Chapter 9 Violet #2
I watch him take in the whole picture in about two seconds. Me against the wall. Torn shirt. Wrists bleeding. Skirt ripped. The guard disarmed by my cell door, hand bleeding, belt still hanging open.
Every civilized layer on Elio Marchetti's face simply evaporates.
He doesn't reach for a gun. Every man in this room carries one. Enough firepower to level the compound twice. None of it matters.
None of it is enough for what his body needs to do right now.
He crosses the space in three strides, hauls the guard up by the throat. One hand, like the man weighs nothing, like he's peeling something off the bottom of his shoe. The guard's feet leave the ground as his hands claw at Elio's wrist. It's useless, like scratching marble.
The crack is sharp and clean. A single twist, and the guard's head snaps to an angle that necks don't go. His lifeless body drops to the floor.
"Elio." His name leaves my mouth before I can stop it. Barely a sound.
He stands there watching me, fists clenching beside him as if he's stopping himself from moving.
"Violet." It's just one word. Just my name. But as soon as it leaves his lips I break into a run.
His fists unclench and he moves to meet me as I lunch myself into his arms, big fat tears streaming down my face.
He came. He fucking came for me.
His arms close so hard my ribs scream and I don't care. I don't care. Because his chest is solid and warm, and his heartbeat is slamming against mine so hard I can feel it through the blood-soaked armor and he's real, he's warm and real and here, and I can't...
I didn't make him up.
I cry.
Ugly. Gasping. The kind of crying that comes from somewhere underneath the basement of yourself, from a room you sealed off and told yourself you'd never need again. Three weeks of not doing this and apparently my body has been keeping a tab.
His arms pull tighter, his hand cradling the back of my head, pressing my face into his neck as he says something in Italian I can't translate through the crying, but I don't need to, and then—
"You're safe, tesoro." His voice is wrecked. "I've got you."
Twenty-two days.
I dig my fingers into his shirt under the vest because I keep slipping on the blood and I need something to hold onto, and that's just where we are right now. I am clinging to a man covered in corpse-blood and it is the most comforted I've felt in three weeks.
He smells like blood and smoke and cordite and death.
And underneath all of that, underneath all the carnage still him.
Citrus and wood and leather, clean and sharp, the exact scent I pressed my face into the pillow trying to find, the one I convinced myself I'd imagined and inflated and built up into something that couldn't survive contact with reality.
I didn't imagine it.
His hands are shaking.
The hands that just snapped a man's neck. The elegant, capable, piano-playing, bone-breaking hands of Elio Marchetti are trembling against my back as he holds me tight.
He lifts me like I weigh nothing, which might actually be true at this point, thanks three weeks of the world's worst diet, and drapes his jacket over my shoulders. Still warm. Still him.
I burrow into it like it can swallow me whole, closing my eyes.
Except I don't keep them closed, because my brain is a beast of its own and it demands data even now. Especially now.
The hallway is a slaughter.
Bodies slumped against walls. Spent casings across the floor like the world's most fucked-up confetti.
A wall blown wide open, rebar twisted outward, wires sparking in the gap.
Fluorescent lights mostly dead. The ones still working flicker and buzz in that sick half-light I'll associate with this place for the rest of my life, however long or short that turns out to be.
I don't look at the faces.
I look up instead. Ceiling tiles. Missing ceiling tiles. Grey-gold sky through the breach. Real sky, the first I've seen in what feels like a lifetime.
I count doorways to keep myself from thinking about what's between them.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Count his steps. Steady. Even. Boots crunching on debris. Plaster, glass, things I'm not going to think about.
Doors are being forced open as voices rise behind each one, women's voices, Italian and Romanian and languages I don't know, spilling out into the corridor.
How many of us were there?
Don't think about that right now.
I press harder into Elio's neck and count his heartbeats instead.
"Matt." His name comes out before I can stop it, muffled against Elio's neck. "He was here he was taken into a room where they ra—"
Elio doesn't slow as his grip tightens and his jaw sets against the top of my head.
"The others too," I press. "We can't leave them here."
"We're not going to," he murmurs into my hair before he shifts his weighed looking back at one of his men. "Take them. Everyone we can find."
Real light hits my face
Gray-gold morning. Not fluorescent, not flickering, not processed through concrete, actual dawn, actual sky, actual air that isn't filtered through suffering and fear.
The brightness almost hurts, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced in my entire life.
I'm crying again, which is getting really old really fast, but apparently my tear ducts missed the memo about maintaining composure.
Cold air stings my exposed skin. But it's good cold. Clean cold.
Free cold.
The first breath tastes like smoke and something green underneath. Grass, maybe. Or trees. Or just the earth itself, still growing, completely indifferent to what happened inside these walls. The world beyond them never stopped.
Tears stream down my cheeks. Silent now. Warm against the cold air. I don't wipe them. My hands are still fisted in Elio's shirt and I'm not letting go. Not yet. Not for a while. Possibly not ever.
From another exit, supported by two men in tactical gear, Matt stumbles into the dawn. His face is swollen, his wrists raw. He squints against the light like he forgot the sun existed.
Then he sees me. In Elio's arms. Wrapped in Elio's jacket. Face pressed to Elio's neck.
His expression fractures as his loaded into a vehicle. He watches me through the window as they close the door.
I watch him back until Elio turns and someone opens the car door and Elio slides inside with me still in his arms, still not putting me down. I keep mine around his neck as the engine turns over, and we move.
Behind us the compound smokes. Women stumble out into the dawn, blinking, holding each other, testing the ground like they can't trust it.
I get it.
The ground hasn't been trustworthy in a long time.
I stay exactly where I am.