Page 33 of Beautiful Deception

Joe falls like a puppet cut from its strings. Remo devotes his focus to the broken needle in his hand; then, he throws it on the ground near where the other half is sticking inside Joe’s cervical spine.

He snaps the gloves off, the sound resonating throughout the hallway, and puts them above the wall lantern. The flame engulfs the latex with a sour odor, and the smell is irritating as it reaches my nose.

Remo just killed Joe with a needle, one that looks like Kimberly’s.

One step back, two heartbeats of courage, a woeful plea for mercy, and the promise of silence. It’s planned out from instincts, yet I do none of that. The strategy is sound and actionable, but the air tastes of rotten fear and rusted iron.

A tempest of conflicting emotions is in my head, unraveling lines of perception and apprehension.

His footsteps tap on the floor with the paradoxical embodiment of loneliness and resilience—a lonely dancer in the ballroom and an audience of vivid obsidian.

“You’ll have to excuse him,” a taunting voice says from beside me, hot breath fanning the cool tip of my ear as it spirals into a shiver down my spine. “He’s not fond of his property being damaged.”

I swivel around, slapping my scorching ear with my hand, and confront the smiling man with a golden halo entwined on his tall frame. Dr. Kian nods at Remo, the muscles on his neck exposed from his shirt’s unfastened button by the collar.

“He’s not going to hurt you,” Dr. Kian reckons as his finger traces my ear and pinches the tip with a touch of fondness. “So, if you want to run…”

I swallow, but my tongue quivers from the dryness and irritation that forms on the inside of my throat. I have questions, accusations in a sense, and I want to know why everything turned out like this.

Where did things go wrong? What changed? Why did any of this happen? To me, of all people. I don’t want any of this, these awful encounters with misdeeds and irresistible feelings.

I’m supposed to make it through the trip with Junnie and indulge in books, yet only two chapters were read in one book. I’m meant to see Dr. Kian in his office when I go back, not get kissed and sleep in a bed filled with his scent. I was never meant to meet Remo, yet he’s the unshakable desire flooding in my veins now.

Things are not what they were. Remo is supposed to be good, but he has blood on his hands. Dr. Kian is supposed to be reliable, but he lured me to take the first step of desire.

Accepting this trip, meeting everyone, finding out who kidnapped me, strange happenstances like slashed car tires and the wire trap, Peter’s death, and now witnessing Remo jamming a needle into Joe’s neck—what exactly was this trip?

“I can answer your questions,” Dr. Kian whispers in my ear, a temptation of the Pandora’s Box hovering in my sight. “But can you handle the consequences of knowing?”

Of course not.

There would be no going back from knowing the truth, nor would there be a time machine to remove Remo’s crime from my mind.

I came to find him after Dr. Kian said Remo was waiting for me, and I walked right into the middle of his crime as if he had planned it down the second of my arrival.

He wanted me to see him kill Joe.

My trust in Dr. Kian is fracturing at the base. I can feel the venom dripping in my fingers when I grip my shirt as I block wishful thoughts of this being a nightmare and waking up on his office armchair.

This is too real, the hand rubbing the curve of my shoulder and the eyes of impatience choking my throat.

I didn’t see anything, I want to say. I have money; take it all and don’t come back.

“There are things that should be said in private,” Dr. Kian surmises with the faintest devil’s whisper on his tongue. “Don’t you agree?”

The way Remo closes our distance is similar to a summer breeze. My skin feels hot before he’s close enough, and it’s clammy anywhere he touches through my clothes. My head nuzzles to his chest like it did many times before when he carries me, but right now, I want to jump out of his arms and bury myself in snow sheets.

“Many misunderstandings are caused by miscommunication.”

I reflect on how Dr. Kian seems abnormally unbothered by the corpse. He lacks the typical human reaction to a crime, but the quick memory of their twenty-year connection untangles my perplexity.

By the time Remo enters the bedroom—his or Dr. Kian’s, I don’t know because it smells of both—I’m losing my last chance to save myself. I don’t want to know anything about them, what happened, or anything, really.

I don’t like to face what I have no control over. However, they obliterate my halted protest by closing the door and securing the lock.

I shove at Remo’s chest as he slowly sets me down on the bed, but his body is bestowed with muscles and ominous strength. I scowl at him, biting my tongue to keep from cursing. The juvenile side of me refuses to give him the satisfaction of hearing me speak, knowing it will be pathetically weak.

“I like a direct approach,” Remo intones, dismissing the timidity trickling in my feet as my body angles toward the door.

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