Chapter Thirty-Five Tyler #3
When Tobias gestures toward Russell, who’s glaring at him in rare warning, Russell turns back to me hesitantly before pushing out a stressed breath and lifting the tablet screen in his hands.
Grabbing it from him, my eyes flit down to see the familiar video feed from the hospital camera the day Alonzo shot Peter.
The footage stopped with Larissa appearing in the frame in the stairwell.
The sight of her now, knowing what I do, already the most brutal of blows.
Russell speaks up, sensing the crack it causes, one I’m not bothering to mask. “Tyler, we’re fucking reeling too, man. We all thought she was—”
“That’s my fault,” I refute, knowing no matter how far I go to explain it, they’ll never realize that I was so intent on my version of the truth that I manipulated them, too. They can’t possibly know I used techniques I’ve mastered in my lifetime to have them all thinking my way.
It’s my fucking evil. Not even my brothers are safe from me.
Justifying it by claiming it was to protect them isn’t enough.
I’m no longer worthy of being that for them.
Or of their blind trust. Who in the fuck am I anymore to believe my judgment is sound?
Welcoming the renewed burn of whatever is coming, I smash my finger against the screen to start the feed.
I see immediately that it’s the same footage I watched days ago.
Peter peeking out the clinic door just as Alonzo appears inside the stairwell from the exit door.
Peter turning and firing in surprise before Alonzo releases his own shot in self-defense.
Peter falling lifelessly to the floor. Larissa appearing seconds later, her voice barely audible but panic-stricken. “What the fuck have you done?”
Alonzo rushing her, her fighting him briefly before they both exit the clinic through the side door, leaving Peter bleeding out.
Carefully weighing my reaction, Russell slides his thumb along the bottom of the screen, forwarding the footage until Larissa bursts back through the exit door.
Coughing uncontrollably, she kneels and checks Peter’s vitals before pulling the door of the clinic open and shouting for help.
A second later, looking up, searching for, finding, and talking straight into the camera. To us.
“He’s breathing. The bullet went straight through his shoulder. Alonzo didn’t know Peter was here. I didn’t know he was tailing me when I called Alonzo to come. P-please believe me, I-I just wanted to see Ignacio before they left. Russell, please give this to Tyler. Please don’t let him think—”
Another coughing fit seizes her before she screams again for help from someone in the clinic, then looks back into the camera once more. Her last message the hardest-hitting, along with her declaration. “I love him, I—Th-this was an accident. Please have Julien explain.”
Julien couldn’t be reached for explanation because he’d been hunting Antony down since he escaped us the night of the correspondence dinner.
When all Julien’s attempts at capture before the raid failed, we made a last-minute decision to move in.
Though I never believed Larissa was with Antony, I never could pinpoint his involvement or place in her plan—if any.
Though Daniello had assured me the night we collided that she hates the motherfucker as much as he does, Antony remains a wild card.
A wild card that Julien is now hunting to the ends of the earth.
My guess now is that Larissa only planned to pull Antony into the equation if she had no other option. If I forced her hand.
“If you need more proof,” Russell says as I try to absorb the latest blow, “there it is.”
I didn’t. I have confessions and the look in her eyes from the days and weeks before.
The unspoken confessions I refused to let her voice with my bite and rejection of her genuine feelings, as I used them against her.
Fighting my own conflicting emotions in an effort not to fully fall under the spell she cast the second I laid eyes on her.
Purposefully blinding myself to how fucking good she felt.
Knowing, deep down, that every raw look she shot my way was underlined with hope, longing.
Refusing to have the faith she begged me for as I tortured her, malnourished her, fucked her roughly, and degraded her.
Treated her as less than human while becoming the monster she accused me of being.
All the while knowing she was every bit like me in makeup.
Made of something too hard to shatter, unless you allow someone close enough to penetrate.
She granted me that access, while I denied her to the very end.
Never allowing myself between blinks to examine or sort what those feelings consisted of.
Her intent so pure now, what declarations she managed to speak ringing clear in the aftermath.
“I’ve always wanted you.”
“I came for you.”
“I only wanted to get close to you!”
No lies detected.
To top it off, in an utter mix of cowardice and selfishness, I allowed myself to feast on what I could feel, just once, in that firelight. Reveling in the connection and escape before I blinked her out, cast her out to complete my mission.
In winning it, I lost the last salvageable piece of my fucking soul.
I’m lost in my racing thoughts as Larissa’s admission of love continues to sound in my ears, until Russell steps up to me, and I catch a flash of dread in his eyes.
The same trepidation I glimpsed during the car ride the day Delphine died as he raced me toward her.
A day he was forced to hear my heart’s deepest confessions while bearing witness to the most brutal hit of my life.
His countenance is the very same now, as if he’s watching me slowly walk back toward my own grave.
“What?!” I snap. “What?”
I brace myself for what’s coming as Russell steps away in his decision, jerking the screen from my grip, his menacing bark for Tobias: “This and anything else can fucking wait, Tobias. I fucking mean it.”
Russell’s adamance and defiance are rare, as is Tobias’s immediate and acquiescing nod, which makes it obvious that both are now protecting me.
“He’s been through enough,” Russell emphasizes icily as Tobias willingly takes his scolding, looking utterly lost. It’s when I recognize the change on the screen in Russell’s idle hand that I know they’re collectively masking another lit fuse.
Certain of it, in seconds, I’ve jerked the screen from Russell’s grip, managing to dodge them both to pull it up to view …
just before it’s ripped away way too late.
As recognition sets in, the fire that I thought had finished me off ignites me wholly.
These flames more caustic, burning hotter and higher while forcing me out of myself once more.
Blink. Black.