17. Chapter Seventeen — Carlotta #2
I inhale raggedly, a sob bubbling up and escaping me.
A second follows and then another until I’m gasping, trembling with the lack of air running through my head, unable to breathe properly.
It feels like somebody is sitting on my chest, crushing my ribcage and chest cavity with their meaty hands, intent on stopping my lungs from filling up and turning my bones to nothing but dust.
A large hand lands on my upper back, between my shoulder blades, rubbing in small circles. “Breathe, Carlotta. Just breathe.”
I raise my eyes, peering at Cassiel through tear-spiked lashes.
“In and out. Follow my breathing. In…”
I flare my nostrils, greedily sucking in a pocket of dank scented air.
“Good girl,” Cassiel praises, hand still moving over my back. “Now out.”
Pursing my lips, just as he does, I empty my tired lungs, before repeating the process. I search his face for something, anything, but the lines bracketing his eyes tell me everything I need to know.
This isn’t a dream or a fucking nightmare.
It’s real. In order to find out what really happened to Cristiano, I have to become a member of The Thirteen and the only way to do that is…
“I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this,” I repeat in a harried whisper, rocking back and forth, knocking Cassiel’s touch from my body as the cold concrete bites at my flesh through my thin leggings.
When my teeth begin to chatter, the lower portion of my body beginning to go numb, Cassiel slips a hand beneath my arms, forcing me to my feet. “Up you get, Carlotta. You’ll catch your death if you sit there any longer.”
“I can’t!” I say again, a second lot of bile threatening to burst from my mouth. “I can’t take an innocent life, Cassiel. I can’t. It’s not right. It’s inhumane. It’s—”
“I’m fucking innocent!” yells Alex, his chest rising and falling at a rapid rate. “I never touched her, I swear! Untie me, sweetness, and give me the gun. I’ll get us both out of here and—”
“Shut the fuck up!” I shout, gripping my head with my hands, fisting the strands of my hair until my scalp stings with the force. It’s impossible to think. It’s too loud, too dark, too small in this space. Everything is closing in on me.
Please, dear God, let this nightmare end.
“I can’t!” I scream. “I can’t fucking kill you!”
Pure, undiluted fear races up and down my spine, paralyzing my entire body.
Silver stars dot behind my eyelids, a second panic attack on the horizon, my heart beginning to gallop in my chest again. The whole room tilts on its side and I feel as if I’m about to fall off the end of the earth, my legs giving away beneath me, my—
BANG!
I flinch at both the sound and the spray of something wet splattering across my face.
Alex slumps forward in front of me, a stain of ruby red beginning to seep through his once white shirt, swelling larger and larger, the tear in his button-up showcasing the perfect hole directly above his heart space.
A hysterical sob bursts from the depths of my throat. “What—”
I turn my head slowly, my eyes taking in the sight of Cassiel standing stock still, feet shoulder width apart, eyes wide with the handgun held out in front of him, pointer finger still resting on the trigger.
If he feels my gaze on him, he doesn’t show it.
Instead, with a calm, cool demeanor only someone trained in the field of murdering people could possess, he carefully slides the safety latch on with the pad of his thumb.
Tucking the gun into the waistband of his jeans, he lifts the hem of his black henley, allowing me a glimpse of the eight pack which lays beneath, flexing and shifting with the movement as Cassiel wipes his face clean of—
I vomit again, stomach contracting painfully, nothing but pure bile and acid burning its way up my throat, because his blood is coating Cassiel’s features.
Blood of the dead man slumped in front of us, that he so easily wipes away, dropping the hem of his shirt and then reaching to make a grab for my hair.
Coaxing the strands into a makeshift ponytail, he rubs the palm of his hand up and down the length of my spine again, a series of supposed to be soothing noises escaping past his lips.
“Shush, Lottie. It’s okay. Deep breaths, remember?”
I try to do as he asks, but the stench of ripe blood and dank air don’t mix, sending another violent wretch through my body.
Cassiel doesn’t pull back or wince at my body’s reaction. He stays where I need him, beside me, a comforting presence that I lean into when I’m finally finished vomiting my insides up.
“You just—” I gasp wetly, trying to get my breath. I swallow, desperately wishing for a bottle of water to rinse out my mouth. “We just—”
Killed someone.
Cassiel nods once, his hazel eyes meeting mine.
His voice pitches low, hands still twined in my hair. “Listen to me. It has to look like you killed him, Lottie. Otherwise, it’s a-a fail, and you won’t be initiated in. I need you to take this.”
I glance down to the gun in his surprisingly steady hands.
My lower lip trembles. We’re standing in this basement with a dead man. A fucking dead man and Cassiel wants me to hold the gun and pretend like I’m the one who shot him? “I can’t—”
“You can. You have to, Princess. Come on, take it.”
I watch my fingers flex slowly as if they’re moving through molasses, reaching for the weapon laying in Cass’s scarred palm without actually feeling my skin make contact with the cool surface.
In fact, my whole body feels rather detached from itself and reality, the concrete ground beneath the soles of my feet unsteady, my legs wobbly, my heart and my brain somewhere else entirely.
In fact, my whole body feels rather detached from itself and reality, the concrete ground beneath the soles of my feet unsteady, my legs wobbly, my heart and my brain somewhere else entirely.
“Now point it at him. Lottie, take a step closer, we need to make it look as believable as possible.”