Chapter Nine #2
Heavy footsteps carry Connor over to me.
I brace myself, hissing as he fists a hand in my hair and cranes my neck to stare up at him.
What I see makes me wince. He’s covered in blood—not his own, I don’t think, but it’s soaking through his shirt and pants, and there are splatters of it across his face and neck.
“Right now, I want to kill you, Mira,” he growls lowly. “Fucking. Talk.”
“Ease up, lad,” Seamus says mildly from the doorway, also having returned.
“You saw her. She can shoot. She’s been trained. The background check on her hasn’t come back yet. Last night, she was a loose end; tonight, she’s a threat.”
I whimper when Connor pulls me up by my hair, yanks the gun from my waistband, and drops me in a dining chair.
He braces his hands on the back of it, leaning over me.
“I find it very fucking suspicious that you made a distracting dinner just before nine guys decided to try to break in. Did the Serpents send you?”
Unable to control my fear any longer, I let out a shaky, “No.”
I glance at Seamus, who leans against the wall with thinned lips.
He won’t help me. Then, at Dorian, who’s also watching this exchange without intervening.
I give him a desperate please help look.
His eyes shadow for a moment, as if he’s contemplating it.
He glances between me and Connor; hope sears through my veins.
Maybe he’ll tell his psycho roommate to back the hell off.
Maybe he’ll defend my innocence. Maybe he’s not all bad…
Dorian gives his head a slight shake. A shard of pain pierces my chest. Last night, he seemed intent on keeping me alive—he’s come onto me more times than I can count in the twenty-four hours I’ve known him. Now, he’s leaving me to the resident psychopath? I saved his fucking life!
Connor grabs my chin roughly and redirects my line of sight to him. “Don’t look at them. They won’t help you. Look at me. Did the Serpents send you?”
“No,” I repeat again, more firmly. “If Serpents refers to the guys who just attacked, then you’ll notice I killed several of them. Why would I kill someone who sent me?”
“She did,” Dorian confirms, his words little more than a groan.
He’s in pain—previously, I was going to help him, but now I’m seething mad at him.
I know I shouldn’t be, but he’s not helping me or protecting me from Connor, which means he gives a total of zero fucks about me, so I need to give negative fucks for him.
He can go to hell; all of these crazy fuckers can go to hell.
“That doesn’t mean someone else didn’t send you,” Connor growls lowly, still not looking away from me. “Who? The Southies? Someone who has shit against the Bratva?”
“No one sent me!” I snap.
“Then where the fuck did you learn how to shoot a gun?” Connor demands.
As a general rule, I do not talk about my past. It’s a graveyard filled with bones, ghosts, and demons.
Any time I’ve tried to talk about it, I ended up unleashing those ghosts and demons on myself.
It rattles me so much I always spend the next days in a state of hyper-anxiety.
I certainly do not want to tell these assholes anything, but I can see just how much Connor wants to kill me.
I can feel it, too; it causes a perpetual tremble in my limbs.
“Do not withhold anything,” Connor snaps. “Either explain to me in detail how you came by such an interesting skillset, or stay silent, and you’ll never talk again. Clear?”
My throat clicks as I swallow, forcing myself to nod.
I don’t have an option but to literally unearth old wounds to expose myself right now, otherwise I risk getting killed.
I’ve faced death enough times that the prospect isn’t as daunting as it should be, but I do not want to die by Connor’s hands.
I’m reasonably certain that his method of killing would put me through the sort of agony that I’m not eager to endure.
He’s the type to send a message; if he thinks I’m a mole, he’ll probably chop me into pieces while keeping me alive.
I have a higher pain tolerance than most, but I’m not immune to pain.
“Lift my shirt. Left side. Check my ribs,” I tell him.
“Is this a trick?” he demands.
I shake my head. “Nope. It’s show-and-tell, since you’re eager to see me dead. Check.” I’d do it myself, but I think any movement from me would drastically increase my odds of getting killed.
Connor doesn’t lift my shirt; he tears it straight down the middle, and humiliation at my exposed bra and what he’s about to see burns in my chest. My torso is a canvas of scars, most so faded that they’re barely visible.
Cigarette burns, old cuts from flying beer bottles…
the left side of my ribs are the worst. That’s where there are two bullet wounds.
Two injuries that very nearly killed me, one of which was put there by the man who was supposed to protect me.
Connor roughly twists me to the side, and his hands freeze on my waist as his eyebrows draw down.
Seamus sucks in a sharp breath; Dorian goes still as a statue; I clench my jaw, hating every moment of this.
“Explain,” Connor growls.
“My mom married a gang member when I was nine,” I say.
“Clyde. He was not a good person. He did a lot of bad shit that had people constantly trying to kill him. My mom was collateral to one of the shootings; I was almost collateral to another. The lower bullet scar is from a man who broke into our home when I was twelve.”
“And the upper one?” Connor questions, no remorse or contrition in his tone.
“From when my stepdad was very drunk a year later. He was pissed I didn’t die with my mom.”
“Jesus Christ,” Seamus murmurs.
“Can I please fucking move now, or are you planning on finishing the job he started?” I ask Connor, desperate to cover myself. I hate the scars on my body—they’re constant reminders of what I try to forget.
“That doesn’t explain how you learned to shoot,” Connor says.
“I started going to a gun range when I was fourteen. The owner was in love with my mom years ago; he was kind to me. I was pretty sure my stepdad would kill me some day, I could feel that he wanted to, so I learned how to protect myself.”
Connor releases me. “You’re going to stay here. I am going to check what you said. There should be hospital reports to corroborate—”
I bark out a laugh. “There are no hospital reports.” I barely refrain from adding idiot.
“I dug out the bullets on my own and nearly killed myself in the process. There’s one for when I had a broken bone in my leg, bad enough that the bone tore through skin and I needed surgery.
There are few for my mom, from when Clyde hit her so hard she couldn’t heal on her own. That’s it.”
Connor’s quiet for a moment, examining my bullet scars again.
“There are sloppy incision scars around the wound,” he confirms. “Could’ve been made by you.
Okay. Stay here. I’ll be back. If what you say tracks, you’ll live to see another day.
If you’re trying to fucking play me, and you got those wounds while training up with a gang or some shit, you’re dead. ”
“Noted,” I snap. “I’ll wait patiently while you pull your head out of your ass.”
Connor shoots me a scathing glare before he stomps out of the room.
“You good, mate?” Seamus asks Dorian.
“Fucking dandy,” he replies. “I need this wound stitched up.”
I say nothing. I’m sure as fuck not going to bloody my hands helping him when he was content to leave me to Connor’s rage.
I wrap the tatters of my shirt around myself, cross my arms to keep it in place, and slump back against the chair, thinking.
I tune out Dorian and Seamus as they talk to each other, and allow myself to do something I very rarely engage in unless I’m listening to music; I dissociate.
Music is vital for helping me zone out safely—dissociation without it is dangerous business, because there’s no way to know when I’ll come back to myself.
The experience of dissociating is blissful.
My emotions fade. My physical being fades.
My surroundings fade—it’s like I take a backseat in my body.
My senses are still active, but easy to ignore.
The feelings and energies of the people around me are easy to disregard.
I can think in peace without the inhibiting factors of the real world getting in my way.
I need to get out of here. That’s my first thought; the need to escape.
I tried to play nice, and it did not get me into a desirable position.
I could wait out the week until I’m let go, but there’s no telling how many times I’ll have to confront death again.
Or how suspicious Connor will be of me, or if he’ll decide that it’d simply be easier to get rid of me.
I thought I could rely on Dorian for at least some protection since he seemed to like me, but that was clearly a miscalculation. I’m alone in keeping myself safe yet again. It’s not the first time, but I’d hoped to avoid ever being in such a position again.
Does the universe just hate me?
I try to think through my options. I could try to sneak out tonight or tomorrow, but where would I go?
These guys all go to Greywood, and they’re obviously armed and connected.
I can’t just leave Greywood; I’m here on a scholarship.
I could try to transfer schools and transfer the scholarship, but it would be nearly impossible to do that mid-semester.
I’d need to wait for next semester at the very least, preferably the end of the school year.
I don’t know how long I spend trapped in my own mind, but faint footsteps draw me out of my self-induced stupor.
My survival instincts force me to be present once more, bringing me partially out of my dissociative state.
Connor enters the room just as I blink repeatedly, my vision coming back into focus.
He stares at me; I stare at him. After a moment, he looks at Seamus and Dorian. “What she said tracks. Reports line up.”
I don’t get an apology from him or even an apologetic glance, but I don’t expect either. He doesn’t seem the type to feel sorry for hurting someone, physically or otherwise.
“You need to get fixed up,” Connor says to Dorian. “I’ll call the doctor for a visit. We need to report this to the boss.”
Dorian looks at me. “I’d prefer to avoid a visit from the doc, and the obscene donation he’ll demand. You know how to do stitches?”
I let out a humorless puff of laughter. Of course I do. I offered to do them earlier. “Nope.” Just like I can’t shoot a gun.
Seamus’s eyebrows raise and faint amusement flashes across his expression.
Connor rolls his eyes. Dorian’s brows furrow.
“It has been a very long day followed by a very long night,” Dorian says lowly.
“Trust me when I say, you do not want to piss any of us off right now. You’ve seen too much and heard too much. ”
“I try to mess with your wound, there’s no guarantee I won’t accidentally slice through your brachial artery,” I say mildly. “You’ll want a professional to take care of it.” I wouldn’t slice through his artery, but I am not doing anyone in this room any favors.
“I’ll call the boss,” Seamus says.
“And I’ll call the fucking doctor,” Connor growls. He glances at Dorian. “Can you walk?”
Dorian nods. “I think so. I’ll wait in the living room.” He turns his gaze to me. “You’re coming with me. I’m going to keep you very close for the time being.”
Feeling my lips thin, I nod. I’m in no mood to get interrogated or threatened more. I don’t want to be in the same state as any of these crazy assholes right now, but it doesn’t look like I have much of a choice.