Page 7 of The Darkest Half

The next thing I know, I’m on the chair again, and Lysandra is straddling my lap, shoving the gun underneath my chin, forcing my head back. The smell of her minty toothpaste fills my nostrils, and fury swirls in her irises.

Despite being on the wrong end of the gun, I don’t back down.

“Maybe she is my mother, but we both know she’s not on my side.” (Lysandra’s nostrils flare.) “She works for you, or else she wouldn’t still be alive. And she conveniently knows a helluva lot of information for someone who has been locked up all this time in a mental institution.”

“Niklas! Please!” my mother cries.

I force myself not to look at her because I know if I do that seeing her will get to me—it already is. But I can’t fold. I can’t show weakness. I can’t ignore what my gut tells me—my gut is the only thing that’s never let me down.

I look Lysandra right in the eyes. “You killed the wrong trump card,” I tell her.

Jackie, I would’ve folded for. Because she was innocent and because she had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. I hate to admit it, but it’s probably best that she’s already dead because it takes a huge fucking load off my shoulders. Yeah, Jackie is the one I would’ve folded for between the two. Victor would’ve forgiven me. He would’ve understood.

Lysandra moves from my lap and stands over me; the gun always pointed at my head.

“This is your last chance, Niklas,” she warns, takes several steps backward to get away from my reach, and then trains the gun on my mother. “She is your flesh and blood, and I will kill her.”

I shrug my shoulders. And I swallow my guilt because if I’m wrong, and that woman wasn’t working for them—No, fuck, Niklas! Stop doubting yourself!

“It seems I have far too many flesh and blood relatives, and nearly all of them are worthless pieces of shit.” My eyes sweep over Lysandra, from bottom to top. “And ass-kissing whores.”

The shot deafens me. I never look over to see my mother fall, but the movement of her body hitting the floor in my peripheral vision torments me. Tears burn their way to the backs of my eyes and sinuses, but I hold them down. I will get over this as I’ve gotten over everything else. This is such a cruel fucking world, my life a dark fucking place I never asked for, with so-called family who has tried to kill me since I was a kid. And I can’t even be sure that any of them are who they say they are. Naeva, Lysandra, my mother, my father. I can’t be sure. I have to wonder if Victor is really my brother. No, he’s definitely my brother; DNA has proven that. Wait a second…DNA. What if that test James Woodard took on Nora Kessler was a fake? What if she is my sister? What if I’ve been fucking my sister?!

“You look like you just shit yourself, Niklas.”

Lysandra’s voice snaps me out of the paranoid spiral. I raise my eyes to hers, sweat beading on my forehead and my heart pounding like a fucking speedbag in a boxing gym. “I think I kinda did,” I tell her, though it has nothing to do with her killing my…that woman.

Screw this—I’m not going to start worrying about this shit.

I round my chin and taunt the bitch. “I guess now all you have left is my proposition. Are you prepared to wait? It could be days or weeks before Victor shows up.”

Judging by the infuriated look in her eyes, she’s not the patient type but knows she has no other choice.

“I should kill you,” she says.

“I died a long time ago, lady. So, go ahead. You’d be doing me a favor.”

There is movement behind me, and I feel a pinprick in the side of my neck, and the hazy room wavers in my vision. I see Lysandra’s lips moving, and I hear words coming from them, but they sound far-off, muffled.

Then that cruel world I live in goes black.

3

Izabel

A bullet rips through my hair and past my head, but it’s only luck and a little instinct that keeps me two inches from its path, as I’d decided to spin out of the way before the guy even pulled the trigger.

I roll across the floor toward him and knock him from his feet with the sweep of my leg. I’m on top of him, my knees holding down his flimsy arms, and the barrel of my gun shoved underneath his chin before he knows what hit him; the clank and woosh of his gun as it hits the floor and slides across is always a pleasant sound.

“I-I don’t know where she is!” he screams. “I-I never seen that girl in my life—”

“Stop lying,” I say, shoving the gun deeper. His sweaty body reeks of fast-food cooking oil; the fingers of my left hand are wrapped in the top of his stinking hair. I bang the back of his head against the floor. “I know you know where she is—tell me now, or I’ll scatter your brains across this restaurant.”

He cries out when I bang his head against the floor again.

But then he…laughs.

I don’t let him know I’m surprised by his reaction, but I sure as hell am because only deranged maniacs with nothing to lose and a sincere death wish laugh when looking death in the face. And I don’t let him onto the fact that the second he laughed, I already knew where the woman was: dead.

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