HEATED REVENGE のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 81 - チャプター 90

CARLOS POVI enter the car, but the air inside is different. Thicker. Like something horrific sit itself between the seats, and refuse to leave.I look at Thalia.She’s curled into the corner of the backseat, not dramatically or theatrically, but in the particular way of someone who has made themselves as small as possible without admitting that’s what they’re doing. Arms crossed at the stomach, knees angled toward the door instead of toward me. Her eyes are fixed on her phone screen, but I’ve watched her long enough to know she isn’t reading anything. She’s just giving herself somewhere to look that isn’t me.My eyes find Greg in the rearview. Stoic, as always. Hands on wheel, looking straight ahead with his face like strong like carved stone.That’s what I like about him. The man might as well be a mute.“Drive.”He doesn’t protest. He just does.The city slides past as he drives. People walking around, restaurants and bars buzzling like everything is well and going. That’s the th

THALIA POV“Fight me.”Every head in the room turns to Carlos.I turn as well, sowly.“What?”He holds my gaze with that particular patience of him that's more of him waiting for you to act than reply. “Scared you’ll lose?”He questions which I know is a taunt. I shouldn't.I'm angry at both him and Marcus but the idea of punching him, fighting him, unknots something in my chest. Something that tells me fist fight is a good idea. “Sure.” I'm already squaring my shoulders before the word is fully out.“To the ring,” he says. “Weapons allowed. Until the other retreats.”I take the six steps that lead into the ring, already putting off my jacket. Nico passes me a glove which I neglect.I want to feel every pain. I think back at Marcus. He had access to reach me tonight. He could have called:bone call in advance, a warning: "Thalia, I need you to prepare yourself before you walk into that room" A text like that wouldn't make the pain hurt so much. I checked my phone a hundred times

I think about the knife still within reach.I can grab it and slit it into his throat. Watch him die now, rid myself of the conflicting ways he makes me feel. Like enjoying the kiss, hating the man I'm trained to kill got a bit hurt by my knife.Slashing his throat now will be considered as part of the fight, I think and it just makes me laugh. It's the most stupid thought I've ever had. I won't leave here alive. Not with his men surrounding me and definitely not with Damien that considers him family."You're not" Carlos says. His breathing heavy and hooded onto my body. Damien might be soft. Looking like the boy next door, with tattoos that aren't as glaring as others, plus the fact that he does smile. He can look quite less criminal but he's as lethal as them.Where others prefer violence and knife. Damien prefers poison, the type that'll kill you so slowly you'll beg for death.I rid myself of the murder. Apart from his present men, I want Carlos to know it's me when I kill him.

THALIA POV“Bye.” Greg’s voice is flat as he pulls up outside my building.I nod, unable to find the word back.The car pulls away and I stand on the pavement for a moment, the night air cold against my face, the city moving around me like nothing happened tonight. Like a man didn’t die beside my feet four hours ago. Like Marcus didn’t sit across a table from my enemy and smile his chess smile and say absolutely nothing to warn me.My phone buzzes.Marcus: We’re moving closer to bringing down Carlos’s name.I scroll up and down, click his name again. But nothing. That’s it. That’s all he sentI stare at it until the screen goes dark.*Moving closer? Four years of my life. Six years if I count from the beginning. Six years of grief, practices, patience, planning and doing exactly what he said, when he said it and how he said it. No improvising. Just complete- Trust the process. Trust me.And tonight he sat across from Carlos Terrius, the one whose name he spoke with venom every single

CARLOS. DAY ONE. 1AM Five hours since she left.I’m still at my desk, jacket off, the contract in front of me unread for the last forty minutes. The words stopped registering somewhere around the third paragraph. I keep reading the same clause and retaining nothing.My mind is elsewhere, circling around regret and anticipation.I shouldn’t have let her go home.Thalia is up to something bad. My mind has been thundering around that for a while.The thought arrives the same way it has every twenty minutes since Greg’s car pulled away. I'm not worried, not exactly. More like the unsettling feeling that I'm about to be double played.I’ve spent months studying, and the specific unease of knowing that Thalia idle is more dangerous than Thalia occupied.But I can’t cage her. Not yet. Not abruptly.She’s an eagle. If I cage her, she'll snap.I've to make her choose to land. If I chain her too fast, cut her freedom before she’s stopped noticing it being cut, she’ll snap so hard and so comple