Semua Bab MY TABOO STEP DADDY : Bab 21 - Bab 30

(CARLTON’S POV)Strong arms. A killer body. Chiseled to the nines. Wrap in an Armani suit, not expensive enough to bribe death. It doesn’t matter. He’s a groom for maggots now. ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, all I want to do is kill Yosef for you.’ I murmur, tracing the edge of Caleb’s coffin. He smells nicer dead than alive, oleander and cinnamon drifting from him.The night is stormy with heavy downpour and emotions. As rain pelts the earth, soldiers close in, dressed in black with matching umbrellas, faces numb as blank papers. They pay their respect: dip their heads, drop roses, mutter inaudibles, and the cycle continues until the line is exhausted. Only the wails of the Velvet Boys and the middle-aged woman, Lydia, carry through the howling wind. The cloud glitters with stars, and the full moon bleeds red, gazing an ethereal blue-purplish hue across the space.Caleb's picture beams at me from the frame. I can’t help but smile back, remembering how we danced off our drunken

(CARLTON’S POV)Who said demons don’t bleed should rethink that.Matter-of-factly, they bleed better than humans. Feel pain just like every living sack of meat and bones. And squirm like a wet, little pussy. “...Bunny,” Tristan convulses on the floor, fingers nimbling my feet scarcely. For a fleeting second, satisfaction floods my chest. I never get tired of watching Tristan suffer or causing him pain. And he never retires from obsessing over me. As the fight leaves him, my teeth chatter in panic. Hope I didn’t put much?Lydia said a teaspoon will induce internal haemorrhage: bleed, scream, and lose a kidney. But excess? I’m fucking sure I sprinkled more than a teaspoon. The thought sends hot doses of adrenaline into my system. Crouching down, I rummage through his coat and slack pocket, grazing the hard frame of his dick and the heat of his body. I bite my tongue as his scorching breath rains up my neck. “I-I wanted to show you I believed you… that’s why—”“You tried to cook

(TRISTAN’S POV)NOISE!!!So fucking loud. Hammering my skull like a sledgehammer. My ears, brain, bones, everything tolls until I hear nothing. “TRISTAN!” My eye flits open. White, hot light burns through my lids. Squinting, I blanket a hand over my face, before blindness kills me faster than the pain in my gut. Then something warm drops on my face. Not the clean kind. Wet. Spreading. Everywhere. Pain licks at my wrists. My sight stutters: ceiling, shadows, Lydia’s face, and the men scattered across the room. “Ahhh!” The heat eats into my skin. The sheets cling to my hand, slick with my own blood. “High the ventilator. Open the windows.”“I’m burning!” My voice fractures. “Take off my skin. It hurts!”I reach for the Glock on the bedstand to end the torment. The metal clicks, but a force yanks it from me. Lydia hurls the gun away, and I resist the urge to punch her. “It fucking hurts!” I tear at my shirt, fire pooling in my veins. Prison was hell, but this will break demons.

(CARLTON’S POV)“Swamp Thing was just a comic book," My voice comes out hoarse. "Until Abby Arcane got swallowed by the green."Shit. I'm talking to myself out loud, in the middle of the forest, while being hunted.Tristan was right, I'm losing it.The hounds bark far away, sniffing at shrubbery and tracking prints. Crickets chirp, frogs croak unseen, and crows caw in tree branches. A vampire bat hangs from a branch, bleeding a roosting bird to death. An owl glowers at me, and I flinch upon seeing rats the size of rabbits. The air is humid and still, with thickets of canopies cloaking any flicker of moonlight. Branches are snakes, leaves are ghosts, and I think the Mangrove beside Mom is breathing. Everything feels dead in the belly of the wild. Maybe it's my paranoia, or it's real? “Let’s make a run for it,” Mom whispers beside me. “Those demons are hunting us now. There might be… or are snakes. Let’s move forward before those dogs snuff us out.” The woods laid traps: thorns and

(TRISTAN’S POV)“HIKARU!!!” My voice cracks like lightning. The echo ricochets through thickets of trees, breaking apart a flock of birds, making the Akita’s whimper, and sucks the color from their faces. Hikaru freezes like a deer caught in headlights, Kori unsheathes his blade from his cane, and their men draw daggers. Their mien contorts into something ugly. Years of vendetta balling up to this very moment: Ducking behind barricades and shooting at one another. Blade slitting throats like pigs in a slaughterhouse. We’ve gone punch for punch. I drank his blood, and he drank mine. We've been at war for years over oil, territory, and pride. A blood feud that nearly destroyed both our families until the Godfather forced a truce.Because Kori is a MOTHERFUCKER!‘The oil will go fifty/fifty. Any fucker found trespassing is fresh meat,’ God-father, Romano, had said, seated with other family heads in the meeting room. I remember the blade slashing through my palm, signing in blood, st