Page 228 of Like Grim Death: Part One
Blood rushes to my head as I think of myfatherseeing or knowing what I did with Ella. I glance at Sevryn and find his eyes are wide as he stares at me.
“You could have killed her. When Cain was making a girl scream and you were presumably alone with her inside a room, when you took that marker to her skin to start it,you could have finished it.”
Scelus.I told Ella part of the truth. The rest is that Lucifer is in charge of it, and it has nothing to do with me at all. Except for the fact I know, before Luce, that the 6 want Ella dead.
“Natalie is set to start shooting another film at the Villa. And you know how Arlo gets sointohis takes.”
My spine crawls, hearing the director’s name. He’s known for his pseudo-snuff films.Real enough to haunt you.
If something happened to Natalie on set, Arlo Estere would get away with it. And my father has Arlo under his thumb, considering he maintains the house Arlo loves to shoot at.
“Do not miss another opportunity, Atlas.”
Then I hear it. The click. Dead silence.
I drop my cellphone to the floor with a clatter and Sevryn shoots up from his chair. “Well?” His accented voice is a bark. “What is it?”
I bury my head in my fucking hands.I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
“When?” Sevryn continues. “When is she free? When do I get who I was promised?”
I laugh out loud, a deranged sound buried in my palms, but it silences Sevryn. Shaking my head, without looking up at him, I give him the only answer I have. “When I can uphold my end of the bargain.”
Alone in my room at this fucking house,Liber,I pluck up the scissors from my nightstand. I asked him for it.Atlas.We aren’t friends. I don’t have any of those. But we have a bond neither of us asked for when Adam Medici plucked me away from the orphanage and set us both on the same side. Maybe he knows what I wanted to do, and maybe he just no longer cares.
I close my eyes and think about what happened only hours ago. Atlas snuck me to a secret room so he could call his father. So he could ask for forgiveness, in his own way, because I guess he did not do what he was supposed to.
I understand it. When I pulled Sid from her bed, when I took her prints the night before we met, I did not want to. I regret it, but offering the papers to her that Edith gave to me, it was my apology. And I am supposed to murder her, but I am not so sure I can. And I do not know now where that leaves me.
I take a breath in through my nose.
I hear the girl I want reassuring me.
Out through my mouth.
“Everything is okay. Everything is fine.”
In.
“Here, hide in here with me. They’re only fighting. It’s okay.”
Out.
I lean back against my bed, sitting on the floor, staring at the nook with bay windows surrounding it. Midnight stares back at me.
The scissors tremble in my hand.
I swallow down the bile in my throat as I swim in a fog of memories I cannot hold onto.My body shivers. I imagine running up a staircase. Someone was chasing me, but it wasn’ther.
There was a balcony. Hands pressed to my spine.
Then my life changed.
I caught a glimpse behind the curtain, and I didn’t rip it down. I suffocated in it instead.
My throat feels tight.
My chest rises. Falls.
