10. Addie #2
Still clasping my hand and the gun, he stepped up behind me in a move so quick neither I nor Evander saw it coming.
Van jolted as if he could stop the sadist raising his gun to my temple. He couldn’t though—and I didn’t fight him on it either.
“If you truly want death to claim you… if you want your life to be nothing more than a statistic in a dusty old Academy record book… if you want to join your friend—your loved ones—in the dirt, then pull the trigger.”
He let go of my hand, stepping back and circling to face me. So he, too, could watch as my brains splattered the mats.
But my hand remained where it was. Shaking against the cold steel.
“Do it, Sinclair.”
My finger flexed on the trigger. My lip wobbled.
To pull or not to pull…
Those unshed tears rolled down my cheeks.
I stared at the man who handed me the power to take my life into my own hands for the first time since entering these walls. The power to take my death into my own hands.
The gun rattled as I trembled, beads of sweat collecting on my forehead as I stared into those haunted green eyes. Maybe I could pretend I was running through a forest… or maybe that was still the tequila talking.
“Do it,” he murmured.
Who was I kidding? I couldn’t leave Eth here on his own… could I?
He’d manage just fine, would maybe even take that Sniper position I wanted so badly.
I closed my eyes.
Maybe I could see Fleur again.
My finger twitched again. My hand stilled at the thought.
I wanted so badly to do it. I didn’t want to endure any longer, I wanted more.
“Pull the trigger, Adelaide!”
And just as my finger pulled back, right on that precipice between death and life, I realised I couldn’t do it. That I wasn’t capable of surrender.
I wanted more.
Fleur would kill me herself if she knew I’d entertained this lunacy for even a second. Her life had been stolen from her; her throat slit in the night all because she’d resembled me…
I knew what I had to do, and this wasn’t it.
The fucker who did that to her deserved this bullet more than I did. He deserved a hell of a lot worse. And I wasn’t about to sit around waiting for someone else to give him a slap on the wrist and go back to pretending there wasn’t a cold-blooded serial killer in our midst.
Well, one who’d been there prior to Graduation.
My arm fell back down to my side as my eyes snapped open, gaze locking onto both instructors. Their expressions were like two sides of a coin: Evander with terror and relief etched plainly across his face, Beckett with something disturbingly like pride.
He held his hand out, and I relinquished the Beretta, equal parts reluctant and relieved to do so.
“And now you know,” Beckett murmured, his eyes flicking to the doors and back again. “This place will need to survive you, not the other way around.”
I wiped the remaining tears away. “Hell of a way to make a point.”
“I’ll say,” Evander grumbled, crossing his arms.
“But a point you needed to realise sooner rather than later.” Beckett raised one black brow pointedly, switching the safety back on and holstering his sexy gun.
One day I’ll own one of those, I promised myself.
I frowned as a thought occurred to me. “It wasn’t even loaded, was it?”
Evander’s head snapped up to Beckett, equally curious.
In answer, Beckett unholstered his weapon again, clicked the safety off, raised his arm, and squeezed the trigger.
BANG.
A nine-millimetre hole appeared in the solid wooden door—a foot to the right of Deklan Pearce’s head.
“Asshole!” he swore from the corner in which he’d apparently been watching my whole existential crisis in silence.
“Oh, great, another witness to my breakdown.”
“Adelaide, it’s not—” His sentence dropped off at the look on my face.
I met his stare head-on, an indecipherable expression flitting across his features, then whirled on the largest, stupidest of the three. “Are you fucking serious?!” I screamed, getting up in his face. “You could have killed me!”
Beckett took the opportunity to step closer. Our chests pressed up against each other. Our lungs raced in tandem. He looked down his nose at me, smirked, then dipped his head—so close he could kiss me.
Fuck. He isn’t going to kiss me, is he?
“No. You could have killed you. I just handed you the weapon.”
My fist flew before I was fully aware of it, landing squarely on the side of his jaw. “Why, you—” I started, ready to unleash a torrent of vitriol his way—and deservedly so—when an arm hooked around my midsection, dragging me from the room.
Beckett just watched and grinned as one of his friends carted me outside, dumping me on my ass in the snow.
“What the fuck?!”
“Be grateful it’s just snow,” Evander muttered. “Beck’s been known to return fire for so much less than that.”
“Maybe I just caught him off guard,” I grumbled, getting to my feet and brushing the stupid icy powder away.
“Oh, you definitely caught him off guard,” Pearce agreed, smirking.
He and Van exchanged a bro-filled look, some secret message passing between them.
Then the doors banged open, and Beckett waltzed out like he hadn’t just turned my world upside down.
He paused long enough to impart one warning and one warning only: “Drills start at 5—and if you ever come to class with alcohol on your breath again, I’ll ensure the only liquor you drink again is on assignment as a Swallow. ”
Evander and Deklan exchanged another, significantly less bro-filled look and followed him back over to the main building, leaving me and my frozen ass behind.
“Good riddance,” I muttered under my breath.
Deklan looked back over his shoulder, grinning, and winked as though he’d heard.
Maybe he had—I genuinely didn’t care.
I had vengeance to plan.