One Deception

Chapter Eleven

“I don’t think I can do this anymore!” he suddenly blurted, pushing away from the table at the same time, his chair making a horror-movie type screeching noise across the floor.

I remained seated, my head cocked to the side a bit as I took this in. Did he mean that he couldn’t sit around anymore? Couldn’t deal with losing the bitch? Couldn’t kill? What?

“What are you talking about?” I asked slowly, my voice low as I remained focused on Zayn across the table.

He reached up a hand and rubbed the back of his neck furiously, causing the skin to even redden a bit. “What we’ve been doing since we all met, Liam,” he finally breathed, closing his eyes for a moment as if he couldn’t even handle it anymore. “Kidnapping these girls, keeping them here, and slaughtering them like… psychopaths.”

I had to wonder why he sounded so horrified all of a sudden, so surprised.

We all knew from the start what we were signing up for, what One Direction was really going to be about. There was no backing out now.

And sure, maybe we were psychopaths. In fact, I was pretty sure that we covered just about all the textbook cases of them, but we were past the point of no return. We were able to accept what we were by now, and I had thought Zayn was able to as well.

“So, what?” I finally asked, trying to keep my voice level. “You’re just going to back out now? You know we still have to figure out how to deal with Rosalie, how to deal with Miranda.”

At the second girl’s name, he seemed to blanche a little bit, or maybe it was just the lighting. Either way, it didn’t look good, definitely like something to be concerned about.

“Of course I know,” he hissed, not looking pleased about it in the slightest. “I just- doesn’t this feel wrong to you? I mean, I know we all had our reasons in the beginning, but these girls did nothing to us; all they did was live. They’re fans, for God’s sake!”

Though I forced myself to remain composed still, internally, I was going ballistic. This was beyond just bad, this was potentially catastrophic. With Rosalie already escaped, we were on thin ice as it was. Now if Zayn, our supposed leader in all this, were to back out and get cold feet all of a sudden, this could all come crashing down.

“Zayn, it’s okay,” I finally said, standing and putting my hands out in an almost defensive position. “We just have two girls to wrap up, and then it can all be over, okay? Two more loose ends and we can talk to Harry, Louis, and Niall about it.”

At the mention of our other three accomplices, Zayn snapped his head back towards me, before he began shaking it furiously. “No, no,” he said quickly. “We can’t talk to them about it, you know how they are. You know Louis and Niall are both like addicts when it comes to killing, and Harry’s obsessed with the power thrill it gives him. You can’t tell them.”

It was at that moment that he gave me a dangerous look. Normally, it was a look that screamed, ‘tell them and I’ll kill you myself’. But now, after knowing how Zayn felt about killing, I knew it was empty.

If he couldn’t handle killing two more fucking girls, he wouldn’t be able to kill me. No, all the threatening aspects of him were long gone now.

“Okay, I won’t tell them,” I reassured, slowly sitting back down and gesturing for him to do the same. “It’ll just be between the two of us, okay?”

Zayn slowly sunk back into his seat, looking more relieved than I’d seen him since discovering One Direction was going to be a hit.