Chapter 26
Ivy
No one is born capable of murder. Or maybe they are. Nature versus nurture—the eternal debate—but I've never thought of myself as a monster.
Emotionless? No. When I love, it consumes me, burns through my veins like poison. Those few I let in, I'd bleed for. The fact that my circle stays small has nothing to do with lacking emotion. Trust is the real problem. Trust is what gets you killed.
“Please! I beg!”
At least that's what I tell people who insist I don't have a heart. If I didn't have one, why has my body count tripled since that winter?
“Have you ever been married, Jonathan?” With every twist of the chamber, each click quivers over my thumb. My eyes burn from not blinking as I zero in on the glass cabinet in front of me. Picture frames. He has a family. Children. A wife. Maybe she loves him as much as I—my throat swells. “Never mind. I see you are.”
He shuffles behind me, as if trying to gain distance between us.
“Marriage is a funny thing. I don’t much believe in it myself.” The glass throws back my reflection. Dark hair scraped into a tight ponytail, skin slick with product—a thousand bottles' worth of denial that I'm falling apart. My cheekbones cut sharper angles now, carved hollow by endless training and the absence of anything that might taste like carbs and comfort. But it's my eyes that stop me cold. Once alive, nature green, now dull like dried moss.
Jonathan’s cries die out behind me as the magnetic force of sadness threatens to swallow me whole.
I don’t recognize that girl.
“Please. I don’t know who sent you, but please.”
That girl pisses me off, because that girl is a reminder of why we don’t broaden the scope.
I turn, aim my gun, and pull the trigger. With a silent blow, his head knocks back in an explosion of vermillion and brain matter.
Silence. A clock ticking in the back.
I don’t recognize that girl.
I answer my phone as I make my way out of the office, taking the emergency stairs. Flight after flight, it’s not until ten minutes later that I push through the exit doors and to my all black Maserati before driving into traffic.
Emeric kept me well fed this year, giving me job after job. Either he knew I needed the distraction, or he didn't care that I was self-destructing.
Swinging the car into an underground parking, I flip the mirror down to check my face, cleaning blood from my cheek and reapplying my lipstick.
Burgundy. The color of blood right as it dries.
I've never cared much about what people thought of me. I didn't care if they were afraid, or if they looked at me sideways for whatever reason. I'd walk down the street and not bat a single eye at another person unless they were a threat.
I was free. To live, to die, to exist between the norm.
Until I arrived at the doorstep of love and found him staring back at me with eyes so soft they reminded me of what it felt like to be free from pain. It has been a whole year, and I still hear the gunshot go off every time I close my eyes at night. Feel the kickback against my chest. I faded into nothing for the first few months, wandering through life with a set routine.
I went to work.
I ran.
I ate… what I could.
I slept.
There was nothing more to me than those set tasks. Did I feel something more for Asher than I gave myself credit for? I can’t even imagine feeling that sad over anyone outside of the very few I keep close. But there's a reason why, it's because they are hard to kill. I felt safety in that fact.
Twelve months. It's a long time to be sad over someone I still, to this day, refuse to accept I felt anything more than lust for.
Lust.
