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. A serial killer in a red mask that patrols the streets at night, beating up criminals and dishing out bullet-shaped justice to anyone he feels deserves it.

“I promise, I’m the one thing in this city you never have to be afraid of.”

Christian glances at the bouquet on my desk and nods towards it. “Pretty flowers...” He rubs a finger over the acrylic nameplate next to the vase. “Elena.”

“I don’t understand why you’d do something like that for a nobody like me.” His answer is immediate, like it’s been rehearsed. “You’re so much more than a nobody, Elena.”

When Christian was six years old, his parents were both murdered in front of him. According to the police reports, they found him sitting in a puddle of his parent’s blood, and when the police asked him what happened, all he said was that a man with a gun ambushed his father and shot both of his parents in cold blood.

okay batman

“I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since we met.” He twists a finger in one of the loose curls in my hair. “Let me take you to dinner. Please?” After a second, he adds, “I’m not a man who says please often.”

“I thought you’d be mad,” I admit, changing the subject. “About me kissing someone else.” He chuckles. “You’re nothing but trouble, Elena Young. Want to know why?” He leans over, folding me in half again so he can whisper into my ear. “Because 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 frown, my earlier sympathy gone. “You want to know a secret, asshole?” I mumble, pushing him away from me, and this time, he sits back. “Remember how you said the next time I’d touch myself, I’d think of you?” He nods enthusiastically, and I sit up completely, pushing him again until he’s flopped onto the bed, his head and shoulders hanging off the edge, and I straddle him. I lean far, far over until my chest is pressed against his, and the vein on his neck is thick and protruding against his throat. And then I slowly reach to his thigh, pull a knife from the sheath, and press it against his neck with the sharp blade digging right into that vein. I do it slowly because I know if he was truly worried about me slicing open his throat, he would never have let me wrap my fingers around his knife. He’s giving me an illusion of control, and I can feel a bulge pressing against my center, telling me that he’s just a little too into it. I lean down to whisper in his ear. “You were wrong. I didn’t think about you. I thought about him,” I purr, making my voice as sultry as I can with ...

he holds up a thin silver bracelet between us. It has a small circular charm no bigger than a dime dangling from it. He drops it on my chest unceremoniously. “It’s in case you ever need help,” he explains. I lift the chain to examine it. “The charm attached is a silent panic alarm. You turn it on by clicking it five times. You’ll feel it vibrate, and it will send me an alert with your exact location. If you press it, I’ll come. No matter what.”

“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.”

“I’m going to figure out who you are under there.” I tap his mask. “I don’t just mean your name.” “What will you do once you know who I am?”

“Who did this to you?”

“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. Begging for my fucking mercy after I hunt them all down and show them the true meaning of fear.”

“Why didn’t you press your panic alarm?” “Because you would have come in there and gone on a murder spree to get to me, and I didn’t think it was enough of an emergency for that. I’m okay. It could have been worse.” “If your safety is even slightly in jeopardy, it’s an emergency to me. Next time, press the goddamn button.” “I don’t want to be the reason you lose your humanity.” He rubs my bottom lip with his gloved hand. “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.”

Not killing them is a very important part of the equation for me. I like to play with my food.

“My angel told me that Valenti made her work naked, and you assholes touched her all night. That was a big fucking mistake on your part. Elena is mine. Mine to scare. Mine to chase. Mine to touch.”

“You’re pretty. Are you Mrs. Reeves?” I clear my throat uncomfortably with a nervous flush pooling in my cheeks. “Thank you, sweetie, but no, I’m not Mrs. Reeves. My name’s Elena.” She tugs me closer and cups her hand around my ear as if to tell me a secret, and she very loudly whispers, “Mr. Reeves thinks you’re pretty too, ‘cause he won’t stop looking at you.”

“What did you do?” “Exactly what I told you I would. I killed all Valenti’s friends. Spelled his name in their blood so he knows I’m coming for him next.” I shudder. “You can’t just keep killing people for—” “I can and I will, Elena. Until there’s no one left that can hurt you. That’s a promise.”

“I don’t think you even know what you’re begging for.”

“You want my phone number? We must be getting serious, Mr. Reeves.” “I’ve been serious about you from the moment we met.”

“Why me?” He takes a deep breath. “My parents died when I was six. For the past three decades, all I’ve done is focus on the past. You are the only thing in my life that’s ever made me consider the future. At first, the future was just the next day. I started sleeping better because I knew falling asleep would make tomorrow come faster and I would get to see you again. I wanted to get a glimpse of you, to see you smile, to hear you laugh. I made a game out of trying to guess how you’d wear your hair to the office. I was always looking forward to the next day because I wanted to discover one more piece of the puzzle that made up Elena Young.” He reaches across the space between us to tenderly hold my face in his hands. “And now I’ve got a whole section of my brain dedicated solely to you, and I think about more than just the next day. I see next week. I see next month. I see next year. I see you in every possible version of my future.” He presses a chaste kiss to my lips. “I’ve never been in a relationship. I can’t promise it will always be easy, but I can promise that I’ll always try to be the best version of myself for you.” Another chaste kiss, this time he keeps his lips ghosting over mine when he breaks it. “That’s why.”

It’s a shame I’m already destined for Hell, because it’s not where angels belong. But I’m not going anywhere without her.

“I am painfully, catastrophically in love with you.”

“Edwin always used to say that I was intense in all aspects of my life. I always thought he was full of shit. He was an old man, trying to be a father figure to a punk ass kid who didn’t want to listen. It wasn’t until I got older that I started to notice it. Anger. Guilt. Jealousy. Pride. Then I met you, and falling in love was like some nuclear catalyst inside me. I’ve been consumed by it—by you. I can’t think about anything else except how much I want you to be mine to love, forever.” He takes a deep breath. “I mean that in the kind of way that’s going to suffocate you one day but I can’t stop. I can’t fucking stop. I won’t be satisfied until I am every part of your existence as you are mine.”

as a cancer, this is a very cancer thing to say. and ironically cancers, scorpios, pisces', and Sagittarius' make up 40% of serial killers.

“Look at me,” I demand, my tone soft but firm. “I am so, so sorry that you trusted me with your heart and that I didn’t give you mine back, but I promise I will. I promise we’ll have that all-consuming love that gives us cavities and I promise we’ll build a life and a home and a family together if that’s what you want. I just need a little time to learn how to love you back.”

“You told me you believe in soulmates.” “Because of you.” “Then that means I’m destined to love you no matter what, even if it’s not right now.”

“Can we come back here in the summer?” Mykonos is beautiful, but the weather in October isn’t exactly suitable for swimming and tanning. “Absolutely. I’ll block off a week for us, maybe even a month. We can go all over Europe.” I laugh. “I don’t think your company would appreciate you taking a month-long vacation to tote your leech across Europe.” “It’s my company, Elena. They’ll get over it. You’ll be my wife by then anyways, so consider it our honeymoon.” My jaw drops open. “Is that a proposal? Because I still don’t see a ring on my finger.” Christian grumbles and grabs his phone from the nightstand. After a few seconds of scrolling, he tosses it onto my lap. I’m staring at an email thread with a photo of an absurdly massive purple diamond. When I see the eight-figure price tag for said diamond, I dramatically roll over the edge of the bed and land on the floor.

He chooses to celebrate his historic success with a bottle of red wine and his tongue on my clit because, in his words, I’m ‘the single best pairing with a good Cabernet’.

“What the fuck do you want with me? What is your endgame? You…you expect me to fall in love with you or something?” His distractingly pretty blue eyes darken. His hands are still up by his head, but he relaxes his stance like I don’t have a gun pointed at his fucking forehead right now. “Yes, I want you to love me. I want…no, I need to be your everything.” I laugh sarcastically, because how could I love someone like him? “Why am I so important to you?” “Because you saved my life.” I scoff. “You know, you always say that, but you’ve never actually told me what that fucking means!”

“You’re not just some obsession I picked up out of boredom. You’re my life essence. The air in my lungs. The beating heart in my chest.” Goosebumps erupt over my skin as our hands trace over my stomach. “You are my everything. Mind. Body. Soul. I fucking love you, Elena, and you will love me back. I don’t care if I have to destroy you in the process.” He moves our hands even slower across my breasts, and I hate the way my nipples harden into tight peaks under the sensual touch. “You’ll be mine one day. Fully. I love it when you fight me, but if you would just shut up and stop, even for one second, you might see what’s right in front of you.”

The Silencer probably did this to me with the expectation that I’d end up on the street so he can whisk me away to his secret lair like some kind of fucked up white knight. Or red knight, if we’re staying true to his modus operandi. At least once I’m living at the Reeves Estate, I’m safe.

“What did I tell you the last time you saw me, Neil?” He stays quiet, and I can see it in his eyes that he has no idea what I’m talking about. I remove the knife from his mouth and press the tip of the blade over his dick. “I told you that if you ever touched her again, I would kill you.” His eyes blow wide with horror and realization. Before he has a chance to say anything, I snatch his tongue out from his mouth and cleanly slice it off with the knife, flicking the severed piece of muscle to the side and watching as blood oozes down his chin. “This is for Elena,” I declare, before slapping a strip of red duct tape over his mouth.

this was incredibly satisfying

I get my answer when I walk into said ER, to find doctors and nurses and security guards crowding triage room one. And that scream. I could recognize that fucking scream anywhere. That terrified voice that saved my life the night we met. Only this time, she’s not hopelessly crying out for help, praying someone will come to her rescue. She’s crying for me.

For HIM 💔

“Elena, I swear on my fucking life I will hunt him to the ends of the earth. I will find him and I will make him suffer until even the devil himself fears me.” “He could come back.” “No, baby,” Christian coos. “I promise, you’re safe now. Neil is dead, and Valenti will be soon.” I blink at him, something dark and unsettling swirling in my gut. “Did…did he suffer?” Christian’s jaw tightens and I just know even thinking about it makes him feel unhinged and feral. He nods. “Yes. I made him suffer. Then I lit his corpse on fire so he wouldn’t know peace, even in death.” “Good,” I whisper, and something sparkles in his eyes,

“I was on my way to the police station,” I finally admit, unable to look at him. “I was going to tell them everything about you.” Christian bites his lip and nods. “Can you even begin to understand how utterly hopeless I felt to press that tracker? To know that I hated you in that moment, but you were the only person in the world that could help me?” He looks down and then back up at me, trying to be brave and hold my searing, furious gaze. “Why would you manipulate me like that? All I think about when I look back on our relationship is how it all feels fabricated now. None of it feels real.” It’s the one question I’ve had bouncing around in my mind since he told me the truth. Why would he do that to me if he truly loved me? “It was real,” he says, and I roll my eyes. “Just…listen. I didn’t want to manipulate you. You saved my life, and from that moment, my heart belonged to you. I guess in the beginning, I thought that if you couldn’t love one side of me, maybe you’d love the other. And then when you started falling for me, for Christian, the Silencer got jealous and just…lost himself.” He takes a deep breath. “You have to understand, Elena, who I am when I put that mask on, isn’t me. We may occupy the same body, but we’re not the same person. He’s the man looking back at me in the mirror. My alter ego. The devil that wears me as his shell. I can’t escape him any more than you can.” “Why are you talking like you’re two separate people, Christian?” “Because I am!” he growl...

One of my valets has Elliot and Bethany’s luggage rolling at his sides. “Where would you like me to put these, Mr. Reeves?” A thump and then the sound of glass shattering pulls all our attention to Elliot, who is staring down at the shards of what was once a vase of fresh flowers kept in the foyer. He’s taking deep breaths and his focus is somewhere else. His grip on Elena is so tight her face is twisted in pain.

theory!!!! Did Christian's biological father kill Elena's father's first family, in which Elena's father killed Christian's father and mother??????

Elena, I don’t think I’ve ever been in so much pain. I want to be there when you leave, to say goodbye and tell you I’m sorry and beg you to stay. But I’m weak, so instead, I’m writing this letter and committing your sleeping face to memory. I couldn’t bear it if the last memory I had of you was the way you look at me now, after discovering the kind of monster I am. You look disappointed. Scared. Angry. But you’re angelic when you sleep. The perfect embodiment of the endearing nickname I’ve given you. I wish I wasn’t the root cause of the burdens you bear. I never believed in love at first sight. I never believed in soulmates. I made peace with the idea of being alone, and I had even made peace with death. And then I met you. I remember looking into your scared, tear-filled, honey-brown eyes the night we met and feeling an ache in my chest I had never felt before. I didn’t immediately realize it, but that ache was my soul latching on to yours, intertwining itself so deeply that no force on heaven or Earth could ever truly separate us again. That ache was my heart’s way of telling me that you would be the first and only woman I would ever love. You became my guardian angel. I will never let that sentiment go. If I wasn’t meant to love you, then fate would have let me pull that trigger. I may have saved you that night, but you saved me too. My heart has been yours ever since. I don’t just mean my love. I mean the actual, functional, beating heart in my chest is yours. You’re...

“Listen to me,” I plead. “I love you. I will love you forever. Even when we’re nothing but bones in the ground, I will find you in the afterlife and cherish you like I always have. I will hold you and kiss you and fall asleep with you wrapped in my arms. I will spoil you and give you a wedding ring with my last name to match. I will buy you yachts and islands and mansions all over the world so you can feel safe. I will do all of this even if you fight me because you know better than anyone that boundaries have never stopped me. One day, only when you’re ready, I will fill you with my love again, and I promise I will do it so thoroughly you will forget all that pain you went through for me. You’ll forget about the secrets and the lies and how betrayed you felt when you found out the truth. I will chase away all your demons because you know I’m scarier than they’ll ever be. I’ll do everything for you until the only thing you know how to do is love me back.” I take a deep breath and wipe away her sorrow with my thumbs. “But I can’t do any of that if you leave me, Elena, so I am begging you to stay.”

“I’d rather chew glass than be friends with you. I’ll be damned before I let a Reeves tear apart my family again.” He lets me go, and this time, I grab him, shoving him against the exterior brick of the house. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Elliot chuckles. “It means the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and you remind me so much of Thomas. I wonder if you’ll end up with a bullet in the chest, too.” My brain short circuits, and now I’m the one breathing fire. “Keep my father’s name out of your mouth and get the fuck out of my house.”

“So how do I make it last an eternity?” “By remembering that a gilded cage is still a cage.”

Safe isn’t a place. It’s the people that love you.

Let me see all of you, the parts of you that you keep hidden under your scars.

“Are you wet, Elena?” he asks. I hesitantly nod. “Do you want me to touch you?” Sighing, I shake my head. “No.” He nods. “Good girl. You’re not ready for that.” His hand that was in my mouth tenderly cradles my jaw. “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?” “Then I’ll love you violently instead.”

“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. Do you understand me? If it comes down to a choice, you will choose me. I don’t give a fuck if it costs the remainder of your soul. You are mine and only mine.”

Her voice hoarse and quiet, she asks, “If we hadn’t met the way that we did…if you didn’t think I was your guardian angel, do you think you still would have fallen in love with me?” My first instinct is to say yes. But yes isn’t enough to describe the way our souls are intertwined. “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. My soul would love you if we lived on different continents and spoke different languages. My soul would be tethered to you across oceans and mountains and harrowing canyons as black as my heart. My soul would be yours if I pulled the trigger the night we met, because not even death could keep us apart. God couldn’t keep me from you, because God isn’t real, but you are, and that’s all the motivation I would have needed to find you.”

Bethany clicks her tongue. “Well? Open them! I’m leaving soon and I want to see you two open your Christmas presents from me before I go.” My eye twitches in Edwin’s direction, and he takes one for the team and opens his first. The three of us watch him carefully as he tears through the paper. Inside, a 5,000-piece puzzle that’s completely white, making it extra challenging. Edwin’s face lights up like the star on top of the tree. He shoves the pitiful attempt at a gingerbread house to the floor. It lands with a ‘plop’, and he immediately dumps out all 5,000 pieces of the puzzle and gets to work, exclaiming proudly that he'll finish it by New Years and starts giggling like old people do until he gives himself a coughing fit. Bethany turns to me. “Your turn, Christian.” With a deep breath, I tear into the small package. When I lift the lid of the black box, sitting against red tissue paper is a Christmas ornament. It’s a sleek black circle with a small golden plaque at the bottom with the year etched into it. In the center, a family photo that we all took together at the wedding. I lift the ornament out of the box and hold it up by the delicate golden ribbon. It spins, revealing a message etched onto the back. “Family’s First Christmas” I clutch the small ornament carefully in my fist and take two long strides across the room to Bethany, pulling her into a tight hug. “Thank you,” I whisper to her, quiet enough that only she can hear it, and when I finally let her go, I pla...

She yelps as I lean down to pick her up bridal style. She is my bride, after all. I carry her through the mansion, to the garage. Parked directly in the middle of the room is a pearlescent white McLaren 720S, and a custom license plate that simply says, ‘ANGEL’. “Christian, you didn’t!” She gasps as I set her down. “This is too much, you bought me a yacht two months ago!”

honestly I love that they both are pearlescent white with titles that reference her. consistency

I don’t know why she suddenly started having these nightmares. She hasn’t had them consistently since November. The worst part about not knowing what triggered them is that I have no idea how to stop them. I have no idea how to help her, and I hate feeling helpless when it comes to her. It's almost like I’m stuck on the opposite side of that glass cage from her. Reliving the worst few minutes of our lives right there beside her.

Dear Mister or Missus Judge, my name is Caroline. Miss Kelly said I have lived here for fourteen months, but I told her it feels like fourteen years, and I’m only four years old, so that’s a long time. My very first free period here, my class went to the arcade, and I tried to win a toy from the claw machine, but I was too small to see inside. I used all my tokens and didn’t win anything. A really tall man saw me in the arcade and asked what I was trying to win. I said I didn’t know because I couldn’t see! So he lifted me up and asked me to choose a toy. I picked the purple bunny because purple is my favorite color, and guess what? The man won Mr. Bunny on his first try! A few days later, I saw the man again and ran to him because I wanted to show him that I still had Mr. Bunny. Miss Kelly got mad at me for disturbing him. She said he was a very important person, and I shouldn’t bother him while he’s doing adult business. He said his name was Mr. Reeves and that I could show him Mr. Bunny whenever I wanted. I started carrying around Mr. Bunny everywhere so I could show Mr. Reeves that I was taking good care of him. Mr. Reeves and Mr. Bunny were my only friends. Mr. Reeves never brought his own friends, but one day, he had a whole bunch of people with him. One of them was wearing a purple dress. Her name was Elena. Elena said that she was just friends with Mr. Reeves, but I knew that Mr. Reeves like liked her. Now guess what? She’s Mrs. Reeves, just like I said from the sta...

Christian circles my wrist with his cold fingers. “I met Death.” I take my bottom lip in my teeth. “And?” Christian brushes a strand of hair back from my face, and looking deeply into my eyes, he whispers, “I told him to go fuck himself, because I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“I’m going to burn this fucking world to the ground just to get some goddamn peace.” I nod, looking up at him from under my lashes. “Let’s burn it together.”