Chapter 45 Kateřina
It’s been three days …
Three damn days that I haven’t stopped crying or pacing around this stupid, fucking rat hole they put me in. My eyes hurt. They burn from the tears and from this horrible neon orange shit they make us wear.
Three days that I haven’t been able to pause my thoughts from running. Running to him.
Damn it, I hate it here. It’s so quiet I can hear my heartbeat. Cain’s house was silent like this, but it was different. There, I started feeling safe. I knew that no matter what happened, he’d be there to protect me. Kill for me.
But here … here, it is different.
I’ve counted the cracks in the wall. Twice.
I stopped crying yesterday. Or a while ago. I don’t know anymore.
My body’s still waiting for him.
Some part of me thinks he’s just late, like he’s stuck in traffic or bleeding somewhere or tearing through someone for touching me.
Because that’s who he is, right?
That’s what he does.
He never lets anyone get near me, not without consequence.
He wouldn’t leave me here. He wouldn’t let them take me. He promised.
He promised …
He said I was his. He said he’d butcher the whole fucking world if anyone touched me.
So why isn’t anything bleeding?
I’m here. Alone. The cops arrested me for something I didn’t do, and they didn’t even bother listening to me. They kept asking me stupid questions. They even brought him up. They asked how I knew him and if we were a couple. I didn’t talk. I know that if I even flinched, they’d put him in a cell.
I’d rather rot than say his name out loud to them.
Because I’d still protect him.
Because he’s all I have.
Because he’s in my bones now, and I don’t know how to pull him out.
Because even if he let this happen, even if he planned it, even if he never comes back …
Even then, I’d still be his.
I keep thinking maybe he’s preparing something. Perhaps this is part of something bigger.
But the silence doesn’t sound like planning. It sounds like absence.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
I don’t know what to do with this stillness, this hole in my heart.
I feel I have nothing left. Nothing left to fight for.
Nothing left to live for.
Just these four walls and this fucking silence and the way my throat keeps tightening like I’m not allowed to breathe unless it’s for him.
I lean back against the cold cement wall, staring at the barred window high above.
“Hey, you! The Czech girl.” I hear from the cell next to mine. Fucking bitch. “Still playing the silent act? You think your brooding makes you scary or something?”
“Leave her alone, Mandy. She’s probably writing love letters in her head. Ain’t that right, Barbie girl?” the woman from another cell shouts. Let’s call her Candy, because I have no idea what her name is. I think no one does.
They just don’t shut the hell up. They’re the only thing I hear in this shithole. Them and the cops trying to shut them up.
“What’re you in for, anyway? Murder? You don’t look like a killer,” Mandy says.
“Probably got framed. That’s how it works, right? The innocent ones always end up in here,” Candy replies, thinking she already knows everything. What an ass. Both of them, actually.
Suddenly, the siren goes off, breaking the silence I was trying to bring back in my mind. My head snaps up.
“What’s going on? That’s … that’s not a fire drill,” Candy says, her voice shaky.
I walk up to the bars and grab them, trying to see what’s happening.
“Shit, that sounds serious. You think it’s a breakout? Or a raid?” Mandy speaks now.
The cops are talking to each other in the hallway as they pass in front of my cell.
“This isn’t right. None of this is right. They shouldn’t even be here!” the young one says, afraid to even raise his gun.
“Shut up. We follow protocol, no matter what,” the other one reprimands him.
“But this wasn’t in the briefing. They didn’t say anything about—”
“Shut it, rookie! Eyes forward. Let’s go.”
They disappear down the corridor, their footsteps fading.
What the hell is happening?
A low, distant rumble echoes through the building. Then, gunfire.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. That’s gunshots. They’re shooting!” Candy shouts.
The sound grows louder and nearer. The siren seems more deafening, and it has nearly numbed my ears. It sounds like a war zone inside a building.
The gunfire stops abruptly, and all I can hear is some shoes stomping against the concrete.
They’re approaching.
“No! Please!” Mandy shouts desperately. “No, no, no!”
Gunshot.
And then, she gurgles, clearly trying to breathe.
That’s it. My end is near. I wish Cain was here so I could tell him how much I love him. Just to see his eyes one last time.
“No, wait, sir!” Candy begs. “Please—”
Gunshot. She’s dead, too.
I think I’m the last one. How lucky. I kneel and close my eyes, bringing his face into my thoughts. All I want is to see him. Just his face.
“Hello, little rose.”
What?
My eyes snap open, and I gaze up.
He’s here. Standing in the mess he made. Blood is dripping from his hands, and his dark eyes are locked on me.
“Cain?”
“Stand up.”
I do as he says. I stand and step closer. I’m not scared of him; I know what he wants to do. He raises the gun and shoots the lock, breaking it.
“You came for me,” I breathe quietly, unable to believe what I’m seeing.
He walks into the cell and stops right in front of me. His eyes linger on my face for a bit longer than usual before he caresses my cheek with his bloody fingers.
“You didn’t talk,” he mutters, his head cocking to the side.
That’s when it hits me. He wouldn’t have let me get taken. Not in a million years. The second they touched me, he would’ve put bullets in their skulls without blinking. But he didn’t.
It was planned from the start.
The anger sizzles inside me, making me unable to hold it.
I slap him. Hard. So hard that the blood dripping from his face sprays all over the ground and my hand.
He doesn’t say anything. His jaw twitches, and he avoids looking at me.
But then he does.
His eyes roam my face while his breathing becomes more forced.
Slowly, he drops to his knees and looks up at me.
“I told you no one would ever take you from me. And now there’s nowhere left to go but me. You belong to me.”
I reach for him, tangling my fingers in his damp hair. I have never been more certain in my entire life.
“I don’t want to go anywhere.”
It was a goddamn test.
But why do I feel that it doesn’t matter anymore? Why doesn’t it hurt me?
It should rip me apart. I should be furious, betrayed, broken. But all I feel now as I look at him is relief. He’s here.
The sirens are getting louder. We don’t have time.
But I don’t care, and neither does he.
I swear the whole world doesn’t exist around us anymore.
“I don’t regret, nor am I ashamed of what I did to you.
I’m proud of you, little rose. You were strong and fearless.
Now you’re wrecked and broken in ways you don’t even see yet.
No one else wants the mess you’ve become.
No one but me. I want the damage. I want what’s left.
I want the wreckage, the ruin, the hollowed-out thing you’ve become. I want all of you.”
I smile at him. “You are enough. I never wanted anything more.”
His eyes linger on mine for a bit longer. I don’t know how much; I’ve lost track of time as I’m sinking into his arms.
“You are my war and my peace. My obsession and my oblivion,” he says as his hands wrap around my waist, pulling me closer to him.
I know he means it. I can see it now.
I am the first thing he’s ever wanted that isn’t power or pain.
And I’ll be the last thing he clings to when the world tries to take him down.
“You are my light and my darkness. My salvation and my damnation,” I reply.
He closes his eyes and pulls me closer, resting his cheek against my belly. Like that’s the line that saves him and damns him all at once.
“You are my Eden, Kate?ina. And I belong to you.”
I take a deep breath, immersed in the blissful feeling he offers me so graciously. Euphoria.
He stands up, takes my hand, and leads me out of the cell.
The hallway is chaos. Guards and inmates lie scattered, blood pooling on the floor.
I try not to look, but the carnage is impossible to ignore.
I should be terrified. I should be sick to my stomach, choking on what he’s done.
But I’m not.
And if that makes me twisted, if it makes me just as broken as him, I’ll wear it like a crown.
Because as long as I’m his—whatever that means; whatever it costs—nothing else matters.
As long as I’m his, I don’t care what’s left of me.
Tear me apart.
Bury the pieces.
I’ll still whisper his name like a prayer.
I’ll still crawl back to him, smiling.