Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
EZRA
“ I ’m first,” I state.
“No, no, Ezra. EZRA!” Cara screams in protest, writhing in her shackles as she pulls at them, tears streaming down her cheeks, blood running in rivulets down her arms and onto her dress as the metal bites into her skin. “Take me. I won’t fight you,” she cries out, but no one is listening.
“Simon,” Lenora barks; he steps up beside her as he awaits her instruction, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed like he expects her to scratch him behind his ear as a reward.
Her lip curls in disgust as she uses the tip of her gun to push him aside so he isn’t touching her.
If he’s offended, he doesn’t show it—his beady eye not leaving Cara for long.
“Prepare the needle, I’ll need the authorities to rule a natural death to get my money.”
“Not fucked anyone in the morgue offices yet to aid and assist you? You’re slacking, Lenora,” I tut under my breath, earning a backhand of her gun to my cheek.
I’m playing with fire, and I know it, but the beast in me feeds off the adrenaline—and right now, I need something to spur me on.
I spit out the mouthful of tinny blood building up in my mouth at Lenora’s feet, vermillion spittle coating her precious shoes.
With a click of her fingers, Simon is on his knees wiping them clean with his sleeve.
When he stands, Lenora asks blankly, “The needle?” which prompts him into action.
He simply raises his mangled hand, and I smile cockily, being pistol-whipped clearly has done nothing to diminish my fucked-up sense of humour.
“You need to be a little quicker around my girl, Simon.”
“She’ll be my girl soon,” he smarmily retorts, massaging his crippled appendage against his chest with a wicked glint in his soulless dead eye; I’m hoping the stained fabric he’s fashioned into an eye patch to cover the damage I did with my spoon gives him a staph infection or something equally painful—a flesh-eating virus maybe.
“Unfucking likely, Pirate Pete; I’d rather strangle myself with these cuffs than be anywhere near you,” Cara hisses defiantly, as her lip turns up in a sneer of disgust at his insinuation that she could ever in a million lifetimes be considered his.
Annoyed with the bickering, Lenora cuts Simon off as he opens his mouth to speak.
She orders Caleb to deal with the preparations with a haughty flick of her wrist. It clearly pays to be the harbinger of freedoms in this place.
The barbiturate brothers—Caleb and Cooper Knox to the world outside these walls—are drug cocktail aficionados; if there is a blend to be made, these boys know down to the letter the effects that they’ll have.
Considering I’m not getting high, and death is pretty fucking final, I can’t imagine too much thought has gone into the clear mixture swimming around in the base of that needle.
I watch as he gets the tourniquet out and prepares what he will need on the table.
I’ve never been scared of dying, too much blood has been spilt by my hands; I knew the Grim Reaper would be nipping at my heels eventually.
I hadn’t factored her into the mix though.
I’d never had to consider someone might actually miss me if I was gone, and that has a nervous energy blooming in my chest.
I take the moment—likely my last—and scramble over to Cara. My bound hands fit around her face snuggly. She’s shaking like a leaf, her lip bobbing as she struggles to contain a soul-crushing whimper. She bends into my touch as I stroke her cheek, my thumb catching a tear mid-fall as it escapes.
My heart lurches, the reminder that it belongs to her heavy in the way it thumps a little faster when we touch. If carving it out for her would lessen the blow of watching me die, I would—ironically—in a heartbeat.
“Come now, sweetheart. Don’t look at me like that. You’ll make me think I’m doing something foolish.”
“Because you are —this isn’t right! I should be the one—” she begins, but I don’t let her finish, dipping down to press my lips against hers.
There’s none of my usual brutishness, only softness and longing as I savour her taste.
She deserves to be wrapped up in the calm of Ezra Wolfe right now, to witness the more considerate man I’ve become since she walked into my life.
“No. This world needs you. I need you.” I regret my omission the second it leaves my lips as she whimpers at the reminder. Even handling her as gently as I am, I know I’m hurting her, and it kills me. “If this is what it takes to keep you safe…it’s an easy choice, Red.”
She searches my gaze for any hint of a lie, but she won’t find it.
I’ve all but cracked open my ribs with my bare hands, my thumping heart steadily keeping pace with hers as I lay my truth at her feet.
She pulls against the cuffs tethering her to the heater, beckoning me forward with pleading puffy eyes as she sniffles around a broken sob.
I don’t hesitate, basking in her warmth as I crowd her body with mine, imprinting the silent promise of always through our connection.
It isn’t long enough, I knew it wouldn’t be, but all good things must come to an end.
For all my faults I’ve been fortunately afforded more than a sinner like me deserves, and when the darkness beckons me forward, it will be her face I’ll see.
I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, my fingers lingering over her pulse point as I rest my forehead against hers.
For a small woman, the shadow she casts down over Cara and me as she stands beside us is a sign in and of its own that Lenora’s ego isn’t contained to her small stature—she radiates the hate and the darkness like it’s a living, breathing second skin.
“Time’s ticking,” Lenora gripes, her manicured finger teasing the trigger of the gun in her grip.
I fight against my natural urge to go rogue and try to take her down, and simply do as instructed.
Risking Cara’s life, even in a situation as shitty as this one, isn’t worth it.
Lenora wouldn’t need much of a reason to shoot her, and if I’m forced to watch Cara die, she’ll make sure I live long enough for the grief to destroy me.
I’d rather accept my fate and get it over with.
Maybe my father’s waiting in hell to greet me with a whiskey; living or dying was never as predictable as I thought.
Stroking her cheek with a steady hand, I linger in the comfort of her warmth for a moment longer, her eyes filled with unshed tears bouncing between mine as she silently pleads with me not to let her go.
I get to my feet and walk towards Caleb of my own volition, his tight half smile meant to be comforting but severely lacking.
I turn and drop to my knees, my gaze trained on Cara, desperate for a few more seconds of her as I silently pray that whatever trip south I have into the belly of hell, it will be with the image of her tethered to my soul.
I’ve never much thought about an afterlife, but a warmth spreads through my chest, and I hold onto that sliver of hope she swore I had the ability to conjure—and I allow myself to believe that if I do get another stab at this existing shit, in whatever life it is—I’ll find her, claiming her as mine time and time again for an eternity.
I watch as Cooper sets down the key to the handcuffs just out of reach of Cara, knowing if she moves too quickly before I’m injected, she’ll get a bullet to the head for her troubles. I see the wink Cooper throws her way; she shakes her head, a pleading gaze penetrating my soul when her face falls.
“Close your eyes Cara,” I order gruffly. She shakes her head, her baby blue ocean eyes red-rimmed and filled with sorrow as her lips tremble. I’d smile at her brattiness and promise her a spanking, if death wasn’t so imminent.
“Let the man have some dignity,” Cooper says as he pulls a blade from his boot and severs the rope knotted around my wrists before Lenora can say a word.
I brace myself for the sting of the needle, refusing to close my eyes as I gaze across at Cara, deciding I don’t care what they are about to pump into my veins if it buys her some time.
I don’t react as it pierces my skin, wincing slightly as the cool liquid enters a vein.
It’s all over quickly, and Caleb slides the needle out.
I sway, hooded eyes still locked on her as death beckons me forward.
I had hoped the Knox brothers would be able to work some magic and get me the fuck out of here, but no one expected Lenora would have this planned.
A cold river fills my chest as pain radiates throughout my torso.
I hit the floor with a thwack, watching the pain of witnessing my death tear Cara up as she scrambles to get free.
I fight against the pull to close my eyes for as long as I can.
I watch helpless as Simon winds his good hand around her hair, forcing her head up as she screams out for me.
“You won’t want to miss this,” he whispers into her ear loud enough for the words to reach me, his wild grimace contorting as he basks in the shrill whimper that tumbles from her lips, her body slumped in defeat.
Time seems to slow down as objects in the room bleed into one another, a cataclysmic melding of figures, colours, and shapes. The slowing thump of my heart leisurely eclipses all other noise in the room, and for the first time since she arrived, I feel alone again.
“Hope” is the only word that passes my dying lips before the nothingness drags me under its blackened surface and the lights go out.
Of all the things I had to show for my sorry existence, her belief in me—the love she showed me that was possible, that is what I hold onto as I witness the final moments of my life fade away.
Her.
Then. Now. For always.
Her.