Nila #2
I squirmed in Cut’s hold, wishing he hadn’t thrown his gun away upstairs. If the weapon were still lodged in his waistband, I could’ve commandeered it and shot him point blank. There was no need to be secretive any longer. No need to hide my true intentions.
He’s my last victim.
“Where are you taking me?” I skip-trotted to keep up, gritting my teeth against my pain.
Cut smiled, his golden eyes blank and cruel. “The ballroom.”
Chills darted down my spine.
Ballroom.
Instead of conjuring images of finery, sweeping drapes, and sparkling dancers, I pictured a mausoleum, a morgue...the last area I would ever see.
Jethro had said a debt would be repaid in the ballroom.
Despite my courage in Bonnie’s quarters, fear engulfed me now.
Debt.
The last debt...
My heels dug into floor runners, creasing ancient rugs. Cut merely dragged harder, never slowing his pace.
Hawksridge seemed to exhale around us, the portraits and tapestries darkening as Cut dragged me down yet more ancient corridors. Moving toward large double doors in the same wing as the dining room, he stopped briefly before another Black Diamond brother opened the impressive entrance.
My eyes drank in the inscriptions and carvings on the doors, of hawks and mottos and the family crest of the man who was about to kill me in cold blood.
I’d walked past the doors countless times and never stopped to jiggle the handle—almost as if it’d kept itself secret until this moment—camouflaging itself to remain unseen until the Final Debt.
Cut clenched his jaw as the large entry groaned open, heavy on their hinges and weary with what they contained.
Once open, Cut threw me inside. Letting go of my hand, he grabbed a fistful of short hair, marching me to the centre of the room.
The chasmal space was exquisite. Crystals and candlesticks and chandeliers. Needlepoint and brocade and craftsmanship. Money echoed in every corner, shoving away dust motes and proving that glittering gold was immune to tarnish and age.
The gorgeous dance floor competed with the tapestry-covered walls and hand-stitched curtains, yet it wasn’t overshadowed. The glossy wood created the motif of the Hawk crest inlaid with oak, cherry, and ash.
The black velvet curtains gleamed with diamonds sewn into the fabric, and everywhere I looked, the emblem of my capturers gilded wall panels and ceiling architraves.
There was no denying who this room belonged to, nor the wealth it had taken to acquire it.
“Like what you see, Weaver?” Cut never stopped as we stormed toward something large and covered by black sheeting in the middle of the empty expanse.
There were no chairs or banquet tables. Only acres of flooring with no one to dance. Loneliness and echoing eeriness swirled like invisible threads, tainting what would happen with its chequered history.
There’d been good times and bad in this place. Wine spilled with laughter and blood shed with tears.
Goosebumps darted over my flesh, almost as if I stepped through the time-veil. Able to see previous generations dancing, hear their lilting voices on the air.
And then I saw them.
Cut grunted as I slammed to a stop, zeroing in on the portraits he’d told me about in Africa.
The Hawk women.
Unlike the dining room with its over-crowded walls of men in white wigs, chalky faces, and gruffly stern expressions, the Hawk women bestowed the ballroom with class.
Their faces held colour of pink cheeks and red lips. Their hair artfully coiled and curled. And their dresses tumbled through the artist’s brush-strokes, almost as if they were real.
Cut let me look. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I was overwhelmed with antiquity and yesteryear.
He let me survey his family’s history while I searched for the portrait that’d caught my eye. I needed to look upon the woman who started it all.
I can’t find her.
Bonnie.
She found me first.
Her painting hung vibrantly, royally. She’d posed with a white poodle and an armful of lilies. Her face unlined and youthful vitality hinting at a woman of early forties rather than the ancient ninety-one-year old who’d just perished.
Up and up the family tree my gaze soared, over Joans and Janes and Bessies.
And finally, at the very top, overseeing her realm and all that she helped create and conquer was Mabel Hawk.
The shadowy sketch wasn’t as intricate in detail as the rest. Her grandson, William, could only remember so much, commissioning the painting off memory.
But the intensity of her gaze popped full of soul even if her features weren’t drawn with precision.
She looked like any other woman from the bygone era.
Any other mother and grandmother. Her gown of simple brown velvet held a single diamond at her bosom while her cheekbones swept into her hairline.
She reminded me of Jethro in a way. The same potency of sovereignty and power.
“Drink it in, my dear.” Cut let go of my hair, running his fingers along my collar. “This room will be the last thing you ever see.”
I still didn’t respond. I’d taken so much from him, and I refused to give it back in the form of begging and tears.
Time ticked onward, but Cut didn’t hurry me.
I let the portraits on the wall tell their story, filling me with timeworn relics, ensuring when the time came to bow on my knees and succumb to the guillotine’s blade, I would be more than just a girl, more than a Weaver, more than a victim of the Debt Inheritance.
I would be history.
I would be part of something so much bigger than myself and would take mementoes from this life to the next.
The room slowly filled with witnesses. Black Diamond brothers trickled in, lining the walls with their black leather. Out the corner of my eye, I noticed a few with bloody knuckles and shadow-bruised jaws. Why had they fought within their ranks? What had caused their violent disruption?
The oppressive summoning from the hidden apparatus in the ballroom pressed deeper and deeper the longer I ignored it. The portraits had been studied, the room scrutinized—I had nothing left to capture my attention away from the monolithic mysterious thing.
Cut turned me to face it. “Would you like to see below the cloak?” He smiled tightly. “I’m sure your imagination has created a version of what exists before you.”
I straightened my spine. “Whatever you do to me, it won’t bring them back.”
He stiffened.
The gentle squeak of a wheel broke the brackish silence. I looked over my shoulder as Jasmine suddenly propelled herself into the room, slipping quickly over polished wood with a horrified expression. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Cut turned around, dropping his touch to land on my lower back. He didn’t hold me in place, but I wasn’t idiotic to think I wasn’t trapped and unable to move.
“I’m doing what needs to be done.”
Jasmine wheeled herself right up to Cut’s knees. Her beautiful face pinched with disbelief. “No! That isn’t your task. It’s Jet—I mean, Daniel’s.”
Cut narrowed his eyes, looking between the two of us.
“Fuck.” He ducked down, grabbing his daughter roughly by the chin.
“You knew, too. You knew all the fuck along Jethro and Kestrel were alive.” He shook her.
“What sort of daughter are you? What sort of loyalty do you have toward your own flesh and blood?”
Jasmine chopped her hands on Cut’s wrists, breaking his hold on her cheeks. “My loyalty is to the right thing. And this is not right! Stop it. Right now.”
Cut chuckled. “There is so much you don’t know, Jaz, and so much you’ll never learn. You’re a failure and no longer a fucking Hawk. The moment I’ve dealt with Nila, I’ll deal with you. What’s good about family if it’s the same family that does everything possible to destroy itself?”
Snapping his fingers, he growled at the brother who’d just arrived.
The man skidded through the doors, breathing hard as if he’d been at war rather than on whatever errands the club did.
My eyes met his. Dark floppy hair and kindness hid beneath ruthless.
Flaw.
My heart leapt, hope unspooling.
I had many enemies in this room but two people I cared about and trusted might be all I needed against Cut and his blade.
“Flaw, take my daughter to the back of the room. She’s to watch from a safe distance and not to leave, understood?”
Flaw glanced at me. Secrets collided in his gaze before looking resolutely away. Nothing in his posture apologised or promised he would try to prevent the future. He merely nodded and clasped his hands around the handles of Jasmine’s wheelchair. “Yes, sir.”
Flaw...?
What had I done to warrant his sudden coolness?
Backing away, he dragged Jasmine with him.
She screeched and jammed on her brakes, leaving large grooves and tyre marks on the elegant floor. “No!”
“Don’t argue, Ms. Hawk.” Flaw dragged her faster toward the border of the room.
I couldn’t believe he’d abandoned me. Wouldn’t he at least try to argue for my life?
Jasmine made eye contact with me, fighting Flaw’s yanking, shaking her head in despair. “Nila...where is he? Why isn’t he stopping this?”
Jethro.
She means Jethro.
I wanted to tell her everything, but there was too much to that question and I had no strength to answer it. She didn’t need to know what happened in Africa. She had her own issues to face once I’d departed this world at the hands of her father.
I shook my head, a sad smile on my lips. “I’m sorry, Jaz. I tried. We both did.”
Tears welled, catching on her eyelashes. “No. This can’t be happening. I won’t let it.” She reached behind her, trying to slap Flaw and scratch his hands from dragging her farther. “Let me go!”
With jerky movements, he bent angrily and hissed something unintelligible in her ear.
She froze.
Flaw used her sudden motionlessness to yank her the rest of the way.
What had he said?
How could he betray us?
My heart stopped. Has he betrayed us or did he make another oath to Kes and Jethro I’m not aware of?
Vexatious questions came faster, battering me with final worry. Was Kestrel awake? Was he alive in the hospital waiting for his brother to visit?
I wish I could say goodbye to him.
My tummy clenched even as I tried to remain strong.
I wish I could kiss Jethro one last time.
Cut spun around, forcing me to do the same. Flaw and Jasmine’s eyes seared brands into the back of my spine. Two brothers dashed forward, gripping the ends of the black sheet hiding the apparatus, looking at Cut for commands.
He snapped his fingers with regality. “Remove it!”
Their hands gathered swaths of material and tugged. The fabric slid like ebony silk, kissing angles and gliding over surfaces, slowly revealing what I’d known existed all along.
The method of my death.
The equipment I’d hoped never to see.
There was no Jethro to stop it.
No Kestrel to fix it.
No Jasmine to ruin it.
Only me, Cut, and the awful gleaming guillotine.
The lights from the chandeliers bounced off the glossy wood of the frame, suspending a single blade ensconced in two pillars of wood. A latch at the top held it in place while the rope dangled down the side, ready to pull aside the barrier and let the blade plummet to its task.
And there...below the chopping block where my head would lay was the basket that would be my final resting place.
Cut kissed my cheek, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and guiding me toward the machine. “Say goodbye, Nila. It’s time to pay the Final Debt.”