Chapter 25 #2
“No! No!” Talon screams, turning to me, her eyes round with shock. “Please don’t kill me! Pleasepleaseplease! I don’t wanna die.”
“Seems like she’s decided.” Chad pats me on the shoulder. “Now, here.” He shoves the weapon toward me. “You get to do the honor.”
“W-what? N-nooo,” I cry, words trembling.
“You heard me, bitch. Take the fucking gun before I blow all of your brains out.”
He shoves it into my hand and wraps the weapon around my shaky fingers. Quaking as I stand there, my emotions wrench out of me. I can’t kill anyone. I’m not a killer. I’m not like them.
“Tick-tock!” He grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls so hard my scalp throbs. “You have three seconds!”
I lift the gun in the air.
“One.” He shoves me closer to Talon, who’s sobbing as she holds Cammie’s hand.
“Don’t hurt me! Please!” Talon’s glassy blue eyes connect with mine, begging me not to pull that trigger.
“Two.”
“Please, just kill me instead. I—I can’t do it!”
“If I say three, the whole room dies! What will it be?”
Panting, trembling, my chest heavy, I aim the gun at Talon. Instead of turning to face the floor, she looks at me, her eyes immortalized in my soul, like a statue of her doom. Something I know I’ll never escape.
“Three!”
Pop.
The bullet hits the back of her neck, blood pooling around her.
I drop to the floor, rushing for her, covering the wound, my fingers soaking with crimson.
She doesn’t die right away. She suffers, her eyes still holding mine until her life slips away, second by second.
Then she’s gone.
Yet I will live with this forever.
It plays in my head over and over, like I’m watching it on a TV screen, while I lie here dying, or wishing I was.
ADRIEL
After dropping Kayla off, I drove back to the party.
Been watching my brothers, my mother with that fucking scarf on her neck, covering what I did to her.
She didn’t tell them. If she had, they’d come after me.
But things have been quiet except for them putting all their resources into finding the trafficking ring.
I hate seeing my mother’s face, that photo of me as a baby still burning a hole in my pocket.
I don’t know why I still carry it. I don’t know why she did either.
Her lies were exactly that. Maybe she feels some form of guilt for what she did, but it doesn’t excuse her not looking for me. She had her chance, and now it’s mine.
People have begun to leave, and I spot my twin, Raph, with his wife, Nicolette, his arms wrapped around her. He’s happy. It’s too bad I’m gonna take it all away.
Suddenly, Sophia jumps into his arms, her smile bright, making my lips twitch. From where I am, I can’t hear her, but she clearly loves her uncle. And I wonder what that feels like, to have a niece, to know her love.
She would never love me like that. I’m nothing like him. I don’t nurture. I don’t love. I’m this. A monster of my mother’s making.
Michael strides up beside them with Elsie, and Gio soon joins with a tall redhead, who I know as his wife, Iseult—my half sister.
If I wasn’t banking on the Marinos trying to kill me, I bet she would love to.
But I have nothing against her. I don’t exactly have anything against my brothers, either.
Not really. It’s always been about my mother and how I can hurt her.
I know the way to do that is through her sons.
Taking one of them from her would kill her.
Raph sets to go, while Nicolette pats him on the shoulder. She struts off with Elsie while he nods at his brothers and kisses his mother on the cheek before heading out. I follow him, watching as he gets into the car, and I get into mine.
He drives some distance while I stay far back, making sure he doesn’t get suspicious. I don’t know where the hell he’s going. I thought he’d be returning to his home. But it’s not his usual direction.
I slow down, the road empty. Dark. The remote in my hand is steady as I ready to press a button. In another life, maybe I would’ve actually liked him. He seems decent enough. But in this life, Raph dies, and I’ll be the one to do it.
As he turns right, I don’t wait another moment. Pressing the button, I anticipate the bomb in his car going off.
“Three. Two.”
The car swerves and stops.
“One.”
Boom.
It explodes like fucking fireworks, the vehicle lit up with a blaze so wide, I stare in awe at the vivid orange and yellow inferno, knowing he’s burning inside it. Knowing this will break my mother’s heart. I grin.
Needing to see him, I slip my mask back on and grab the fire extinguisher as I head out the door. The car burns, so close to exploding. As I reach it, I extinguish the fire inside the driver’s side, unable to stand my excitement at the thought of his charred body.
Except when I look inside…
“What the…”
He’s not here. There’s no one here.
I growl, staring out onto the open road.
How the hell did he escape?
The car swerved. Did he get out? Did he know? Did he hear something?
Fuck! My tech is undetectable. What did he use to find the fucking bomb?
Rushing for my car, I gun out of there, needing to figure out what went wrong.
But as I do, a notification pops on my phone. The cameras in Kayla’s home register extra bodies. I immediately turn on the app, and my heart completely stops beating.
She’s on the bed, tied up as two people with ski masks are on top of her, stripping her, blindfolding her as she barely fights back.
“FUCK!” I scream, slamming my forehead with a fist, going 130 miles per hour to get back to her while still watching her on my phone.
The muscles and veins strain against my skin, filling with rage. Too much of it, I can’t contain the quaking of my body.
And when she screams, when they take a small carving to her stomach, I know instantly. The Midnight Murderer has Kayla. Two of them as a team. Now it makes sense how they’ve managed to get away with it for so long.
They have her. They will kill her.
I should’ve been there instead of avenging a past I should’ve let die a long time ago. Because of my carelessness, they came for her. Now I’m gonna lose the only person I have left in this world.
If I’m too late…if they kill her…my life is over too.
“I’m sorry, baby bird!” My voice bleeds with an indescribable level of agony. “It’s all my fault. Fuuuck!”
My chest rattles, and something registers in my eye. I fling at it so I can still watch Kayla. As I do, I glance down at the back of my finger, seeing something I haven’t seen since I was a child.
My own tears.
It hurts. It fucking hurts so goddamn bad to see her cry, to watch them do this to her.
“I’m coming! I swear I’m gonna kill them for this!”
But I fucking hope like hell I can make it back in time to do just that.