Page 111 of Corrupted Deception

Val’s hurt. Val’s going to die.

No more. No more. No more.The words reverberated in my head over and over again. I swear I could feel them banging against the inside of my skull, fighting to get out. The urge to grab the sides of my head to hold them in made my hands shake.

Instead, I stared at the floor and dug my fingernails into my palms so hard, the sting left no doubt I’d drawn blood. I could feel it, sticky and warm.

I could feel the cloud coming in too—that’s what Dr. Steele called it. The fog that settled into my brain and made it difficult to think, to plan, to reason.

I could hear Nacio on his phone, giving orders, calm and clear. Maybe that’s why I’d liked him from the day I met him—he had that ‘stay cool under any pressure’ vibe that Cielo had.

But now, the words in the room were all blurring together, lost somewhere beneath the sting in my hands and the blood whooshing past my ears.

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.The urge to scream rose up, thick and hot. ‘Tantrums’ and ‘meltdowns’ Dr. Steele had called them. Asshole.

“Charlotte,” Julio’s voice rose above the blur as a hand landed on my shoulder.

“No!” I shouted like I’d been slapped or stung. “Don’t touch me!” I snapped and jerked away from him.

He stepped back, unperturbed.

That was the worst part, when they acted like my ‘meltdowns’ were just ordinary, everyday shit.

I took a slow, deep breath and tried to look around, but there was too much chaos, too many people around me to focus on grounding in my environment.

So, I looked inward. “Visualize,”Dr. Steele would say.

It was always the same, the freefall, those few moments of weightlessness when there was nothing but wind all around me and the world far down below. But this time, an image of Cielo sprung to mind in my calming place. He was lying in my bed beside me, skin to skin, his hand tracing idle circles along my hip.

I breathed in and breathed out, feeling the not quite smooth pads of his fingers against my hip, watching the rise and fall of his tattooed chest. ‘In the heart of the tempest I find my way’it read down the lightning bolt that ran directly over his heart.

“Sorry,” I apologized to Julio as I opened my eyes.

Without turning my head, I could feel Cielo’s brother, Deo, watching me from across the room, and Aurelio. Cielo too.

‘Oh, this is the greatest show…’

“You’ve got it together,tempesta?” Cielo asked, but it didn’t feel like a question, not even a statement. It was a command.

Bossy,asshole.

“Yeah, I’m good.” It wasn’t quite the truth, but not a lie either. I could hear above the blood still pounding past my ears, and though my hands were sticky with blood, my nails were no longer digging into them, drawing more.

“Bene,” he said with one simple nod. He wasn’t looking at me like everyone else; there was no assessing going on in his eyes, no hesitancy like he was waiting for me to erupt.

“What’s the plan?” I asked, because there had to be a plan. I wasn’t going to lose any more. Not today. Not happening.

He took a step closer, forcing me to look up to hold his gaze.

“I need you to trust me,” he said, his voice so quiet it was clear this conversation was meant for just us. Nevertheless, I feared I knew what he was about to say.

“You’re planning to leave me here with a babysitter, aren’t you?”

He shook his head. “You need to be here, Charlotte. You need to be here, and I need you to stay calm,si?” he asked like he believed I had every ability to do that.

“You sound just like my dad,” I mused aloud.

He smiled. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

Hm, I guess it was.

---