Chapter 11 #4
Emitting a short growl, I cross the room and eye the woman from head to toe.
With about three inches of height on her, I look much more threatening than I am.
However, the tattoo on the inside of her arm tells me she’s trained Order and could probably kick my ass.
“You would be so audacious as to make demands of the lieutenant general?” Maybe I can’t throw my own weight around, but I sure as hell can throw Taylor’s.
The doctor, presumably seeing Taylor for the first time, shrinks back. “I see. I apologize. It’s simply protocol.”
“This is her family, and you will let them grieve. We will call for you when we’re ready. Thank you.”
Miffed but compliant, the doctor exits in a huff and I venture a glance at my captor. Her eyes are glossy, unfocused, and burning. Faith’s blood dries in her hair. Mason ambles around the table and puts his hand on Taylor’s back, but she shoves him off.
Delilah disengages from the soldier and Taylor’s head snaps to her. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know. They’re putting her in a bedroom as we speak.” Delilah’s dulcet voice frays at the ends.
Taylor stands and leans over the table, bloody hands gripping the edge. I wish someone would cover this poor dead girl with a sheet. Rivers of dried blood stream from her nose and mouth. Her eyes are open, staring into the abyss.
“What room?” Taylor asks, brushing Faith’s hair from her face.
Delilah glances from me to Taylor. Like a submarine navigating through swaying sea mines, she is careful. “Taylor. Interrogate tomorrow. We have to make sure we haven’t been compromised.”
Taylor doesn’t move. Her eyes stare into the cold, blank ones of Faith. “What. Room?”
“You are not going in there,” Delilah insists, putting on her most authoritative voice.
It straightens me right up, but Taylor’s in a whole other world.
I’ve been in that world. It’s a world of cobwebs and the only emotion capable of slicing the thick ropes of depression is anger.
“She is of no use to us dead. You will be more—”
Taylor stomps across the floor and pins Delilah against the wall with her hand wrapped around Delilah’s neck. They square off, no struggle between them. “What room?” Taylor demands again in a fierce, shrill whisper.
I start toward her. “Taylor, let her go.”
Taylor’s right arm extends out, holding out her palm to me. It’s not her outstretched arm stopping me, but rather the unhinged look in her eyes. Her head whips back to bore into Delilah, and she yanks the older woman toward her. “What room?”
“Your floor, room four.”
Taylor immediately releases her and storms out. Delilah rubs her neck with one hand and waves off my concern with the other, nodding in the direction Taylor went. Taylor cannot go into that room half-cocked. She’s more than half-cocked. She’s fully cocked. A walking grenade with the pin pulled.
Two Order soldiers still dressed in their formal garb stand guard by the door as I catch up to Taylor’s feverish pace. Finally, I snag her arm. “Will you stop for a second?”
“Don’t touch me.” She wrenches her arm away from me. Streaks of the woman who brutalized Cornelius Thorne bleeds through. I let the fear of her pass through me.
“You can’t go in there. You are in no condition to interrogate anyone. You’re upset, and grieving, and I think you should go back and say a proper goodbye to your friend.”
“I am not wasting my time talking at a corpse.” She stops short. “I am not going to interrogate the shooter. I am going to torture her and kill her.”
“That’s even less helpful! Get ahold of yourself.”
“I don’t give a fuck if it’s helpful! She tried to kill me, and instead she killed—” Desperation and anger is the dam keeping back the furious sadness in her eyes. “But she missed, and I intend to make her pay dearly for her piss-poor aim.”
“Please. You’re not thinking clearly. You are better than this. You’re above petty revenge and vengeance,” I beseech her as earnestly as I can. Every word out of my mouth is true, but I don’t think she believes me.
Slapping my forearms with her own, she shoves me against the wall of the hallway. Voice lowered to a deadly rasp, she takes a step toward me and seethes, “I am a killer, Miss Piccolo.”
Quickly, I shimmy to my left and stand in front of the door, in between the two guards. “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Taylor stalks me, slinking like a wolf with quiet, deliberate steps.
Wild eyes drag up from the ground and bring with them a heat that starts in my stomach and crawls up my neck.
It pins me against the door without touch.
This is a really, truly inconvenient time to find out I’m turned on by her anger.
“Move.”
“No.”
“Miss Piccolo, do not make me ask again.”
“Technically, I don’t think you ever actually asked.” My voice quakes and undermines my humor.
“What is your objection? She killed an Order member. She is an enemy. I made it very clear to you what I do to enemies.”
“And what makes that any different than what Thorne did to his? Or my father? Hmm?” I’ve got her, however briefly.
“You’ve spent so much time over the past few weeks exalting this precious rebellion you care so much about, telling me how much better off the world will be once the region leaders are gone, and I fail to see how this is any different than what we have. ”
The fury drains from her face, and in its place she looks exhausted. “What do you want me to do, Lucy?”
“If the Order is capable of real change, then the easiest way to show that is to grant mercy where others would’ve granted death,” I plead with her. “Don’t hurt her. Don’t kill her.”
She looks to the guards, then back to me. Finally, the first crack appears. It’s subtle. Her voice. The tiniest waver, like a tremulous violin. “Why do you care? She is no different from the people I killed in Thorne’s place to save you.”
“Killing to survive is not the same as goddamn torture, Taylor. And it’s not the same as killing because you want to, and I know you know it.”
Another crack. Taylor visibly swallows. “Get out of my way.”
“No.”
“Move, or I will move you.”
I nab her hand and press it hard against my throat.
“Do it.” Emotions in her eyes flicker like starlight through foliage, fingers twitching around my galloping pulse.
She’s ready tinder, dry and excitable, and I’m trying to be a sheet of cold rain.
“I know you’re hurting and I’m so, so sorry.
But it is not your fault, and you don’t have to do this.
You can come with me to my room. Scream, cry, throw things, break stuff, I don’t care.
She’ll still be here in the morning and you can question her with a clearer head. Stay with me tonight.”
We square off, my arms at my sides as she cradles my neck in her hand. But asking her to back down is like politely imploring the plates of the earth not to split their seams and swallow the world.
“What gives you the right?” she asks under her breath. She releases her hold on me, but not the hold in her stare. Before a sigh of relief exits my lips, she addresses the men beside me. “Soldiers, escort Miss Piccolo to her room. She is to be placed on lockdown.”
I’m suddenly in the firm grasp of the guards, each of them arresting one of my arms. They drag me away from the door, and Taylor doesn’t, or can’t, look at me.
“Unhand me!” I fight against their grip, trying to lunge toward her. “Let go of me! Taylor, please, don’t do this!”
But she’s gone, door closed, my words nothing but an echo down the hallway. I’m dragged to my room, shoved like a disobedient dog into her kennel, locked in and left to anxiously pad in my cell.
I want to believe Taylor will arrive soon.
I want to believe she’ll come to her senses and seek refuge with me.
I want to believe she sees me as the kind of person with which to seek refuge.
I want to believe enough of my mother—a woman who could soften the marbled tyranny of Luciano Piccolo—exists inside me for that to happen.
I want to believe. But the reality is, I’m alone.