Page 48 of Manacled Hearts

My breath hitches a moment after the snapping cock of the gun, and the guy’s hands shoot up in surrender.

“Heroin.”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Evelyn?! Heroin?! Is this it? You’re a junkie?” He’s truly appalled. And most of all, furious.

Though, it’s the look in his eyes that affects me more than his words or tone. It squeezes at my heart because the disappointment is painfully vivid.

“Stop it. No, I am not.” There must be another explanation for why my body bellows for it. “You don’t understand. You will never understand what it all feels like.”

“Make me.” He utters those two words like he asked me for a glass of water, not to share my entire story and how I ended up here.

“Excuse me? Yesterday you tried to pay me off to leave. Hours later you shipped me off back to your friend’s home because you wanted nothing to do with me. Now all of a sudden you want to pretend that you wish to understand me?” I scoff as I shake my head. “Seriously, go away, and leave the man alone.”

The itch beneath my skin grows, and on instinct, I go to scratch my forearms but wince when at the first run on it, Finnigan notices. I drop my hands in the calmest way possible, hoping he doesn’t want to investigate the reaction.

“Last night has nothing to do with this. You expect me to stand by, watch you destroy yourself for a cheap thrill? Damn it, Evelyn. I thought you were way smarter than this. This is…” But he only shakes his head, emphasizing his disappointment. Then he focuses on the man whose arms are still in the air. “You’re seriously protecting the guy who was contributing to your self-destruction?”

I shake my head, scoffing. “A thrill? I may have kept you all at arm’s length, but you don’t need to get too close to know thrills are not what I want in life. You’re perched too high on your gilded throne, and you’re failing to see what the world looks like for the rest of us. I may be wrong, but if I’m not, then you’re a hypocrite. Here’s a hard lesson for you: when the horrors of this world put their hands on you, they sear through your flesh until they reach your very soul and brandish you. But that mark never scars, it sizzles. Constantly. An ember that catches fire once in a while and brings you down to your knees all over again. I’m not chasing a thrill, Finnigan. I’m chasing anything else but… this.”

I’m heaving when the words finally die on my tongue, and though he only glances at me as he keeps an eye on the drug dealer who looks more horrified by the second. I can still see the shift in his expression. I can’t make sense of the feelings breaking through his icy gaze. There’s hatred, pain, too, and I wonder if he also bears a sizzling scar that never heals.

“Evelyn,” he begins through gritted teeth, “you need to get in the fucking car.”

“No. What I do is none of your business, you yourself set that boundary. If anyone’s going to leave, it’s you.”

“So you can continue the transaction?” He doesn’t disguise the disgust in his tone.

“If I want to do drugs, Finnigan, it’s nothing to do with you. Go home and leave us to it,” I yell and it actually startles him. At this point, I don’t want to continue the transaction anyway, and I’m pretty sure I can pay this dealer all the money in the world, and he won’t sell to me, but I’m standing up for the bloody principle of it.

“Oh, is that how it is?! Okay.”

Finnigan whips his head back at the dealer and the gun jerks before me with a muffled pop. The noises that follow are ones I’m not sure I understand—a short gasp, a strange thump, a soft crack, a gargle. I follow the direction the gun is pointed at, but there’s nothing there. The man is no longer in its aim.

I gasp when I look at the ground, covering my mouth with my hands as my vision remains stuck to the small hole in his forehead and the blood that starts to pool underneath his head.

“There. No drugs for you tonight.” he says calmly as he turns his attention back to me.

“Yo—you…” But the words get stuck somewhere in my throat.

“I solved a problem, yes.”

There’s a dead man here… at our feet. There’s panic skirting at the edge of my senses, but outrage is what comes forth instead.

“You’re insane. A murderer.”

He cocks an eyebrow, looking increasingly bored at my words, slightly confused as to why I’m pointing out the obvious.

“This means nothing to you…” I add.

“It does, but not in the way you think. I refuse to have any remorse for taking his miserable life. Men like him shouldn’t be tainting our city.”

“Men like him? You just put a bullet in his skull, what makes you so much better than him? Is your perception of the world so twisted?” I lose my cool because for the life of me I can’t understand why he thinks what he’s doing is better.

“Did I say I’m better? What I do, what we do, is fucking different! There are rules, limits that we draw, and they aren’t made of chalk or smoke. They are clear as fucking day. Like… human trafficking, in case you forgot, Evie darling.”

Oh, he’s using that?! No, he’s not winning this. But it looks like tonight I’m not winning anything either. Though, the itch I came here to scratch seems to have eased with our heated interaction, and that is downright terrible. He cannot be the one this craving depends on.

“There must be many others in this city. I will find someone else,” I blurt out, like that’s what matters right now. Christ, I’m an idiot.

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