Page 82 of Make Me A Sinner
Her mouth opens to speak, but I don’t register what she’s saying—because something else gets my attention. Tires screech on pavement, and I know instantly—something’s wrong. That same protective instinct kicks in, and before I even turn to check what’s going on, my body makes a shield to cover hers.
I reach for my gun, and as my eyes scan the area, I can see the other weapon aimed right at me. I fire, but so does the man holding the other gun.
Bullets rip through the air. People start screaming and scattering. Chaos instantly erupts, and through the madness, I can see the bastard drop.
I breathe with relief, but there’s a pain ripping through me, unlike anything I've ever felt. My chest feels like it’s detonating. My feet just don’t support my weight anymore.
“Set,” Serena screams the second I hit the ground, raw panic in her voice. She drops over me, tearing open my shirt. “You’ll be okay,” she says, checking my wound, waiting for it to start to heal. But my chest is still burning, like the bullet’s burrowing deeper instead of fading.
My vision blurs. I can barely fight for air, let alone manage to form a coherent sentence. “Something’s wrong.”
forty-one
-Serena-
I can barely piece things together and realize this isn’t a hallucination, or even a nightmare. This is really happening. Tearing through his shirt, I stare at the round bleeding wound in the center of his chest. Panic floods me. I know it’s supposed to heal, just like last time. But this one isn’t healing.
“Ma’am,” one of the club guards drops to his knees beside me, his eyes growing wide, recognizing Set.
“No police,” I order, knowing well enough this has to stay private. He can’t be taken to a hospital. That will get the FBI on our backs and probably half a dozen other government agencies we’ve never even heard of.
“On it,” the guard nods, rushing off to deal with the witnesses.
I can’t focus on what’s going on around me anymore. Set’s breath is getting uneven, and the screams of the people running around us blur into background noise as I desperately stare at the wound, praying for his body to reject the bullet.
But then Set’s lips move, and I hear the words I dread most. “Something’s wrong.” My world stops in that instant. Darkthoughts cloud my mind, but I fight them with everything I’ve got. I’m not giving up on him.
“Tell me what to do. Anything,” I nearly scream between tears, still processing how we ended up here. He doesn’t even seem to hear me for a few seconds. Still, my cries are louder than the oblivion swallowing him. “Set.”
His hand barely reaches into his pocket. The effort’s too much for him to bear, but his phone slips from his fingers, his breath shallow and fading. “W… Whiro.”
I instantly grab the phone, my bloodied fingers sliding uselessly over the screen that won’t recognize me. I wipe them on my skirt along with the screen, then type in my name—his password—and hit call when I get to Whiro’s contact.
Every second waiting for him to pick up feels like a year, every breath a nightmare, just to realize he’s not answering. But I’m not giving up. I call again, this time finally getting through to him.
“What the fuck is it?” he answers, his voice raw and I’m pretty sure I hear moaning in the background.
But I don’t have time for this. And neither does he. “Set,” I murmur, unable to explain what happened. “It’s serious.”
“Where are you?” he asks, his voice much more tight.
“At The Inferna,” I choke. “In the alley.” The words stumble out, my thoughts all over the place.
“I’ll be there in three,” Whiro says before hanging up on me, and somehow I wish he were still on the other end, because there’s an eerie silence settling around me, despite the pounding music still coming from the club and the few startled voices of the people who saw what happened.
The club guards quickly form a line, strong enough to block any prying eyes, managing the few eyewitnesses so we won’t end up with the police on our hands.
Set’s breathing grows so shallow that I fear each one might be the last. I can’t help but feel responsible for all the times I wished for this. When I saw this as the solution to all of my problems. Because him gone would mean my freedom.
But now… now it feels like someone’s draining the air out of my lungs. My own body is jerking uncontrollably from the shock, and in the time it takes Whiro to get here, memories of me and Set together play in the back of my mind. The bad ones seem to have vanished completely. Only the good ones remain, and that’s all that matters. All that matters is that he survives this. But as much as I keep staring at the bullet wound and expect his body to reject the bullet, all I see is more blood pooling from the injury.
“Set, please,” I beg as if it’s in his power to stop it. I keep doing it anyway, praying he’ll find the strength to fight this.
Strange to pray to God for the devil’s son, but it doesn’t stop me. At this point, I’d do anything not to lose him. “Please… please… please,” I repeat so many times, it feels like it’s the only word I’ve got left in my vocabulary.
“What the fuck happened here?” Whiro emerges from the shadows, his voice almost ragged.
“He… he got shot.” I manage to say, trying to pull myself back together and come up with a plan. “He’s not healing,” I murmur, looking at Whiro, silently begging him to come up with a solution.
