Obsession (Dangerous Love #1)

EPILOGUE

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HAWK

I sat there, hand over my mouth, making sure I didn’t make a sound.

They’d caught him.

Shane had freed him, and Harris’s gang had gotten their hands on him already. That’s why he’d stormed out like that. Of course, how stupid could I be not to realize that?

“You know what’s funny? You really thought you could get away from me. Where were you going to go?”

Harris leaned toward him and shoved his hand into Joshua’s hair, who was barely blinking now as his face was covered in blood, his wrists tied with rope behind the chair.

Harris was… unrecognizable. That sadistic, malevolent grin was not his. His hands were bloody, a sign that he was the one who’d done the damage to Joshua’s face in the few minutes he’d been there.

“Please...” was all Joshua could reply as the smirk on Harris’ face turned to pure, genuine rage.

He stood up and punched him in the face again, causing me to bring my other hand to my mouth as well. Joshua’s blood spurted from his nose and fell to the ground as he seemed unconscious for a moment. The force of Harris’ punch almost brought the chair down, but he was still holding on to Joshua’s hair.

The blow sounded like a bang, and I could have sworn I heard bones cracking. If he hit him like that a few more times, he would die.

Just like his brother had died.

“No problem, I’ll make you talk,” Harris said as he let go of him.

Joshua spat up a mouthful of blood and then groaned in pain as he fought to stay awake.

“Joshua, don’t be stupid. Just tell him what he wants to know. You know what he can do to you,” Mike spoke.

The look on his face was inappropriate because he was shirtless and had lipstick stains on his neck. They all looked devastated after the party, but they were there, sitting around Joshua like Harris’s personal guards.

Now I understood why Shane was going so hard against him. They’d never let on that Harris was their leader, not like that, but now I could feel the tension in the room through their posture.

“He doesn’t know, he’s never had the chance to find out.”

Harris had his back turned to me, and I didn’t see what he was doing until he turned to Joshua. He was holding a strange, sharp object that looked like a claw, but upon seeing it better I realized there were four of them, attached to brass knuckles.

First he pulled a black leather glove over his left hand, then, as he added the second item and balled up his first, only those fearsome claws remained.

Joshua seemed to have regained consciousness and began to stir when he saw them.

“No, please, Harris, please, I swear I didn’t...”

Harris lunged at Joshua and ripped his T-shirt, then ran his claws across his chest. Blood spurted out and Joshua howled rabidly in Harris’s hands as Jay and Mike grabbed his arms to hold him down.

“You thought you could play with me, motherfucker? With what I love? You thought you could get your revenge through Katherine, huh? I told you then that you’d suffer a much more painful death than Marcus, didn’t I? You didn’t listen.”

As Joshua screamed, Harris reached out to Ty, who handed him a small bottle of milky liquid, which he poured directly over the wound, and all hell broke loose.

I turned my head, unable to watch any longer. Joshua’s screams sounded like pure agony as Harris pressed his hand over his mouth until his jaw was all crooked. His wound was foaming and smoking as the torn skin began to disintegrate. The fumes reached me and I immediately felt like I was going to puke because it smelled like rotting flesh.

God, it was acid. Acid poured over a bleeding wound.

As Joshua seemed to lose consciousness from the pain, Ken approached him with a bottle of water and poured it over his chest. It didn’t numb the pain, but it seemed to have stopped the decomposition momentarily. Four horrible cuts remained.

I could tell from Joshua’s face that it was the most excruciating pain a human could endure, because he began to cry and beg as Harris exposed his mouth.

He was the one who had stalked me for days, like a psycho. He had invaded my house and scared me, wanting revenge by using me in a cruel way. He had threatened and beaten up my friend, he had also threatened his sister… he had done so many things and probably much more, but it was hard to think about all that while I watched him. His face wasn’t the same. He wasn’t the same asshole that had attacked me.

He was in Harris’s claws now – literally – and he knew what that meant.

His head fell forward as he whimpered. His flesh was now browning around the cuts, which weren’t as deep as I thought they would be, but I guess that was the point. He didn’t want to kill him yet. He wanted to inflict unimaginable agony on him.

Harris pulled him by the hair to turn his head back and showed him the bottle with whatever it contained. Joshua began to shake and move as Harris held the bottle over his eye.

“No, please, please ...”

“What were you going to do with her? What were you going to do with the photos?

His voice was so… cold. He wasn’t even angry anymore, because he seemed to have turned into a different person. Joshua’s suffering didn’t affect him in the slightest, he probably could have ripped his heart out without batting an eyelid.

Joshua started to cry when the acid was so close to his eye.

Harris grabbed him by the jaw to keep him still.

“Nothing, man, I swear. It wasn’t me. Someone ma ...”

One drop was all that poured into his eye, but that was all he needed. Jay covered his mouth with both hands. He was wearing gloves and didn’t feel when Joshua bit him.

I covered my ears and wanted to leave because it was too much for me. That agonized howl would haunt me forever.

Joshua fought with all his strength, but Harris grabbed him so tightly by the neck that even his screams were silenced.

“You only have one eye left, Joshua. You better answer my questions.”

The coldness in his voice was something I would never forget. I couldn’t look at Joshua or his face because his eye seemed to have melted into his skull.

He fainted for a while and Harris stepped away from him as Ken threw a bucket of water directly into his face. He woke up with a violent jolt and began to shake, but not because he was cold.

Harris had blood up to his wrist and it didn’t seem to bother him. He calmly circled Joshua until he regained consciousness and began to whimper in pain.

That’s when I realized I was crying too, petrified by what I was seeing. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t leave, no matter how much I wanted to. I couldn’t stop him, could not approach him, because I was afraid that the same gaze would be directed at me. He would have asked someone to take me away so he could continue his torture.

He couldn’t see me where I was standing because the light was only shining on them. I was camouflaged by the darkness and the huge barrel.

It smelled of wood, wine and death.

They were standing on what looked like a metal platform, barely a few inches high, but the way Joshua’s blood flowed through a small sewer maw told me he wasn’t the first one being tortured there.

“Harris, please...”

He could barely hold his head up.

“Don’t call me that,” the demon growled, “you have no right to call me that.”

Joshua raised his eyes.

“Hawk,” he managed, looking at him with his only eye.

Hawk .

No one had ever called him that. He’d never told me, and I was too confused to understand where it came from until I remembered he had a Harris Hawk tattooed on his chest. He was Harris Hawk.

That’s what the glove was. Eagle claws.

This wasn’t new to him. It wasn’t the first time he was doing it. “You can do whatever you want to me after this, but let me talk for a minute,” Joshua pleaded as he gasped.

“I’m not listening to your lies, Joshua, I don’t have time for that,” he leaned over him. “You have one chance to tell me what you wanted to do to her, and maybe I’ll consider giving you a quick death.”

“You can kill me all you want, but it won’t save her.”

Harris wanted to strike again, but Mike held him by the arm, albeit quite reluctantly.

“Listen to him for a moment, he’s too persistent.”

Harris gritted his teeth and pulled his arm out of Mike’s grip, then took a step back.

Joshua seized the moment and began to speak.

At first I wanted to take her, I admit it. The second day I wanted to take her out of school just to spite you, to get back at you for beating me. I wasn’t going to hurt her, but then a guy came up to me,” he paused, coughed and gritted his teeth.

I didn’t even want to imagine the pain he was feeling as he could barely speak.

“What guy?” Harris asked mockingly, not believing anything Joshua said.

“I didn’t see his face. He caught me and blindfolded me. He drugged me, then some guys beat me up.”

Harris began to laugh.

“That’s the dumbest lie I’ve ever heard in my life. Come on, Joshua, be smart. Make up something more interesting.”

“They asked for every detail.”

“Every detail about what?”

“About you.”

Harris turned to him.

“About why I hate you and why I wanted to take the girl you like. I told them everything, and they made me kidnap her from school and manipulate Olsen into helping me. I’m not crazy enough to rape an innocent girl just to get back at you. Yes, I hate you for what you did to my brother, but… I know he deserved it. I didn’t stop Marcus from doing it because I was afraid of him, but I didn’t...”

I noticed Jay clench his fists as V’s mention drew the anger out of him too.

“That’s it?” Harris asked, completely unmoved. “Are you done?”

Joshua looked at him, exhausted.

“Why did you kill the guy in the square?”

A shiver ran down my spine at the mention of Tristan Reece.

Joshua shook his head as he seemed to find it hard to even breathe.

“It wasn’t me.”

Harris grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back.

“Seems pretty fucking convenient that a guy I almost beat up went flying off a building.”

“It wasn’t me. It was them, don’t you get it? They follow your every move. They’re following her so closely, I’m sure they know where Katherine is better than you do right this second.”

I couldn’t react to Joshua’s statement as Harris proceeded brutally, sinking his claws into his shoulder but not adding the acid as well. Joshua swallowed his own screams as Harris covered his mouth.

“They, they, who the fuck are they? Tell me,” Harris screamed.

“I don’t know! I would have told you if I knew.”

“And they manipulated you so easily?” Ken interjected.

When Joshua didn’t answer, Harris sank his finger into his wound and made him scream as loud as his lungs would allow. Even the wine bottles rattled in unison with my sanity. The roar would probably have been heard all the way upstairs if the music hadn’t drowned it out.

“They threatened to kill me if I didn’t help them. I didn’t think much of them at first, thought they were just some crazy enemies of yours,” he replied.

Harris grabbed him by the throat and choked him off. His jaw was clenched so tight he looked monstrous.

“And you thought it would be fun, didn’t you? Messing with me.”

“Big mistake,” Mike commented, and I couldn’t believe he was amused at that moment.

Joshua gritted his teeth and fought for consciousness as Harris let go of him. The blood flowing from his eye had reached his mouth.

“There are two of them. Two of them leading the rest. They have planned everything down to the last detail, and they’re just getting started. One of them had been in Katherine’s house, not me.

“Give us a fucking detail, it’s impossible not to have noticed anything,” Jay butted in.

“I was high the whole time, and they had ski masks on. Only one of them was talking, I didn’t hear the other one.”

Harris laughed as if amused by Joshua’s words, but there was no amusement in the tone. Joshua looked at him again.

“I really liked her at first, you know? The first day I saw her. That night I just said she was hot and you freaked out like you always do. You were the one who made me attack her the next day because you beat me up like she was already yours.”

Joshua grinned with his bloodied teeth as Harris clenched his fists.

“You know what? I’m sorry I won’t be here to see you go crazy with fear, because whoever’s after you wants her now. They’re smart, strong, they’re playing you and you’re too stupid to realize it. I was just a puppet and you fell for it.”

Harris grabbed his throat and was about to strike again, but Joshua’s sadistic grin stopped him.

He spat out another mouthful of blood, “Do it if it helps you, you monster. Kill me, then go back and tell her you’ve stopped the danger, that you love her and will protect her from anything.”

“Shut up!”

Harris’s whole body shook as Joshua continued to grin even as he choked.

“All these years you’ve been stepping on everyone’s head without caring about the consequences. I told you the day would come when the pain you caused would come back to bite you.”

Harris said nothing more, but he was shaking so hard Joshua moved with him.

“Where is she now, Hawk? Are you sure she’s safe?”

“She will be very soon,” he said in that cold tone, then his fist met Joshua’s throat.

By the time I realized it wasn’t just another blow, it was too late. Joshua’s face turned to stone, and blood spurted around Harris’s hand, splattering his face.

He struck him with the claws. He sank them into Joshua’s neck.

I pressed my palms to my mouth so hard my jaw ached and leaned against the barrel to keep from collapsing.

The life was quickly drained from Joshua’s remaining eye. Blood flowed over his chest and down Harris’s arm to his elbow. A pool formed around the chair.

With a brutal yank, he pulled out his claws and ripped at his neck.

His head fell forward and he stopped moving, but the blood kept flowing….

Flowing…

Flowing…

I turned and clenched my fist over my mouth, clinging to the last drop of sanity I had left in me.

“Why did you do that, Harris? What if he was telling the truth? We could have gotten more out of him,” Mike said.

“Nothing is true. It was him all along,” the voice boomed.

It wasn’t my boyfriend’s voice, it wasn’t the voice that told me he loved me.

I dared to look at him again. It was not the face of the boy who had cried in my arms at his mother’s grave.

I could see the tattoo with my initial so well, but I could no longer connect it to the moment he had made it. I couldn’t grasp that this had really happened and that the man with the bloodied hands and face was the same one. And the truth terrified me, it tore my heart apart to realize that this was his real face.

Without meaning to, my eyes fell on Joshua again as he lay there, his neck quartered and bleeding like that of a sacrificed animal. It shook me to the core.

Harris pulled out the fearsome claws and threw them on the ground, the sound they made making me wince.

All that was left was the glove, dripping blood.

He didn’t take it off, but lit a cigarette and started smoking it furiously while looking at Joshua.

A memory came to mind and materialized before my eyes.

I had seen this picture somewhere.

The tall, massive body, the leather glove, the cigarette…

Now it had a face.

A whimper caught in my throat as I forgot to breathe.

“What should we do with him?” Ty asked, far too calmly.

“We’ll deal with it tomorrow. I have to get back to Katherine.” I trembled when I heard my name on his lips.

He didn’t finish the cigarette, he stubbed it in his fist and the smoke slipped through his glove.

Before I realized it, I started moving, because just the thought of facing him made me want to howl.

I ran up the stairs, my footsteps unheard because I was not wearing shoes. As I stepped into the cold night air, I allowed myself a few seconds to catch my breath as I rested my palms on my knees.

It couldn’t be him… no. It couldn’t be the same man.

I gasped.

I’d forgotten the night at Decepticon Fast Food, the creepy guy who’d entered the store a few minutes before all hell broke loose, the fear I’d felt, and the way he’d watched me.

The events of that night had triggered the move.

It couldn’t be him.

I refused to the core to believe it, to think that we had not seen each other for the first time when I thought.

That he had been playing with me all this time, with my life, until he had me exactly where he wanted me.

I had to get away.

I started to run until my feet took me into the parking lot, past a few people who were too drunk to notice me, then gasped as I realized I had no means of transportation. Who was I supposed to…then I saw his fucking car camouflaged in the darkness.

I didn’t have a key, but I knew exactly how to start it if it wasn’t locked.

I ran over and yanked the door open, crying with relief when it opened.

I got behind the wheel and tried to access the hidden monitor, but my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn’t control my fingers to press the logo.

I looked at my palms through the darkness, and the stream of tears shook my whole being.

I am a criminal.

He had told me. He had told me so clearly, so simply, and I had closed my eyes and my mind because I only saw what I wanted to see and only heard what I wanted to hear. I had labeled him a protector and killer of evil to make myself feel better, to find an excuse for how much I loved him. I had fallen in love with a cold-blooded murderer. A criminal who tortured, who didn’t bat an eye at the pain and agony he inflicted, who grinned as he tore into flesh while his victim begged him to stop.

I swallowed my stupid tears, full of guilt and bitterness, and managed to start the car and grab the steering wheel. I was shoeless, but managed to reach the pedals as I pushed the chair forward.

The headlights lit up and caught the attention of a few people, but I stepped on the gas.

I was going so fast that I barely had time to turn around and avoid colliding with the other parked cars. My heart stopped beating until I found myself on the road again.

It wasn’t the car he’d given me, it was a better one. The right car to rid you from the devil or kill you.

I stepped on the gas and watched the numbers on the screen skyrocket before my eyes. When I reached 250 miles per hour, the speed became pure poison. Just what I needed.

There wasn’t much traffic, so I drove without a destination until the darkness swallowed me up again and I found myself on the same road as last time.

Before I knew it, I’d left Seattle as the meter neared 300 miles per hour with the euphoria of danger flaring in my drug-fueled, drunk and terrified veins.

I had no idea where I was going, but all I knew was that I needed to put as much distance between me and Harris Stone as possible.

Logical thinking was no longer the order of the day. I didn’t know how to react or deal with the disaster. I was playing with my own life and was aware that if I lost control of the car, it could all be over at any moment. I could still feel his touch, his breath, his kiss. I had been so close to giving myself to him, so fucking close… The need to kill had been stronger for him. The thirst for blood had been stronger than his desire for me.

I swallowed down a lump that hurt my throat and opened the window to let the cold air in. It hit my ear and froze my skin instantly, and at that moment I allowed myself to take my foot off the gas.

It had been the worst idea to close my eyes for a second and breathe, because when I opened them, it was too late.

I screamed and slammed on the brakes. The car reacted accordingly and stopped, but I had gotten way too close to… him.

A man was sitting in front of a car that had stopped in the middle of the road, his headlights shining towards me.

It was the same Lamborghini Urus that I could recognize anywhere, even in the darkness. I could have sworn he had overtaken me earlier, but I had not noticed.

The man was getting closer, and I tried to start the car again and back up, my hands shaking on the steering wheel and buttons while my heart pounded in my ear.

God, he was telling the truth.

Joshua was telling the truth.

He was innocent, and my true devil was close to me now. I couldn’t even see his face because he was wearing a ski mask.

As the engine vibrated and I stepped on the gas pedal, a horrible sound pierced my eardrums and I screamed out.

The car shook.

The shot sounded like a thunderclap and my heart exploded in my chest. Another followed and the car shook again. Red lights lit up on the dashboard as the car indicated a malfunction, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but when I stepped on the gas again, the car rumbled.

He’d shot out the tires.

A fourth shot and a fifth, all into the front wheels, which he completely destroyed to make sure I could not drive away.

I wanted to get out of the car, but what good would that do? He would kill me on the spot.

I watched him as he approached without haste. His gait was that of a predator that had cornered its prey after playing with it for days, but the fun was over.

Joshua had died, he had lost his puppet.

He wore a black leather jacket and was massive, tall and monstrous. I wished I could see his face so I could know who was about to be my executioner.

I snapped out of the trance when he reached the car, and I tried to crawl into the other seat, but he reached his hand through the open window and grabbed me by the arm.

I started to struggle and scream, all to no avail. Everything that had happened tonight, everything I’d used, everything I’d seen, was at peak performance at the last moment of my life, and I surrendered to exhaustion as I kicked and screamed as loud as my mouth would allow.

He opened the door and pulled me out of the car, then turned me around and held me from behind with one arm around my neck and the other holding my arms behind my back.

“What happened, wild angel ? Did your wings break?” Had I gone mad? Probably, because all I could hear was Harris’s voice. He grabbed me by the throat with his large palm and pushed my head back until I could hear his breath in my ear.

“You should have listened to my warnings.”

I blinked, fighting for clarity because my mind felt like it was glued shut with thumbtacks. I gritted my teeth in his grip, then a bright light blinded me, and the familiar sound of powerful engines pierced the night. There were many of them, and I could see them closing in like a pack of beasts.

The ground beneath my feet shook, and the devil growled near my ear as the bright light mixed with the darkness, but the latter won, as it always did.

I could feel it in my bones. Hell was getting closer and closer.

Before I lost consciousness completely, he pushed me forward. I stumbled and couldn’t catch myself before I fell and hit my head on the concrete. I winced in pain as the sounds around me began to fade and my heartbeat became louder. The lights went out and my blood pressure skyrocketed. I suddenly felt cold all over, which felt so wrong since I was in the center of the inferno.

I couldn’t tell how long I lay there until someone picked me up. The same voice called my name and a cold hand touched my face.

I managed to open my eyes and this time I saw his face, the face I loved so much and the face that drove me mad.

The face that went by many names, but I only knew the one he wanted to introduce me to, as he had probably lied every step of the way.

A desperate, horror-crazed Harris. He was on his knees as he pulled me into his arms. Cars drove past us like in a video game, like lightning in a devastating storm, while others clustered around us, forming an impenetrable shield.

“Don’t let him get away,” he shouted as his body trembled against mine, “it’s going to be okay, baby. You’re going to be okay,” he whispered in a desperate voice.

He was shaking even more than I was.

I didn’t believe his lie a second time.

But I blacked out before I could let him know that things would never be okay again.