling, and I snap.

I kill him with my bare fists. Beat him until his skull is deformed into useless shattered bits of bone, and until his soft tissue and blood squelches under my hands, splattering back into my face with every reel back of my fist.

“Mommy said there would be pancakes.”

“Okay, baby. Just…turn around and count to one hundred, and I’ll get you some pancakes, okay?”

“But daddy, I don’t know how to count to one hundred.” “That’s okay, babygirl, just turn around and count as high as you can.”

I hold my angel to my chest and wait for Caroline to reach ten before I put the gun to my head. And like I was always meant to, I pull the trigger.