**Chapter Twenty: He is worse**

**Sam's POV**

Rachel's eyes were still open.

That was the thing I couldn't stop looking at. Not the blood, not the hole at her temple, but her eyes. It was open, fixed on a spot on the ceiling like she'd seen something up there worth staring at forever.

One second ago, she was alive, angry, breathing, pointing a gun at me.

The next she was… gone.

The phone she had snatched from me was still clutched in her lifeless fingers, the screen cracked now, smeared with red.

Tears slid down my face, slow and silent at first, then faster. I remained frozen, staring, while the memory of the last few minutes crashed over me in jagged pieces: I had come for the phone. That was all. Rachel hadn’t gone to the gathering. She caught me with my hand inside the cabinet. Her eyes had narrowed the moment she saw what I held.

“I know what’s on that phone,” she had said, voice low and dangerous. “I don't know why you want it, but you have to give it back to me.” She had ripped it from my grasp during our argument. Then she ran through the living room, out the door, into the hallway of the building. I had chased her up to the sound of her footsteps fading.

Then the crack.

A single, sharp crack that stopped everything.

My knees finally gave out. I dropped beside her, hands hovering uselessly over her body, too afraid to touch. The tears came harder now, choking me. Something grabbed my arms from behind and hauled me up and back, and my body reacted before my head did. My palm connected with a jaw. The sound of it was louder than I expected, louder than the gunshot had been, and my hand stung like I'd hit a wall instead of a face.

"Why." The word came out in pieces. "Why would you… she was just a girl. She wasn't part of this."

He turned his head slightly and spoke to the men behind him in a tone that left no room for argument.

“Take her.”

His guards moved immediately, reaching for me. I jerked away and hit Adrian again, this time with both fists against his chest.

“You’re a Devil. You’re worse than them all. You're worse than Diego. She was never part of their world!” I ripped the diamond ring from my finger and flung it at his face. It struck his cheek and clattered to the floor.

“I never asked for a bloody contract. I never asked for bodies. Rachel was innocent!”

His hand shot out and closed around my wrist like a vise. He yanked me against him so hard the air left my lungs, his face inches from mine. “There is never a day without blood being shed in the mafia. Do you understand me?”

I tried to pull free, and drop back to Rachel’s side, but his arm locked around my waist like iron.“Don’t be stupid enough to leave fingerprints on a corpse,” He said and lifted me onto his shoulder.

“Secure the perimeter. Wipe every camera in a three-block radius. Burn the building down.”

“Put me down, you monster."

—————

Gold light finally came sideways through the windows, after ten minutes of starring into the clouds, a flight attendant wheeled in a tray.

I looked at the tray for a while, then stood up and swept it onto the floor. A crystal glass hit the wall and burst into pieces small enough to catch the light like scattered glitter. I tore the freshly laid clothes down the seams, threw the jewelry hard enough that a chain snapped against the window.

Rachel used to run through rain with me until our shoes filled up. I used to braid her hair before school because she couldn't get the sides even. I told her once, years ago, half joking, that nothing would ever touch her as long as I was around.

The door clicked open, the flight attendant greeted someone and I heard footsteps walking out, and a familiar one stepping closer.

Adrian… The monster himself.

He walked through the wreckage without looking at it once, his boots finding clear spots on instinct, until he was standing close enough that I had to tilt all the way back to find his face. Even folded into myself against the wall, I felt it, the size of him blocking out what was left of the window light.

"Give me your hand."

I turned and looked away instead.

He crouched. His dark, expensive cologne, filling the space before he did. "Your hand, Samantha. Do not make me ask the third time."

My pulse was going hard enough that I could feel it in my throat. I turned to face him "I don't take orders from you."

His fingers closed around my wrist and pulled me up and open before I could pull back, and the ring, the one I'd thrown at his face an hour ago, slid back onto my finger with a small click that felt bigger than it should have.

"Never take it off again."

I reached with my free hand to rip it straight back off, but he quickly caught both wrists in one grip this time and pinned them to the wall above my head, and that was when the height of him actually landed on me, the way his shoulders blotted out the window, the way my head barely cleared his collarbone, the way I had to strain up just to keep his eyes.

He leaned down until his mouth grazed the shell of my ear.

"You can hate me." His breath warmed against my temple. "Scream. Break every glass on this jet. Curse my name till your throat gives out. This stays on your finger."

For a while there was just the engine hum and my own breath going ragged against the steady rise and fall of his chest, close enough I felt it more than heard it. Whatever had been anger a minute ago had turned into something with more weight to it, something pressing in the same way his shadow did, warm in a way I didn't want it to be.

His grip then eased, his fingers found a piece of hair stuck to my wet cheek, and tucked it back slow, like he had all the time in the world, like Rachel wasn't three time zones behind us cooling on someone's marble floor

Then he straightened, and cold air rushed back into the space where his body had been.

"The maids will see to you."

He was almost to the door when he stopped, one hand on the frame, and looked back at me over his shoulder. His eyes gave away nothing.

"We'll be here a while."

The door shut.

I sat there with the ring cold on my finger and my wrist still marked pink from his grip.

Wait… Where was the phone?

Had he taken it off her before he carried me out? Did he already know what was on it?

A some small, unwelcome part of me was more afraid of what *a while* meant than of anything I'd left behind on that apartment floor.