Page 143 of Brutal Revenge

“You like that, huh?” he grunts between pounds. “You like the thought of sending me into a murderous rampage.”

I don’t recognize the desperation rising in me. It’s blinding, and before I can swallow it down, I’m swamped by an orgasm so ferocious it sends Matteo free-falling with me.

Tears burn my eyes as he empties himself inside me.

They’re not from pain or euphoria.

They’re from locking on a hooded gaze over Matteo’s shoulder, deep in the orchard.

Chapter 46

Matteo

The wood chipper roars loud enough to shake the orchard. Limbs grind through the chute, splintering into mulch that sprays into the bin behind it. But instead of the smell of lemon bark and sap filling the air, blood and bone take its place. They cling to the mulch, coloring it as well as one of the workers’ faces shone when I arrived to make him pay dues for his penance.

Nico feeds the fool’s left shin into the machine. “I still don’t get it,” he shouts over the noise of his leg splintering into millions of pieces. “I thought Azra was fine with having your antics watched.”

I look toward the house, where Azra went an hour ago to freshen up for lunch, and grunt. “She seemed fine.”

I’m grateful we went for an industrial-sized chipper when the silence of its quick demolition rings in my ears.

“But?” Nico presses.

I glance down at the headless, limbless torso of the man who watched me squash Azra against the tree after the chase and make her come all over my cock, and again, a sense of calm washes over me.

It wasn’t the thought of being busted milking my cock of cum that turned Azra on.

It was everything the interruption would instigate.

The way she shooed away the admirer while still in a lust cloud announces this, not to mention the questions she asked me afterward.

We’d stayed in the orchard long after our game of chase ended, and long after my itch to kill weakened. With her head resting on my pec and our eyes facing the cloudless sky, she asked about my life. For once, I was genuinely interested in participating. I told her everything. How being the middle child made me feel overlooked, and that I acted out because I thought it was the only way to be seen. I even told her how I argued with my mother the day she died, and that I still blame myself for her death.

I’d been arguing with her about something I can’t even remember now. Something petty and childish. I noticed a handful of times she’d rub her temples like she had a headache, but I kept pushing, believing she was invincible.

She stopped talking mid-sentence, and her eyes went unfocused. Her hand slipped from the counter, and she swayed. I remember shouting her name as I sprinted to her side to catch her before she fell, but my help came too late. She died in my arms.

The doctors said it was a ruptured aneurysm. Instant, unpredictable, and unpreventable.

A freak of nature.

But try telling that to a son who watched his mother die right after he screamed at her.

Part of me still thinks if I’d just shut up, maybe she would still be here.

Azra said the same thing my brothers did when I confessed my guilt after our mother’s funeral. Aneurysms don’t wait for perfect timing, and her death wasn’t my fault. But she said it in a way that resonated with me on a personal level I can’t explain.

I believed her.

I’ll always regret the last words I spoke to my mother, but I don’t see it as a burden anymore. I won’t stop until I’ve done enough good tobe granted one final time in her presence. That can only be seen as noble, right?

Don’t look at me like that.

Yes, at my feet, there’s a dead body currently being fed into a wood chipper, but my mother always said I’d measure love by the extent of my jealousy.

For all we know, she’s smiling down at me now, proud of the man I’ve become.

I sure as fuck know I’m proud of him.