Page 47 of Seeking Shadows

“Okay, but don’t yell at me later.”

“Why would I scream?”

“Mia didn’t kill Carter,” Charlie says, and I freeze. “Paulina Riviera did, according to the camera footage. I’m sending it to you. One minute.”

The screen of my phone lights up in my hand, and I almost stop breathing as I press play. The video begins. Silence suffocates me.

Mia is there, standing next to Paulina Riviera. They talk, but there’s no sound. I don’t fully understand what they’re saying, but I can see their tense gestures, the loaded looks exchanged between them. Deep down, Carter is unconscious, lying on the couch. He stirs slowly, his eyes blinking as if trying to return to reality.

Then Paulina moves. Quick. Calculated. I see the glint of metal before I even realize what’s happening. The gun is raised. The shot is fired.

My heart clenches.

Carter writhes, his body stiffening before it falls. His expression frozen in shock, his eyes still trapped in a question that will never be answered.

Mia screams. I don’t hear it, but I see it. The panic, the hate, the despair. She lunges forward like a cornered animal. Her violence is raw, chaotic, uncontrolled. I see blood, I see the glint of the knife in her hand as she attacks anyone around her. She doesn’t think, doesn’t hesitate. She just destroys.

And then, suddenly, she falls.

Her body collapses to the ground as if the weight of the world has finally crushed her. I see the sedative being injected, see the knife fall from her fingers, stained red. She tries to fight, her eyes blinking heavily, but soon her body goes limp.

My chest tightens. My throat closes.

The video ends.

My hand trembles as I put the phone down. My heart beats so hard it feels like it’s going to tear my ribs apart.

“So… it wasn’t her,” I murmur, but the words come out weak, almost meaningless. As if I still don’t have certainty. As if some part of me refuses to accept it.

I keep glancing at Miain the middle of our training. Today, I'm supposed to learn how to torture with her, theoretically. Mitchell, they say, was a sadist who enjoyed it for pleasure.

I want to run away.

I try to control my urge to confront Mia. I want her to come to me and confess. I want her to tell me the truth—for once.

Or maybe she believes she did it, and her mind is playing tricks on her again. I can’t be sure.

The air is thick, saturated with the metallic smell of blood and sweat.

A dim light bulb swings from the ceiling, casting jagged shadows on the dirty concrete walls.

Mia chose our target for training. Don’t ask me how, but I know he’s done something bad.

The man is tied to the chair, his wrists bound with industrial tape, his ankles securely fastened to the metal legs. He breathes heavily, choking on his own spit and blood, his wild eyes flicking between me and Mia.

She seems calm. Too calm.

With leather-gloved fingers, Mia spins the blade between her hands like a toy, the light reflecting off the already-dirty steel.

Her eyes flick over the man’s body, analyzing where she wants to start.

He’s screamed before.

When she demonstrated to me how to make them feel slow pain, then broke his fingers one by one, taking her time.

Mia smiled then, because she says she likes to come up with coherent punishments. He used those same fingers to mistreat innocent animals.

When she used his own belt to choke him until he nearly passed out, then turned to me, explaining how much more fun it is when they need to divulge information.

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