CHAPTER FIFTEEN #3
Not one person. Not one enemy.
Them.
The word belongs to my world.
My father used to tell me that power was never measured by the people willing to die for you, but by the people willing to make you suffer before they take your life.
A bullet was merciful. A knife took its time.
But men who understood leverage never reached for either first. They reached for the people waiting at home. The people you cared about.
That’s who suffered the most.
I can still hear my father’s lessons as though he’s sitting beside me, patient as ever, pouring tea while I rolled my eyes because I thought I’d never have to understand the weight of lessons like that.
He’d smile anyway, tapping two fingers against the table before telling me that who you are in the moments before you die is who you are to your very core.
That the person lingering beneath the skin you’ve carried around your whole life until that point was the person you’d have to eventually face.
And how easily that power, who you really are, can be destroyed just because someone somewhere wants something from you or someone you care about. All in the name of Vendetta.
Revenge.
He tried to prepare me for it. But nothing could have prepared me for this. Nothing.
In my case, I don’t think I’ll ever truly know what brought me to this hell, or what my power is.
Whether I was simply a punishment for another man’s sins.
My father’s sins. But I find myself wondering if Death already knows the answers to those questions.
If he isn’t trying to know me at all, but instead, trying to uncover my power.
My truest self before finally deciding whether it’s time to claim what’s left of me.
The warmth of the mug has seeped into my hands, yet I continue turning it slowly between my palms, watching the last wisps of steam disappear into the room while I search for another harmless question to ask.
When I finally meet his eyes, I find him watching me with the same quiet concentration he’d worn all evening, his expression unreadable, though there is something different about the way he studies me now.
Less curious. More certain. As though every answer I’d given him had quietly confirmed a suspicion he’d been piecing together since the moment we sat down.
He leans back ever so slightly, giving me more space instead of less, and when he finally speaks, his voice remains infuriatingly gentle.
“What aren’t you allowed to tell me?”
Every thought leaves my head. The room seems to tilt beneath me, the question echoing through my mind until I can no longer hear the grandfather clock somewhere deeper in the house, or the quiet crackle of the logs burning low in the hearth, or even the sound of my own breathing.
Seven simple words. Impossibly ordinary that somehow finds the one place inside me that screams for me not to answer.
Because I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because somewhere along the way, the choice was taken from me.
And something tells me that Death has worked it out.
If I tell him what he wants to know, they’ll find out about it. I just know it. It doesn’t matter that I’m sitting in this warm, quiet house. It doesn’t matter that I’m here, safer than I’ve been in the longest time. Because they’ll know. They always know.
The mug slips from my hands before I realize my fingers have stopped obeying me, rocking dangerously against the saucer as I lurch to my feet, every instinct inside me screaming that I need to leave.
Need to run. Need to put miles between myself and the question before the answer finds its way out of my mouth.
My skin crawls beneath the oversized shirt until it feels too tight, too heavy, suffocating against my chest, and before I can even register what I’m doing, my nails are digging into the soft flesh of my forearms, scratching hard enough to make the sting bloom beneath my fingertips.
His voice reaches me first. Calm and careful, but I don’t hear the words. Only the panic.
The room grows smaller with every frantic breath, my pulse hammering so violently it drowns out everything else until all I can hear are the voices I’d spent the whole day trying to ignore. Don’t tell anyone anything. Don’t speak. Don’t think. Don’t remember.
My nails drag harder, then stop. Not because I told them to, because another hand has wrapped gently around my wrist. Not tight enough to trap me. Only enough to stop me from hurting myself. I flinch, the blanket slipping from my shoulders, my eyes flying to his.
He’s closer now. Close enough that I can see the concern written plainly across his face, yet somehow he’d left enough space between us that I don’t feel concerned. His grip is impossibly gentle, as though he’s holding something so fragile, he’s terrified to be the one to shatter it.
“You’re here,” he whispers, never taking his eyes from mine. “Look at me. You’re here.”
For reasons I don’t understand.
I do.