My Fiance’s Mistress Tried to Strip – Search Me Chapter 06

My Fiance’s Mistress Tried to Strip – Search Me Chapter 06

One of Mother’s men put the knife in my hand without being asked. 

It was small. Silver handle, clean edge. The kind of thing you’d miss if you didn’t know to look for it. 

Ilaria saw it and started moving backward on her hands, dress dragging across the floor. She’d been crying since Dante walked in–real crying now, not the performance from earlier, mascara down both cheeks, nothing left of the afternoon’s careful presentation. 

“Wait-” Her voice broke. “Wait, please, I didn’t–I wasn’t going to actually-” 

I crouched down in front of her. 

She flinched when I raised the knife. I didn’t touch her face. 

“You loved this dress,” I said. “Keep it.” 

The blade went in at the neckline and I pulled it 

straight down. The velvet split clean, all the way to the hem, and the dress fell open around her. Twelve thousand dollars of someone else’s taste, ruined 

in about two seconds, in front of everyone who’d watched her take it. 

She made a sound I won’t describe. Grabbed at the fabric. Couldn’t do anything with it. 

I stood up and turned to Nico. 

He was still on his knees–his father hadn’t told him to get up, and apparently some part of him had figured out that staying down was the only option he had left. His hands were on the floor in front of him, blood from the broken glass drying on his palms. 

One of those hands had touched my face. 

“There’s still the matter of the engagement,” he said, 

without looking up. Trying to find any angle that worked. “Our families made an agreement. If you want to honor that-” 

I stepped on his right hand. 

Not fast. I let the heel find the spot and then I let my weight settle onto it, slow and deliberate, until I felt something shift underneath. 

He made a strangled sound and tried to pull away. I didn’t move. 

“This hand,” I said, “touched my face. Remember the feeling.” I held it another second. “That’s the interest on your arrogance.” 

I stepped back. 

He curled over his hand, shoulders shaking, whatever was left of his composure finally gone, Ilaria was still on the floor behind me, holding the ruined dress against herself like it could do anything for her now. 

I looked at both of them for a moment. 

Then I set the knife down on the counter. It made a small, clean sound against the glass. 

I turned to Mother. 

“Killing them is too easy,” I said. “I want them alive.” 

She looked at me over the rims of her sunglasses. Said nothing. Waited. 

Blood was too quick.

I wanted something that lasted–something they’d wake up to every morning for the rest of their lives, something that couldn’t be undone or recovered from or explained away at a dinner party.* 

Death was an exit. I wasn’t giving them one.* 

“I have something in mind,” I said, Mother almost smiled. 

“I thought you might,” she said.