Page 54 of Stormhold

BELLE

Arkane could hardly wait for our car to come to a stop before he threw the door open and got out, his gun cocked and loaded, ready to take Timothy Walters’s life. There was nothing calm about him. In the time I had known him, he had always been composed and calculative, but never this. His gray eyes blazed with wrath, the expression like a cold predator that you’d never know when it’d strike—even the step he took was purposeful. Like it was only toward one goal. Death. I finally understood why they called him the Beast of the Twins.

The doctor did advise me not to walk, but something in me wouldn’t settle unless I saw it with my own eyes that Timothy Walters was dead. Somehow, Arkane didn’t complain when I told him I was coming along.

The pier was shrouded in twilight, the sky still a shade of peri-wrinkle blue. The frosty air felt like arctic air on my skin, laced with the smell and sounds of the ocean.

Jon stood by three slain bodies that looked cold and long dead, holding a short sword that was still dripping with blood. In the dark, his pale eyes looked like a haunted phantom, ready to kill more.

And Grayson was still hovering over a man, punching his skull into the ground. I was pretty sure that man was already dead, but Grayson wouldn’t stop. His eyes looked unfocused and rabid. Almost as if bloodlust had possessed him. I hoped someday someone would tame that anger inside him.

I had no clue how they made it out here first and had time to kill them, but somehow, they did.

I guessed they reserved Timothy Walters for Arkane.

Mikhail and his men stood guard while Arkane walked straight to Timothy Walters, who looked anything but cocky, as he trembled on the ground in his underpants, his face bloody and bruised. I didn’t know how Jon found him, but he did.

And from what I knew, there was no sign of the traitor with Timothy Walters. Just a few hired mercenaries to guard him as he tried to escape the city through the sea. But Jon caught him before he could, and sadly, those mercenaries had to be sacrificed to Jon’s and Grayson’s rage. I don’t even think they asked them questions before they killed them. All to satisfy their anger. But then, I wasn’t one to speak; we Valerians did have a similar code—Death before question.

As soon as Arkane’s shoes filled Timothy Walters’s field of vision, a whimpering cry passed his lips. “Just kill me,” he begged. “J…just kill m…me.”

A howling wind swept through as a low chuckle slipped out of Arkane’s lips. The sound felt so ominous that I felt it in my bones.

“You’re damn right I will,” Arkane promised.

Thirty-four minutes—that was how long it took Arkane to kill Timothy Walters. In the end, he was an unrecognizable bloody mush on the ground. I’d never seen anyone kill like that. He only used his fists and feet, but he still managed to tear open Timothy’s body and kill him from the inside out. It was brutally the worst way to die, and even a seasoned killer would lurch at the scene.

I felt nothing at all.

He wasn’t a good person, and his life would add no value to this world.

Arkane got nothing out of him, except that he did it all on his own, and it was revenge for his brother’s death. But we all knew he was lying, so Arkane continued his torment, not wasting his time relishing in his kill.

So if Timothy Walters was lying even in death, it meant death was coming for him either way.

Who could be so important that Timothy Walters would rather die at Arkane’s hands instead?

The only person I could think of was the man with evil eyes.

I didn’t know who he was, but one thing was for sure. His enemy was both Arkane and Killian, and he wanted the Twins, and he wanted it all to himself. Or maybe he and the traitor were working together, and the traitor wanted the Twins and was willing to sacrifice Killian to kill Arkane.

And the package was still missing. Timothy Walters mentioned that Killian was going to use it to blow up the city council, which Killian had no knowledge of. So it must be the evil eyes man’s plan, and if he planned something similar, the consequences would be dire. And whatever plan he had for it, it was going to be bulletproof, if today’s events were any indication.

“Oh, look who got here first.” Killian’s brassy laughter echoed from behind us. “Fucking hell, cousin. Fuck you,” he spat out. He sounded mad, terrifyingly so.

I turned to him, and everything in me froze as I met the eyes of the man I’d been hungry to see for the past thirteen years. I knew one day God would put him back into my life, and I promised I would be patient until that day.

And here he was in flesh and bone, the same eyes that haunted my nights for a long time.

Eyes so lifeless and dark that they looked like evil itself.

Killian walked over to Arkane, the evil-eyed man tagging behind him, and he slid me a curious glance before turning his attention back to Arkane. If he was affected by the state of Timothy Walters’s demise, he didn’t show it, and he wouldn’t. He was too smart for that.

My eyes couldn’t help but drop to his hands. The same hands that burned through my flesh for amusement, the same hands that forced me to watch my mother die, the same hands that touched me when I didn’t want them. I had already died a thousand deaths reliving that nightmare over and over again inside my head, and that one day I died altogether. Today, I’d put that girl behind me. My past doesn’t crumble me or rule over me anymore. But that didn’t mean I forgot.

I fisted my fingers, my nails digging into my palm. My hands itched to kill him this very moment, but they had six Surman agents with them, and the Stormholds weren’t on my side or theirs either. So unless I wanted to be dead tonight, I must refrain from making drastic decisions.

“You said it yourself, cousin.” Arkane grinned, washing Timothy Walters’s blood from his hands with a bottle of water Mikhail poured for him. “The first one gets the kill.”