26. Zira
ZIRA
My confession was supposed to make Bradley stop touching me. How can he bear to, knowing I got my own brother killed? His blood is on my hands.
Bradley doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of my words, though, because he doesn’t throw me down in disgust. He keeps me cradled against his chest and turns away from the mirror I’m transfixed by, then he gently sets me down on the ground but keeps both his hands on my shoulders.
Shivers ripple down my spine and I urge him silently to let me go.
Don’t stain your hands on me.
Bradley doesn’t acknowledge my internal demand and instead crouches ever so slightly until we’re eye to eye as he wipes my tears away.
“I’m going to help you undress and get in the bath, okay? If you need me to stop at any point, then say so and I will, or if you’d rather someone like Ivy or Valentina, I can get them for you.”
He’s being so nice and I hate it.
I hate it because I hate myself.
How have I spent my entire life doing everything for Peter, scraping him up with me and taking care of him, funding his bad habits and working myself to the bone to take care of him and get him help, and he didn’t even hesitate on that embankment?
I close my eyes and my thoughts flood with that same moment over and over. Peter raising the gun, the bang of the weapon and the hot pain of the bullet grazing close enough to me to cut skin. I was angry when I thought it was Harris. Now there’s nothing but despair.
Bradley moves around while humming softly as if he wants me to know where he is all the time.
It’s annoyingly considerate and I hate it.
His warm fingers brush my elbow and sweep up to catch the sleeve of the nightshirt he slipped me into, however many nights ago it was we arrived here.
The material bunches at my shoulder and he places his palm there to keep the fabric in place, then his touch brushes against my hip.
With his warmth leading the way up my body, he brings the fabric up to under my chest and then carefully manipulates the neck hole enough that it slips off me without incident.
My hair catches briefly in the shirt and then slaps against my bare back in clumps.
It needs to be washed.
I need to wash.
I don’t care enough.
A bite of cold nips at my bare skin, but before I can wrap my arms around my naked body, Bradley’s already scooping me back up into his arms and lifting me over the edge of the tub.
“Tell me if it’s too hot,” he says in a low voice.
Finally, I open my eyes again, freeing myself from the torment of the same memory over and over again.
Hot water and fluffy bubbles rise to meet me, kissing the soles of my feet and the backs of my thighs as he lowers me into the tub.
Bradley shows no care for his sleeves as they instantly get soaked.
For a moment, the water is too hot. Bitingly so. It cuts against my skin, turns my shivers into trembles of pain, and every inch of me tingles with the urge to claw my way out of the water like some distressed cat.
But then I take a breath and the heat grows… pleasant.
The bubbles smell nice and they fizz slightly against my skin while the water wraps me in layers of warmth that tempt me to sink down until I’m completely submerged.
Luckily, Bradley’s there to stop that from happening.
After freeing his arms from underneath me, he rocks back on his haunches and quickly removes his shirt which frees him from his sopping wet sleeves. Then he’s back with me.
Hollow, I study his face. Never have I been naked with a man without the weight of expectation, but Bradley carries such a soft look as if he really is here just to help me.
I hate it.
I want him to be angry. To yell and scream and tell me what a terrible person I am and justify the self-hatred growing inside me.
But he doesn’t.
He kneels there and picks up a soft sponge, then begins to bathe me like he’s some kind of master at it. As soft as the sponge is, it oddly grates against my skin, but Bradley follows every swipe of the sponge with a caress of his own hand and that’s much nicer to handle.
Maybe he knows. Maybe he can see everything I’m trying to hide because I don’t have the strength anymore.
The numbness in my chest, a black, weighted cloud that crushes my lungs and heart, suddenly starts to ease.
It’s like the heat from the water has wormed its way into me and is picking apart the knot of anger and grief, allowing my breath to come easier and each heartbeat to feel a little less like it’s just a rock rattling around a cavern.
“Your brother,” Bradley says softly. “Tell me what you meant by he’s dead.”
I blink slowly, and tears I hadn’t even registered suddenly roll down my cheeks. “He’s dead,” I repeat in a voice so cracked and dry, it’s hard to believe it’s my own.
“At the house?” Bradley asks.
Slowly, I shake my head. “They swapped masks,” I murmur, and pain lances right up my breastbone. “They swapped…”
I close my eyes, saving myself from Bradley’s flicker of confusion. He continues to wash me slowly, one arm at a time, and then across my shoulders and slowly down my back.
“Who swapped?” Bradley asks after he finishes washing every delicate inch of my back.
“Harris.” My eyes open and I gaze down at the bubbles, hoping to find an answer in each one I pop with a pass of my fingers.
Sadly, I don’t, but now that I’ve started talking, it’s harder to stop.
The pain in my chest floods upward as if trying to claw out of me and the only relief I get is to talk.
“I knew Harris before, did you know that?”
Bradley shakes his head. “No. I didn’t. You knew him before the robberies?”
I nod shakily. “We dated when I was young. Too young.” I swallow my disgust. “But I was lonely and he was there and it was nice to be taken care of for once, so I didn’t care. He’d pay some of my bills, get me food, take me to school.”
Bradley’s face remains expressionless, but there’s a flicker of something dark in his eye.
“It was fine. I liked it. But then someone else caught his eye and he left me, and I missed him terribly and did everything I could to get him back. Threw myself at him, and even though he was happy to fuck me, it didn’t matter.
Eventually, I moved on. Peter and I got a new apartment, I focused on him and helping him, and… ”
Trailing off, the tears well up back in my eyes.
Bradley moves on to my legs and takes extra care while massaging my feet and easing some of the tension I carry there.
“Harris,” I choke out. “W-When I found out Peter owed him money, I was so angry. I thought we’d left him behind, but he was still in our lives.
He was feeding into Peter’s addictions and reversing all the work I did to help him, and then when the debt got so big, Harris came to me and he told me if I slept with him for every grand Peter owed, he’d forget the debt. That was the price of Peter’s freedom.”
Bradley’s hands pause on my knee and they tighten briefly, then they continue up my thigh, but he never reaches too high. The sponge cleans and his hands soothe right after.
“I said no,” I whisper. “Told him I’d never touch him ever again, and he hit me and told me I’d made a mistake. I couldn’t imagine what he was going to do, but then Peter was gone and suddenly, the only way to save him was the robberies.”
I lift both hands to my face, curling my fingers together into a fist and pressing it to my mouth. Glancing up, I meet Bradley’s concerned gaze.
“That was an impossible choice,” Bradley says quietly. “You were given an impossible choice and I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head back and forth. “No, because if I’d just swallowed my pride, swallowed this idea that I was better, then none of this would have happened.
No robberies, no shooting…” I glance down to the pink scars on Bradley’s chest. “No running with the diamonds, and my brother wouldn’t be dead.
” A sob surges out of me, but no more tears come.
Clutching at my chest, I gasp deeply. “Oh, my God.”
“Zira, I don’t think that’s true. Harris would have found a way to lock you into that disgusting deal for the rest of your life. You did what you had to do.”
“Did I?” I gasp weakly. “B-Because I still got screwed and Peter’s…” Closing my eyes, another dry sob rises in my chest.
“What happened to Peter at the house?”
Of course. Bradley has no idea what really happened. To him, it probably looks like Peter killed Adam and then died or something worse.
“Not the house.” Opening my eyes, I lock onto Bradley’s grounding gray eyes. “That was Harris.”
Bradley’s bushy brows twitch together. “Harris?”
I nod. “They swapped masks because they were working together the whole time! P-Peter was never missing. He was the other mask. He was there at every robbery, he was there the night I shot you, and he was… he was with me in the car that night on the cliff. It was him.” The words tear out of me like vomit and my throat burns.
“He swapped masks with Harris because Harris didn’t want to wear the most recognizable mask and Peter probably thought it was cool, and so it was him, it was him in the car and he tried to kill me, but I got him killed instead and he’s dead, he’s really fucking dead, oh, my God. ”
I burst into tears, gasping and sobbing as waves of deep despair wash over me.
Bradley immediately gathers me into his arms and hugs me against his broad chest, but it doesn’t soothe the agony pouring out of me.
Each tear down my cheeks burns with guilt, every sob rasps past my dry throat like sandpaper, and I hope it never ends.
I deserve it.
“They worked together,” Bradley repeats, and it’s like he’s finally understood something.
“If that’s true, Zira, then no matter what, they would have used your connection for the jewelry store.
Given the work that went into planning the raid on the ship, I’m not so sure Harris would have settled for sex. He had a plan.”
“All my life,” I sob. “All my life, I’ve done everything for him.
I raised him, helped with his homework, fed him and clothed him, tried to get him into a good college and worked myself to the bone trying to get him the help he needed, and instead he chose Harris.
He chose—” My throat closes and I choke, gripping tighter onto Bradley’s forearm.
“I tried so hard to save him and I failed. I failed because he died! I killed him, oh, God.”
I’m shaking apart, tearing apart at the seams. Nothing in my life exists anymore. Peter’s gone. My apartment’s likely gone too, and my job. I had no savings. They all went to Peter. I have nothing left.
“I killed him,” I gasp. “If I’d just… stopped all this, he’d be alive. I killed him!”
“Zira,” Bradley says firmly, his gentle voice drifting down from the top of my head. “I pulled the trigger that night, not you. I shot Peter to save your life because he was trying to kill you. I killed him. Not you.”
I killed him.
Is this… Bradley’s fault?
If he hadn’t been at the jewelry store that day, then I never would have picked him to be the hostage and never would have gotten involved in whatever the hell this place is.
I’d be dealing with the guilt of killing someone, but Peter would be alive and with me.
Bradley wouldn’t have come to my store to scare me, wouldn’t have sent people after that second team.
Everything would be fine if… Bradley hadn’t been involved at all.
Slowly, I pull back at him and squint my raw eyes in the low light. “You,” I whisper as my brain spins a long, winding path to new logic in an attempt to stem the pain in my chest.
“You’re right. It’s all your fault. I… I hate you, you hear me? I hate you!”