Page 110 of Obsession & Oath

Carmen

Ican’t move.

I can’t breathe.

The gun is still in my hand. My fingers locked around the grip, rigid, shaking.

The shot still rings in my ears.

I killed him.

My father is lying on the ground, blood spilling from the hole in his chest. His face is twisted, frozen in that last moment of pure shock.

Like he never truly believed I would do it.

A sob rips from my throat, but I don’t cry. There’s only numbness curling through my veins like poison.

He deserved it.

He was going to kill Dante.

He was going to let medie.

He spoke of my mother.

For the first time since she died. He spoke of her as if he knew her desires for me. As if he knew how wide a warm embrace might stretch. As if he knew just how far her grace and love would go before it shattered.

I might only remember her amber scent and smiles in a vanity mirror. But Idoknow mothers.

I know what I would give to love my unborn child for even a day.

I knowEvelina.I knew the kindness she was capable of, the strength she carried in her bones. Evelina would never have looked at me the way Amos did, with hatred and scorn.

Amos Rubio wasn’t my father.

He was amonster.

And yet?—

A heavy weight crushes my chest, making it hard to breathe. The gun in my hand is slick with sweat. The world is a blur of distant shouts, of gunfire still raging outside. I feel unsteady, trapped in this moment, in the ruin of what I’ve done.

Then, suddenly…warmth.

A solid, steady presence before me.

Dante.

Shielding me from the chaos, his hands covering mine, gently prying the gun from my fingers.

“You still with me, princess?”

I blink, dazed, barely registering when he tucks the gun away and pulls me against his chest.

My body melts into his, my forehead pressing into the crook of his neck. He’s warm, so impossiblywarm,his heartbeat a steady drum beneath my hands. Alive. Alive, alive, alive.

He murmurs something, quiet words of comfort, his fingers slipping into my hair. I don’t know how long we stay like that, how long I stay enveloped in the smell of amber and the arms I’ve always been so very fond of.

But it’s long enough for the chaos around us to feel distant, for my breathing to slow, for the numbness to give way to something else. Somethingworse.

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