Chapter 37
Sullen
The house is night dark, and they are not as stupid as I wish they were. At three in the morning, we hear their vehicles, but their headlights are off.
By sound, I count two cars only, which means we outnumber them.
I glance to Karia, by my side in the darkened back room. It has a couch, several chairs, and little else. Every eye in the space is on us, but it’s her I want to see.
“Don’t hesitate.” I glance at the handgun in her fist, taken from the pile of weapons that are in this house.
It looks wrong, even in the dark. Her pretty green nails—she painted them with her drugstore supplies—and slender fingers cradling something so fatal.
But she’s survived me. She can survive this.
“Don’t overthink. They deserve worse than a bullet. ”
Von snorts. “Of course she won’t. Will you?
” The Bentzen version of comfort, cocky and demanding.
Von has Isa in his lap, to our left. Maude and Alivia are in the library, Fleet and Elliot standing in the doorway to this room, but ready to do Maude’s bidding as we planned, at any moment, when dragging Sanford into their hideout will be most opportune.
Cosmo is on a couch across the room, and he laughs quietly.
It annoys me.
I tighten my fingers on my girl’s thigh as she stares back at me. But the moment she starts to answer me, the windowpane at her back explodes.
My heart races as I’m on my feet, my ears ringing, glass crunching beneath my boots as I jerk Karia up and behind me.
“Let’s fucking go.” Fleet’s words, and Elliot’s placid laughter causes a grin to form on Karia’s face, despite the glass in her hair. There is determination in her eyes as she stares at me, our gazes locked, her fingers curled around the grip of the gun.
Then Isa says, “They won’t come in from right there,” her voice loud above the ringing in all of our ears.
She knows battle more than any of us, aside from maybe Von, but her words are too late.
With the lights off, the only glow from an exterior one outside, we can see nothing, and in a heartbeat, even that goes out. The silence runs through the house. Someone has cut the power.
And someone is already inside.
There is a shadow at my side the moment before Karia is ruthlessly ripped away from me. I sense more bodies fill the room at the same time I hear grunts and a growl, but a gun goes off right in front of me as I blink in the new darkness and lunge closer to my girl, or where I think she is.
My fingers find her wrist, the gun still in her hand.
“Karia,” I whisper as fights break out behind me. I hear Isa snarl, footsteps as if someone is running, and another pair as if someone else is giving chase.
Karia’s cerulean eyes reach mine in the dark. They are wide.
Her complexion seems drained.
And it takes me several blinks to see a gun held to her head.
But it is not Klein. Or Stein. Or Constance or either of the other guards holding it to her temple.
My lungs compress.
The gun in my own hand feels useless as I squeeze Karia’s wrist once more.
There is a guttural sound in the distance. Someone choking on their own blood. I know what that sounds like. My mother. Mercy. She flashes inside my head.
But it is Cosmo de Actis, holding Karia as a shield, as a hostage, that I am seeing now in the darkness of the room, his bright green eyes locked onto mine. Otherwise, his expression is blank.
Karia is limp in his hold. She is not trying to get away. There is a look of shock carved onto her gorgeous face, in the circle of her soft lips.
She opens her mouth as if to speak, but nothing comes out.
“Cosmo.” I say his name, not letting go of my angel.
He drags her backward, that gun to her head, and I follow, as if I am on a leash.
“Drop your weapon,” Cosmo says, staring right back at me as we go deeper into a corner of the room where it seems we are alone. No one knows what is happening to us, just as I do not know what is happening around me.
And even though it is the two men I hate more than anyone else in the world inside this house, I find I no longer care. I would forgive them if only to ensure this blonde princess who owns me completely escapes without pain.
I don’t drop the gun. “What are you doing?” It is the only thing I can think to say. But didn’t I know this would happen? Don’t I, more than anyone, know that “friend” is a fiction? A myth? Something which will never happen in my world.
Cosmo turns his head. His lips press to Karia’s ear.
She stiffens.
My stomach feels as if it is being shredded to pieces.
I bite the inside of my cheek so hard, I taste a tang.
Stop. I want to scream it.
Another gunshot goes off somewhere further in the house.
It sounds as if there are cats tearing this place up.
Obliterating all the memories and pain and ache of being here.
Before, I thought I would want to burn it down.
This, the house on Ritual Drive. But being here with Karia, what we did, what we’ll do, I find I want it.
A thing that felt impossible just days ago.
Now, I can see it. Her, here with me, always.
Out of Writhe, out of this mess, away from the pain, she would wallpaper over everything terrible that ever happened to me.
More than that, she is like brick. An impenetrable shield to the outside. The one who carved my heart from my chest and held it between her pretty little fingers. She is everything.
And Cosmo de Actis will not take her from me.
“Tell him to let us go, Princess,” Cosmo says, his eyes never leaving mine as his mouth touches her and my skin crawls.
Mine. I want to scream it at the top of my lungs. She is fucking mine.
I tighten my hold on her wrist. I wish I had no gloves on. I wish it was my bare skin against her own.
“Cosmo,” she gasps, her voice hushed. A whimper. She is as shocked as I am, and it is the only thing that gives me some small measure of comfort. She did not betray me.
He betrayed us.
For what end, I do not know.
“Let me go,” she whispers. “What are you doing?” She turns to look up at him, and their lips are a breath away, only apart from his height.
I dig my nails into her wrist as much as I can with leather between us.
She knows how I feel, how I am breaking, in the way she jerks her head away from him to keep distance, but still stares into his eyes. “What are you doing?” she asks again, as if she cannot believe it. Him.
The gun is along her cheekbone.
It feels as if I am already dead.
“Cosmo, what the fuck are you doing?” There she is. Angry. Wrathful. Mine.
Cosmo grins at her. He traces the contour of her face with the barrel of the gun.
I am shaking. Trembling. I find I can barely move as he keeps stepping them both back, and I keep following. Hell. I would follow her there.
He doesn’t stop.
He is walking us deeper into the room, the house, and I remember then, a moment before it is too late.
I remember Isadora questioning Karia about every inch of this house, and she knew enough, with all of our plans—none of which was this. But I remember the second before Cosmo glances up at me, and that smug cockiness is gone.
All at once, the floor falls in the space between us.
Karia vanishes.
There one moment, gone the next, a scream tearing free from her lips.
My heart catches.
Cosmo squats down, lifts the trap door back into place, where it clicks.
No one is near us.
No one saw.
Cosmo tilts his head and I hear Karia scream again. It feels as if I will break in half.
“Do you really want her in this?” he asks me quietly, still crouched in a squat. “Because I know you weren’t brave enough to tell her no, but I am.”
I want to kill him.
The gun he had to her head dangles from his fingers.
Mine is tight in my hand.
I want to blow his fucking brains out.
Rage is what makes me shake now.
“And she has a weapon, and they will not go down there. Didn’t you say it yourself? They never did.”
When we went over this house, I told them this was the only trapdoor I was aware of, but I was sure there were others.
I told them Stein and Klein were too frightened of betrayal to step foot in the darkness below themselves.
And I told all of this first to the breathing dead man in front of me, when we had a truce in the kitchen.
“I won’t have her die for you.” Cosmo doesn’t look away from me, even as he is at my feet. “I won’t have her die for me, either.”
Karia has stopped screaming.
My throat is tight.
“I won’t have her thrown into their hands.
” He gestures toward me with the gun, but not in a threatening way.
“I see what they did to you.” He stares down at the wooden floorboards, back in place.
“I will not let them do it to her. I am responsible for this, too. That is my father who marked you.” There is revulsion in his words.
“She deserves to be untouched.” He looks up at me.
“Leave her until they are all fucking dead.”
I want to argue. I want to say no. Karia chose to be by my side. That should count for something. It should count for everything.
But if I had to pick between a single hair on her fucking head—all mine—coming to harm, and taking away her choice?
I’m not as good as she thinks I am.
I know what I’d choose. What I will choose.
Cosmo’s brows lift. He must see it, in my face. The conclusion I’ve come to. The ways I will smother her if it means she stays mine for eternity. I have fantasized about putting her in a jar, too. There is nothing reformed about me. Nothing pure or good or altruistic.
All I want is her, with me, until we both die.
I will do whatever it takes to reach that end.
“Good boy,” he says as he rises.
I hit him with my gun before he can even imagine I would have it in me.
He staggers back, lifting a hand to his bleeding temple, his eyes wide with shock.
I step forward, crouching down to get in his face.
“Do not think this makes us friends. Do not think this means you get her, too.” I grab the back of his neck, forcing him to stare up at me.
“Do not think you are the hero here. When this is all said and done, you might be dead too, if I think you are a threat to us.”
Then I shove him backward, and turn to find the men who have haunted me my entire life.
Forgive me, Karia, for I will keep sinning.