I backed away so quickly that I slammed into the door and the knob dug into my spine.

Again, Lyla’s name rushed through my head. Panic gripped my heart, squeezing and pushing my blood through my veins faster than a freight train. My head started to pound. It hurt as if someone was stabbing me in my temple. Reaching up, I smoothed my palm over the side of my head. It was then that the images came. They smacked into me with the force of a hurricane, making my stomach turn and my breath seize.

Sarah’s face moved through my mind. Her expression was contorted, full of shock and fear. It was the way she looked when I walked in Michael Welch’s apartment and discovered her fucking him.

They jumped out of bed, throwing their clothes on like there was a fire, and then I remembered her trying to calm me down, but there was nothing… only the loud buzzing in my ears and pain in my heart.

Michael came my way. “Hey, man, listen, let’s talk about this.”

But I stopped him when I lodged a knife I hadn’t realized I was holding into the side of his neck. Sarah followed. My hands burned as I cut them into pieces, and blood soaked me and everything around me. As I passed a mirror in Michael’s hallway, I looked at myself and smiled sadistically.

But there was unknown DNA under my fingernails. Someone else had been there. It wasn’t me.

Then the memory of waiting outside Michael’s apartment building came back to me. I remembered waiting until I felt close to exploding. I remembered knowing what she was in there doing and finally breaking. I moved across the parking lot, accidently running into a teenager on a skateboard. I caught him before he fell to the ground, and my nails sank into his arm

“Hey, watch it, dude,” he called out as he rode away.

I gripped at my head as the memories kept moving through.

And then there was Carlos. The memories of fighting him in the laundry room—of smashing his head under the laundry press until I heard his skull cracking—of shoving his lifeless body into the dryer, setting the temperature at its highest setting, and walking away, leaving him to tumble and burn.

Those memories were followed by the ones of Miguel begging me to live, and Jose and his boys and how they’d cried like bitches when death was near. The way I’d choked them to death with my bare hands, and then strung them up to let them hang the way Scoop had.

The images attacked me over and over; beating into my brain until my stomach soured and nausea filled me. I’d done those things. I was the monster everyone said I was. I’d murdered Sarah and Michael; there was no mafia conspiracy. I’d never been set up. Then I’d murdered members of the Mexican Mafia like it was nothing.

I’d killed over a broken heart—over the death of my friend—and over Lyla. And even though I’d somehow blocked out the memories of those murders, I knew if it came down to it, I’d do it again for Lyla. Over and over again. I’d wear the blood of anyone who tried to hurt her on my hands proudly, and that thought made me feel even sicker.

But why had I killed Douglas?

He was never a threat to Lyla or me, yet there he was, lying on the floor like a piece of dead trash.

My hands shook when I looked down at them.

What was wrong with me?

I was obviously a very sick man.

I was totally unaware of my crimes. The monster in me had taken over completely in those moments. I was Jekyll and Hyde, and my darker side liked to come out and commit crimes I was clueless about. Those memories were buried deep inside of myself, and I wasn’t sure why they were starting to spill out of me like water.

Why now?

Why in that moment of complete and total happiness?

I’d decided when I was inside of Lyla in the shower that we were going to run away together. I knew that I couldn’t leave her—that I’d rather live life on the run with her. But that wasn’t possible now. I was dangerous. It wasn’t safe for even Lyla to be around me since I no longer trusted myself—I no longer even knew who I was.

“You’re X,” a deep voice whispered at my side.

Turning, I was ready to attack, but there was no one there. I rubbed at my face with bloody hands, sure that I was losing my mind. The voice continued to whisper—my alter ego—telling me what my next move should be. He told me to get rid of Lyla. He told me to cut her perfect flesh into tiny pieces and then to run, but I couldn’t listen to him anymore.

I had to protect Lyla.

As if I’d somehow summoned her, she was there. She gasped at the scene before her as she stood in the doorway of her living room. Her eyes moved over Douglas’ dead body, and then down at my hands. Her face was pale and twisted in shock and fear.