Usurped my fiancé and filled the cracks in my heart with empty promises.

Surrendered her soul under the guise of choice.Īnd though I left the way Death usually does-silently, before dawn-it was never my intention not to return and collect.Harbinger of death, keeper of souls, frequenter of nightmares. Whether she knows it or not, she gave herself to me that night. Until I tasted her-the dewy essence of her supple skin, the tang of her arousal glistening on her own fingertips, the salt of her tears as I shattered the last vestiges of her innocence. Springtime in a world rife with death and destruction.Ī woman I scorned until I found myself blinded by a new obsession. Persephone to my Hades, as some used to call me.

Moral licensing I didn’t think twice about until the lines bled too fully for me to distinguish between them. I let the darkest wants live inside of me, manifesting through my obligation to an organization I joined before I knew what I was doing, allowing myself a pass because of the decency of my day job. Love the way it blossoms like a flower springing from the earth, igniting a compulsion like no other.Ī desperation only relieved by the feel of another’s heart pulsing beneath my fingerprints-the flutter delicate and innately human, petrified and struck stupid in my wake.Ī desire quelled only by bloodied hands and bodies mangled by them- my hands, the very pair sworn to an oath of healing. I learned I quite enjoy the taste of brutality on my tongue. He’d plucked me from the streets and promised a life of luxury, if only I could get my hands a little dirty.īut, like all other things, it snowballed out of control. Working for Rafael Ricci, the don of Boston’s-at one time-premier crime family was never supposed to be a permanent thing. Where the violence coded into my DNA could be satisfied, the parts of me aching for death and destruction sated. Somewhere I could go and not lose myself in the lack of absence of noise. Said my brain had wired itself to short-circuit under certain stimuli-sometimes, simply the existence of stimuli at all. My peers in college, and later my colleagues, dubbed it a psychological disorder. Learned to seek it out in times of chaos, a force to ground myself in. I fell in love with the innate stillness of it-the calm it provides, the secrets you can wedge into its depths. With each interruption, nurses entering to draw blood or family members coming to offer false moral support, my body craved the void. The kind found in sleepy hospital rooms, hidden between the dull, intermittent beeping of an electric monitor and the steady drip of an IV bag.

Sav r miller series