The stench of blood and vomit invaded my senses. My eyes never left the river of red liquid racing along the concrete floor.
It took everything in me not to vomit at the nauseating smell.
The last thing I remember was almost escaping before we were stopped and knocked out. And now we somehow found ourselves waking up in this god awful basement.
"I can't believe I'm fucking tied to a chair again" Melody grumbles glaring at her dirty Nike slides and I sighed trying to ignore the ropes digging painfully into my wrists each time I shifted.
"Why the long face's ladies?" The same voice from earlier inquired the bleary figure making his way to the side, a cigar limply hanging between his index and middle finger.
Melody and I remained silent knowing better than to get fresh with this guy. Because unlike Amir he wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet through us.
Moving the cigarette to his lips his hands gripped the white sheet that was stained with red and with a tug he revealed a body.
Gasps left Mel's and I lips.
It felt like my heart was about to explode out of my chest, my terror making it impossible to breathe at this gruesome sight. My pulse raced as I struggled to control my quivering palms, my eyes wide with panic.
I met Amir gaze waiting for his glazed eyes to move. They didn't. He was slumped in the corner, body rigidly still, bathing in the thick crimson liquid. My eyes wandered down his face stopping at his throat.
An incarnadine grin smiled mockingly back at me. The slash across his throat seemed to have more life than his listless gaping mouth. It taunted me. I could forever look at this twisted smile but he could never again see his face light up with one.
I swallowed and slowly began to survey the rest of his mutated body. The blood had cascaded like a waterfall down the front of his body and gathered in a small pool.
His arms and legs were bent at awkward angles as though he was a marionette that had been carelessly dropped. I gagged. His body was devoid of his laid back posture I once knew. I quickly tore my gaze away from him. He was no longer the Amir I knew, he was now just another corpse.
"I'm sure you ladies know what happens when I don't get my fucking money on time don't you?"
We both numbly nodded. Everyone knew what happens.
"Great. This fucker here owed me over half a mil and couldn't pay it back. He didn't even have the decency to tell me that the payment would be late. It's like the world has forgotten about common courtesy" he went on to state slowly making his way towards us.
"Now you" I didn't know who he was referring to but my face was no longer pointed towards the ground but now was held in his calloused grasp.
"Aren't you a beauty" he whispers, tracing his thumb over my chapped lips.
Tears sprang, unbidden, to my dull, chocolate brown eyes. It was too easy, he was enjoying this.
"Word around the streets is that your Synns new bitch"
My eyes widened. People knew about me? Nyx and I?
"W—we aren't together" I choked out.
"It's truly a sight to behold seeing you trying to protect that murderer." He began, tightening his grip afterwards. " It's fucking sickening seeing someone like you wasting your time on that fucking asshole. He kills the innocent for a living, torching their poor helpless souls thriving off of their desperate pleas and yet here you are salivating over his cock which I'm sure has fucked more woman than you and I can count combined. Woman these days are awfully fucking greedy and I honestly don't whether to call you pathetic or just fucking dumb"
It was clear confusion was written over my face. My furrowed brows were a dead giveaway to such emotion. That wasn't the Synn I knew. He wasn't a murderer.
"Oh. I guess your beloved boyfriend has left you out in the dark?" He mocks slipping his hand from my face and into his pocket retrieving the sleek device.
Unlocking it he clicked onto something and thrust the phone before my face.
Terror sucked the very breath from my mouth.
There's no way...
My heart was throbbing in my ears, loud and irregular, but I barely heard it, for my mind was clouded with fear.
There was this unexplainable distant, detached look in his eyes as he stared down at the man. He was dead, that was for sure. It seemed as if someone had beaten his head in with a club. His face was like a collapsed pumpkin. Remnants of his organ painted the curb. There was tons of blood. Maybe two gallons, possibly more but that wasn't important.The whole sidewalk is caked in the stuff.
Tears ran from my eyes and stung my cheeks. I helplessly shook my head refusing to believe the image being real.
But it is. My brain counters back, flashing images of his white crisp long sleeved shirt and his face spotted with the remains of the metallic liquid. Not to mention his leather shoes drowning in the substance.
"You poor doll" he mocks with a gutteral cackle releasing my face from his contaminated hands.
"Ahh you're Amir's feisty Puttana, no?"
[ whore ]
Melody remained silent as he approached her. Gently tapping her cheek he grins. "The last time I checked you're hanging out with that hacker of Synn? He isn't as bad as your friend's boytoy, but man he sure knows how to decapitate a man so exceptionally clean. You'd think a nerd like him only knew about technology but looks can be deceiving"
His last statement hung in the air, strangling us but both Melody and I grasped at it as it squeezed the last bit of air out of our lungs. We knew absolutely nothing about the men close to us. We were nothing but sitting ducks.
"It really was fun seeing you girl's miserable but now I must let you go. Until next time loves"
And with that everything went dark.
•
•
Faintly, quick shallow breaths sounded, like someone was desperately gasping for air they couldn't keep down.
"Remi" a desperate voice calls.
My eyes flew open as I gasped for air; my leaden lungs suppressed any efforts I made to inhale.
"Breathe Remi. Breathe" he softly instructed.
Even with tears blurring my vision I could spot him reaching form, his large rough hands cupping my cheek, his fingers sliding into my hair gently treading through the strands.
"Breathe" he instructed firmly, his eyes were hard as they focused on me.
Slowly breathing in I shakily exhaled trying to get my breathing under control.
When I did I finally assessed my surroundings and my heart plummeted when I found out I was in the same room which I had been given to sleep in when I had to look after Noorie.
And to make matters worse I was in the same space as him. And he was touching me.
Burgundy I met his stare and his pale eyes raked over my face for a second too long, and I squirmed under his undivided attention.
"Synn" I called the shakiness in my tone betraying me.
"Yes Remi"
I exhaled a long, shaky breath and looked up at the blank black wall. My mind was at war itself.
It's been a while since I felt this feeling.
Meeting back his eyes I swallowed, " you can't touch me anymore" I whisper.
"What?"
Grasping his hands I peeled them away from me gently placing it onto his lap. "I don't want to be around you Nyx. I'm not safe"
His attention dropped to our hands briefly and I quickly drew away my hands immediately, missing the fraction of warmth they provided. But this was for the best.
Nyx looked at me. That cold stare behind his glasses seemed to bore a hole through my chest. He was angry, that I could tell.
"You're not making any sense, Remi. What the fuck are you suddenly talking about not wanting me to touch you anymore or the fact that you're not safe around me. Have I ever given you any reason to not feel safe?"
"That's just it Nyx. I don't know anything about you! How am I supposed to know if you're safe or not if you're not telling me shit?" I exclaimed.
"You want know shit, fine I'll fucking tell you"
This was what I wanted right? For him to open up to me. But why did this feel so wrong? I didn't want him to tell me because he felt as if he was obligated to but I was the one who's forcing him to and it was a little too late to say no.
"I didn't grow up with role models, I grew up with people I never wanted to be like. They say blood is thicker than water, but that doesn't mean shit. Having abusive parents, you learn to only care about things in secret. Liking things openly becomes unsafe, because your parents notice, and it's the first thing they'll take away from you the second they need to blackmail you. After a while it only feels safe to not care about anything, to not want anything, and to not be attached to anything, because then it can't be used against you, they can't use it against you. You have to be apathetic if you don't want to be openly vulnerable to abuse. Eventually you learn to hide everything from everyone. Even your friends don't find out about it. Every pleasure feels like guilty pleasure, like you'll pay for it later. Your entire life becomes a secret that feels too dangerous to tell anyone."
Both my parents despised every single bone in my fucking body for not being able to live up to their perfect standards. My mother never upheld her title as a mother. She was a fucking whore who enjoyed torturing her four year old son, stripping him naked and beating him until he could barely stand, sometimes until she heard a satisfying pop and his ear splitting screams from the horrendous pain of having his bones broken. She left me in my own piss and vomit for days in a cellar, cradling my broken bones and if I ever shifted I was fucked. I didn't eat nor sleep, I had to fucking endure all that pain by my fucking self until I had learnt my lesson. I had my first cigarette when I was five, with that bitch. I nearly fucking died after she forced me to fucking smoke four in a row which landed me in the hospital for respiratory issues and some that conniving bitch escaped CPS lying that my babysitter had forced me to smoke when he came to babysit me. But even though I went through all of that shit and worse, It wasn't the fact that she didn't care that upset me. It was the fact that she and my father flaunted me to the rest of the world as though they actually care; like they were the best parents of the year.
When all you know is pain you don't know that that is not normal. But sometimes, pain is all that lets you know you're alive. I don't think anyone has ever fucking loved me. They loved versions of me I have spun for them, versions of me they have constructed in their minds. The easy versions of me, the easy parts of me to love. I'm so tired of it all. I'm tired of not fitting in; of being left out; of being hated. I'm tired of having everything I am ripped up and strewn around the room the way a puppy wrecks an abandoned toilet roll. I'm tired of never doing anything right; of constantly being humiliated; of feeling like I'm just not good enough, no matter what I do. I'm fucking tired of feeling like this"
He reached forward to cup my cheek, the touch surprising me.
"I'm sorry," I choke out. He's quiet. Tears dripping off my chin and onto my shirt. He lets out a slow, shaky breath. "Don't cry," he says. "That's not fair."
And here I thought my life was fucking messed up. He was drowning and nobody saw his struggles.
His lips were like a caress as he brushed them across mine; slow and soft. He lingered, breathing in deeply as if he couldn't breathe without me. "You know, I've tried staying away from you. I've tried ignoring how I feel about you, which isn't how I should feel. But it's like fighting a losing battle."
I sucked in a painfully sharp breath and held it, my heart abruptly thumping against the walls of my chest.
"I've never been a good man," he confessed horsley. "But if it's for you Remi I will try my fucking best to be the man that you need me to be. I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy."
More tears spilled from my eyes.
I knew exactly what I had to do.