Adrien #2
And now I’m twenty-two. I think. I have more money than I ever dreamed of having and yet I possess absolutely nothing that matters. I’m not powerful. I’m just a weapon. A slave wrapped in expensive clothes. A trained animal that someone else points in the right direction.
I’m not free.
I’m more chained than I’ve ever been before.
I let my head fall to the side, eyes wandering through the emptiness. My fingers fumble at my belt, trying to find my phone, but instead they land on my gun.
It’s sticky. My whole shirt feels weird. I lift my head and look at myself, realizing I’m covered in blood.
Right.
I killed someone today.
I’m not even sure who it was anymore. His face is already slipping away from me, blending into the dozens of other faces that came before him. All I know is that he was one of them, and that made it easy.
I used to think I understood how this fucked-up organization worked.
Back when Kasien and I first really got dragged into it, I thought there was some logic behind it all. A hierarchy and rules. People at the top and people at the bottom. I thought if we stayed alive long enough, we’d eventually see the whole picture, gain power and escape it.
But we knew absolutely nothing.
After some time, we realized Vermilion isn’t just some criminal organization operating in the shadows of a few cities.
It’s everywhere.
Its influence crawls through entire states, through businesses, politicians, ports, warehouses, law firms, and companies that look perfectly legitimate from the outside.
Half the people shaking hands in expensive offices probably don’t even realize they’re touching money that passed through Vermilion at some point.
And Lucien understood very quickly that Kasien and I were different from most of the unfortunate bastards who crossed his path.
Most people need years to become useful.
But with us, Varners had done the hard work for him, and all he had to do was point us in the direction he wanted.
And so, as unfortunate as we are, of course he made the worst kind of slaves of us.
The men who arrive after the negotiations fail, after the interrogation is finished, after every warning has already been ignored.
The men who get sent when a problem refuses to disappear on its own, when somebody knows too much, talks too much, or simply becomes inconvenient enough to warrant a permanent solution.
Those men are usually the last thing people see.
And that’s exactly what Lucien made of us.
But as human nature dictates, a person can get used to anything. And in my case, I haven’t just gotten used to it.
I found passion in it.
I found a sense of beauty in killing people that are part of this pitch black world.
Every time another Vermilion man ends up on the wrong side of my gun, the rage simmering beneath my skin every waking second finally has somewhere to go.
All the resentment, grief, hatred, and helplessness that have been rotting inside me for years suddenly find an outlet.
It’s liberating.
And so I lie here covered in blood, smiling, because I’ve made it my hobby to erase men stupid enough to have anything to do with Vermilion.
If only she knew the kind of life she had escaped.
Little by little, it became easier to convince myself that letting her believe we were dead was the kinder option. And the safer option for sure.
My fingers find my pocket and, after several failed attempts, manage to pull my phone out. When the screen unlocks, it automatically opens to my call history.
Bryan.
Fucking Bryan.
Still not answering my calls.
I immediately call. Again and again.
At some point it stops being persistence and becomes harassment, but fortunately I’ve never cared much about the distinction.
At last, the line clicks.
“Bryan,” I manage, forcing an unnatural amount of friendliness into my tone.
“Adrien,” he exhales.
He already sounds tired. The poor bastard is probably regretting picking up.
“Tell me something,” I say.
“What?”
I narrow my eyes at the ceiling.
“Is he prettier than me?”
My hand falls limply beside my head, taking the phone with it. After fumbling around, I manage to put Bryan on speaker because holding a phone and participating in a conversation at the same time suddenly feels like an unreasonable amount of responsibility.
“Who?” he asks.
I stare at the phone in disbelief.
“Who?” I repeat angrily. The outrage that blasts through me feels entirely justified. “That fucking architect who’s dating my wife!”
The silence that follows is suspiciously long.
“For the love of God,” Bryan finally says. “She’s not your wife. Are you high again?”
“No,” I lie effortlessly.
A long sigh crackles through the speaker.
“So?” I press. “Is he prettier than me?”
“Can we not do this again?”
The fact that he said again tells me everything I need to know about how many times we’ve apparently had this conversation.
“Stupid question, I know,” I click my tongue. “Let’s be realistic. Of course he isn’t,” I conclude.
He remains quiet.
“What did you say his name was?” I try.
“I didn’t,” he retorts.
“Tell me.”
“I won’t tell you, Adrien.”
“Why?”
“Are we really doing this?”
“I guess we are,” I bite back.
“Safety reasons.”
“Right,” I mumble.
I rub my hands over my face, not really sure why I called him again.
I’m not even sure what I’m looking for anymore.
I keep collecting little fragments of her life that I have absolutely no business knowing, because somehow even the pain feels better than the emptiness, and at some point, it became addictive.
I roll onto my side. The church is gradually surrendering back to darkness while the fractured colors shimmer weakly across the stone.
My gaze stays fixed on them as my mind begins doing what it always does. It starts building her. Not the woman she probably is now, but the version preserved inside my head. The version that never got the chance to grow older without me.
The spark in her eyes. Her mischievous smile. Her lips. She has these deeply kissable lips. Freckles. Her skin. So soft. Why was she always so soft, so touchable, and lovable?
My eyes fall shut and heat begins to coil through my veins, spreading inch by inch through my body. I keep them closed, just to make sure the fantasy doesn’t get ruined this time.
Then warmth settles on my lap.
Her warmth.
Something feather-light brushes against my neck. It’s her hair. I can feel it cascading over me.
The cold stone beneath my back gradually turns pleasant and comfortable.
Then her lips are in the crook of my neck, kissing me slowly, tracing the lines of her own scribbles tattooed into my skin.
My hands are already working at my belt, loosening it without much thought so I can fit my hand there. The fantasy feels real enough that I don’t want to open my eyes and I don’t want to risk losing her.
I’m absolutely hard, of course. I slide my hand in there, fisting my dick.
“Can—”
“Fuck!” I shout, jerking my hand out of my groin. “I forgot you’re still there.”
I bury my face in my hands.
Fucking Bryan.
I almost jerked off with Bryan on the phone and Mother Mary staring at me from the stained-glass window.
That’s fucking brilliant.
“Yeah. Unfortunately,” he mumbles, his voice crackling through the speaker somewhere on the floor beside me.
I lazily zip my pants and buckle my belt, wondering if this officially qualifies as rock bottom or if I should expect worse, glancing at Mother Mary and feeling strangely judged.
To be fair, dear Mary, I haven’t touched a single woman in three years. So give me a break.
Which reminds me that—
Someone else did touch a woman in the last three years.
My woman.
“Bryan,” I grit out.
“Yes,” he says wearily.
“Tell me his fucking address,” I choke out, my vision blurring.
“Sure. And what exactly are you planning to do with it?”
“I’m just gonna check the neighborhood on google maps.” I roll my eyes. “Now gimme it. The address.”
“Adrien, please stop,” he says with a sigh.
“Bryan—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“Okay, enough.” The sharpness in his voice cuts through me before I can continue. “She’s married, okay? Stop calling me. Get over it. I can’t do this anymore.”
My insides stop working all at once.
“What?” I whip out, jerking upright.
“She’s married,” he repeats hesitantly, his words echoing through the church, bouncing off the walls and hitting me like bullets.
Married. Married. Married.
“No,” I breathe out. “She married me.”
“Don’t do anything stupid. I’m done with this. I’m calling Kasien. Where are you?”
“She married me!” I grab the phone and shout into it but then the line beeps as the call ends.
Air abandons me once more. My head drops into my palms as something ugly and unbearable begins burning through my chest, turning everything inside me into a raw, aching resentment.
When I look up, my gaze finds Mother Mary, but the image is distorted. I blink repeatedly, trying to clear it, but I can’t tell whether it’s the tears or the chemicals making it impossible to see straight.
And just like that, the one thing I had left, the bond we created in this place, the vows we said to each other, all of it is taken away as well, all of it suddenly feels shattered beneath a new vow spoken to somebody else.
I reach for the gun next to me and lift it, pointing it directly at Mary’s figure. I blink again and again until my vision sharpens long enough for me to aim at her heart. Then I take one short breath and pull the trigger.
The gunshot explodes through the church.
The stained glass bursts apart into what looks like a million colored fragments, moonlight catching every shard as they scatter through the air, turning destruction into a brief storm of colors and light.
I stare into the night through the empty hole in the window, then look around only to realize there are more saints, all of them standing peacefully in the remaining windows.
I raise the gun and fire a few more shots, deleting them one by one.