Muriel's POV
The year I loved him most, my mother forced me to break up with Alaric Booth, so he threw her into the strip.
And the year I hated him most, I crippled his father and made him sign a confession.
That same year, a pregnant girl showed up on our doorstep.
“Heaven has already punished him by making him marry someone he doesn’t love. What more do you want?” she said.
I turned to Alaric. “Is that so?”
In the half minute he stayed silent, I saw everything I needed to know.
I dropped the iron bar to the floor and asked, “Which do you want, an abortion or death?”
Without hesitation, he looked at the bodyguard and ordered, “Make her lose the baby.”
Slapping him across the face, I demanded, “I want you to do it yourself.”
——
Alaric clenched his fists so tight that the veins stood out on his forehead. “Muriel, stop this.”
“Come on. Killing is just a small thing. After all, she’s someone else’s woman and child,” I said.
Janice Bacchus, who had been trembling with fear a moment before, now leaned arrogantly against him. Her skin was flawless and white, nothing like my hands. Mine were callused from knives and gun handles after years of fighting at Alaric’s side. It was clear he had sheltered her and kept her ignorant.
So ignorant that she brazenly provoked me. “Muriel, did you hear that? Alaric would never hurt me.” She smiled confidently. “You’ve been married to him for five years and still haven’t given him an heir. How dare you threaten the one who will carry on his bloodline? We’re trying to give you a way out—”
But then her words turned into a scream.
By the time Alaric came back to himself, Janice was on the ground with darts pierced in her belly and both knees. I leaned back in my chair, took a deep drag of my cigarette, and watched the woman bleeding on the floor.
“Looks like Alaric didn’t tell you I only move upward and hate stepping down,” I said. “I even crippled his father. So what’s that bastard in your womb compared to that?”
The bodyguard checked quickly and reported that Janice had miscarried.
“Is that so?” I said. “Then dig it out for me. I want to see what Mr. Booth’s bastard looks like.”
“Muriel!”
A cold, sharp dagger pressed against my throat, and Alaric’s eyes were red and terrifying. “Don’t let your madness loose on Janice. She’s not a beast like us! She’s already lost the child. Do you really have to be this brutal?”
The last time he had looked at me with that kind of murderous heat was when he found out my mother had forced me to break up with him because she disapproved of his methods. To keep me, he’d send my mother to the strip with that same look, and my mother had gone mad.
And the day I crippled his father, Alaric didn’t feel anger, only exhilaration. “Yes, Muriel. Just like me, crazy and bloody-handed. No one would say we’re mismatched anymore.”
And now he was back to falling for some pure-hearted angel?
My fingertips traced the edge of the knife, and I smiled. “I gave you the chance to do it yourself, and you refused. Since we’re husband and wife, I’ll take over. Look at your little lover now. Not only does she have nowhere to go, she can only lie there like a dog.”
“Oh, it seems like Mr. Booth wants to vent for his beloved. Then go on.”
Then the sound of a bottle shattering rang out.
I kept smiling and met Alaric’s eyes as I used a shard of broken glass to cut the skin at his elbow. The room was soon filled with the smell of blood. The sound of his sharp intake of breath and Janice’s scream sounded strangely sweet to me.
A few of Alaric’s men raised their guns, and the black barrels all aimed at me.
Despite that, I simply shrugged as if I didn’t care and kept moving my hand, inching toward an artery.
