Black Winter Prequel: The Tempest

VII - Pandora's Box

"This will gonna hurt, darling," Rune poured the alcohol on Lazuli's wound and start cleaning her wound. She bit her bottom lips as she grimaced.

"Why do you still keep on calling me darling?" she chuckled weakly. "And something else hurt more than that."

"What? You, turning me down when you didn't want to?" Rune gave her a piece of wood she could bite to. "Hold on, this will be over in a second," he then sprinkled gun powder around her wound. Lazuli was just staring at him.

"I will never let you go this time, Tempest." Lazuli screamed as Rune ignited the powder in her wound. Her voice echoed far over the forest, startling the birds. It was ironic that the forest hummed with life around them, but she was on her verge of death. She tried her best to open her eyes and gaze at the man who was looking at her warily. "You're not allowed to die. I will still marry you. We will still have thirteen kids. I will still make you happy, okay?"

"That's soppy, Rune," Frost commented in the line.

Rune forgot that he and Fifth still could hear them. He turned off their transceivers as he waited. They needed to leave soon, but he was letting Lazuli get some rest for a bit.

"What is your name? It isn't Rune, right?"

"Well, my real name suits me well," he flashed his perfect set of white teeth at her. "My name's King. King Felton. How about you?"

Lazuli closed her eyes as if she was looking in her memories for her long-forgotten name. "My name's Lazuli, Lazuli Rose."

***

Slim, polished, posh Italian leather lace-up Oxford shoes crunched slowly across the floor. He stood there in the aristocratic cutting lines of a great tailor. A pant leg, navy blue, pressed and pleated, fluttered in the wind.

A matching navy-blue blazer, tailored to fit Mr. C's broad frame, was held across an arm. He wore a dress shirt, outstandingly white, the sleeves rolled up to just beneath his muscular forearms. His shoulders were broad, his chest thick and powerful, his arms stretching the sleeves of the button-down.

His men were all disposing the dead bodies of their own and the Tempest's comrades. Even though they were able to kill all the Tempest's backup team, they still lost more than half of their men. They couldn't stop but curse as they found the bodies of their fallen comrades. Sixty versus five men, thirty-nine were dead in their part.

They were collecting weapons, shreds of evidence they could find, pretending to be busy so they wouldn't need to talk to their boss.

No one dared to look at Mr. C. He was fuming mad-a radiating threat. Vehemence bled from every pore. His deep-green eyes were narrowed, constantly shifting and assessing, his square, hard jaw grinding and pulsing.

"We found David, Allen and Zaid's body, boss. It looks like she was able to escape," Gervase, the leader of his men, told him cautiously.

Everyone was quiet in the room. Eventually, the deep, smooth baritone voice of Mr. C broke the silence, "Blair, who is she? Did you look hard enough when I told you to check her background."

Gervase nodded. "We looked at all the database we have, boss. The only information we found about her was the one we gave to you."

"I bet her name isn't even Blair. How could she do that to me? How could she smile genuinely and looked at me as if...as if she loved me?" His voice was effortlessly powerful, echoing in the small room. It cracked a bit as he asked the questions that were troubling him.