11. Kiera
KIERA
I tried to breathe through it. But the bile burning the back of my throat was enough to make me puke again.
Squeezing Spencer’s hand harder, we were just steps from the warehouse entrance.
I’d killed someone.
And whatever came next was certainly something I didn’t want to be involved in. Flashes of every gory movie I’d ever seen were a highlight reel in my mind. Limbs torn from limbs; blood spewing onto the floor, my face; reciprocating saws revving and churning as they cut through bone.
From everything I’d ever learned, it was nearly impossible to get away with murder. Especially one as gruesome as this, especially with four perpetrators.
Spencer swung the door open, a creak forcing my eyes back into the warehouse. “Just try to breathe, it’ll be done soon.”
Someone will come looking for him.
Just as we were stepping inside, Leo and Dom were lifting Grant’s limp corpse and dumping it into a metal bin. It made a heavy thunk as it fell to the bottle of the barrel.
The duo placed a lid over the top, Leo using her elbow to slam the metal top into place. Despite myself, the two of them were glistening in sweat, their exposed arms flexed and tensed from lifting an entire body.
It must be the adrenaline. Surely this isn’t hot.
Shaking the thought away, I followed Spencer’s lead inside. But looking at the barrel wasn’t any comfort to my fears.
“What is that supposed to do? Play hide and seek with it? We are so getting caught. I’m so screwed. This was such a bad idea…” My feet started to pace my body around the dark warehouse.
Spencer tried to intercept me but she was easy to dodge.
Until I hit a wall of meat, who’d managed to corner me against another metal pillar.
Dom’s eyes were calm, an ocean of blue stillness, but her voice was a low rumble of threats. Lifting her hands to my face, I caught sight of the blood on her hands and face. I couldn’t remember if it was from the torture or lifting the body.
My heart raced at the visual. Something about the splatter, her intense face, the way her jaw tensed… I couldn’t shake how familiar it all felt.
Pointing in my face, Dom towered over me. “Calm down.”
Scoffing, I pushed myself off the pole to get past her.
Before I could, she brought her blood soaked, bruised hand to my throat — pressing me back into the cold metal pillar.
My eyes stayed on her knuckles, bright red and cut open. Even through the fear, I could feel the blood on her hands soaking into the skin of my neck.
“Viper. You need to calm the fuck down. You don’t know what you’re doing.” Dom hissed in my face, tightening her grip to keep me quiet.
Once my shoulders dropped, forced into submitting to my captor, Dom loosened her grip and let a rush of air flow back to my head. “I don’t take out the trash.”
My forehead wrinkled.
As I was about to get myself back into Dom’s hot water, she continued, “The Oracle handles body disposal. But we need to make this place look brand fucking new, like they just polished the concrete. Understood?”
Nodding, I realized how out of my depth I was. I wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with my captors. But the truth was, they stood heads above me. At least in this department.
If I wanted to get out of this, to get back to whatever life waited for me after Gabriel gave up on finding me, I needed to survive Dom’s wrath.
And right now, that meant complying. That meant cleaning up the pool of blood spreading on the floor.
The blood I had spilled.
Dom peered deep into my green eyes, testing me. Once she was satisfied she dropped her hand and headed back to the closet at the corner of the room. There, she grabbed a few jugs of liquid and tossed them to the floor. “Get to work.”
Leo and Spencer got to work, grabbing rags, brooms, and mops. I hadn’t even seen the grate off to the side of the metal chair until Leo was using a squeegee to direct the crimson liquid down the drain.
Lingering at the edge of the circle of light, I watched my two protectors clean. They were a well-oiled machine. And that’s when it hit me again that they’d done this before. All of it was so methodical, the way they’d grabbed Grant, how ready the warehouse was. How easy the cleanup was going.
I should have been afraid, should have been regretting ever getting on those bikes all those weeks ago. And something inside of me should have told me they would do the same to me.
But watching them work, I knew what this was. This wasn’t random violence, it was vengeance. And maybe true Justice.
Leo and Spencer were methodical, each of them with their part to play and executing perfectly.
A shiver ran down my spine at the word. Execute.
From behind me, a firm hand gripped my shoulder and nudged me forward. “Don’t be a fucking leech, get to work.” Dom growled in my ear. “Or is getting dirty ‘beneath your station’?”
Rolling my eyes, I turned on my heels to fight back.
No one shoved me like that. And quoting my own words back at me was a low blow.
Especially given how wildly different these circumstances were.
It was just like her to remember that, to hold my words against me.
But like everything else I’d seen over the last few weeks, I was realizing that Dom’s cleaning exercise in the shop was preparation.
But face-to-face with Dom’s chiseled jaw and gritted teeth, I knew I didn’t have a choice. This is what The Oracle wanted and no amount of arguing with Dom would stop me from having to get my prints all over this shit.
Letting out a slow breath, I looked up into her icy eyes and hissed back, “Don’t ever touch me like that again.”
A sinister smirk took over Dom’s face. Licking her lips, she leaned closer to me. “I will touch my property however I like.”
Unflinching, I knew I was wasting my time. Instead, I whipped around and grabbed a mop from the closet. “I’ll never be yours.”
But before I could leave her reach, Dom gripped both of my shoulders and pulled me against her body. She was burning like a furnace through her thick tshirt, her muscles pinning me in place. She’d ditched her dress shirt for the cleanup, instead letting a tight undershirt strain against her body.
With a laugh, Dom tightened her grip. “Oh, but you always have been, Viper.” She shoved my shoulders as she released her grip. Before I could come up with any sort of biting response, she turned into the darkness of the warehouse.
Fuck her. Fuck her. Fuck her. The thought repeated in my mind every few seconds the entire time I was cleaning.
It moved surprisingly fast with all four of us. After a minute of sulking, even Dom got to work. She’d shoved the barrel into a back room of the warehouse, somewhere The Oracle’s hunchmen would be sure to find.
Leo and Dom must have gotten the body into the barrel quickly, considering how little blood there was to clean up. Most of our time was spent flashing a black light over the space and hunting for fingerprints we had missed.
The work of making the place pristine kept my mind from replaying the images of what I’d done. I’d almost been able to shove the thought of his blood flowing from his neck, the feeling of the blade ripping into flesh from my mind entirely.
It was so perfectly cleaned I might have been able to convince myself none of this had happened. If I came back here in the morning, there’d be no trace. Just the itch in the back of my mind that I’d never be the same. That it had been real. That I would never unsee it.
It wasn’t until we stepped back out into the cold night air that I remembered it was all real.
A light flurry fell from the sky, small snowflakes landing on my eyelashes as we walked to the bikes.
Wrapping me up in her arms, Leo looked down at my tired face. “Let’s get our little Princess back to the castle.”
We loaded ourselves onto the bikes, and headed back to Dom’s mansion. Even the rev of the loud engines wasn’t enough to quiet my mind.
I might never know peace again.