Whatever information they want, I will give them.
“Where is your father?” Emin asks me. That question breaks the eye contact between Lana and me as I look at him.
“You fucking heard me. Where is your father?” he repeats his question, as if I didn’t understand it the first time. In all other scenarios, I would have said something back or killed him, even from this position, but I don’t have that luxury now. They are using Lana as bait, and if I don’t take it, they will murder her.
“Listen, I don’t know where my father is,” I answer as honestly as I can. My mind is thinking through what I should say to get Lana and me out of here, and Emin picks up on it.
“Don’t try to lie to us, otherwise she,” he points his gun toward Lana and looks back at me again, “and your entire team will die.” Emin is not fucking around. Honesty is the best policy, as they say.
“Emin, I really don’t fucking know where he is.”
“Have it your way then.” Emin takes slow, deliberate steps toward Lana, turns the chair so Lana is looking at him, and then does something that makes any word stop in my throat. He points the gun toward her heart. No, no, no.
No.
“Emin, don’t fucking do this. You worked with her! Whatever her father pays you, I will pay you a hundred times more!” I’m pleading as tears are streaming down Lana’s face. She is sobbing and mouthing a silent prayer. There is no possible way for me to escape from being chained to this chair, with three heavily armed men in the room. I mean, I could escape, but that wouldput Lana and my entire team in danger. I don’t know if these men are looking at them.
If they are as good as I am, they would.
“Just tell us where your father is! Otherwise, Lana dies in the room where you were born as a baby!” Emin’s voice is filled with hatred, and he is growing impatient.
“M, make them stop! Just tell them!” Lana’s short, trembling inhales cut through her words, making her sound fragile and broken. I’m shaking my head, and I feel hopelessness taking over me.
“Little hummingbird, I will get us out of here!” I scream. Emin cocks his gun, and I’m getting sick.
“Tick…” he begins as he lets his finger hover over the trigger, and my anxiety is rising. I’m thrashing harder in my seat with no fucking luck. The air is sucked out of the room as Lana looks at me.
“I love you,” she says to me as if defeat is upon us already.
“I love you too!” I scream back.
“Tock…”
“Emin, no!”
“Tick…”
“Let her go, kill me!”
“Tock…” His finger is now fixated on the trigger. My heart is pumping fast because I’m out of options.
“M, please, please, please!” Lana screams at me as she closes her eyes. Another guard approaches me and places a bag over my head. Now I’m totally cut off from her.
“Lana, no!”
“You don’t deserve to look at her anymore because you failed her, and now.” I hear Lana’s sobs increase. “Your little hummingbird is all sung out, and you are the reason for her downfall.”
Click.
No sound. No movement. No thumping heartbeat.
The only reason I know I’m alive is because of the two hands holding my shoulders down.
Lana is dead.
Lana is dead.
My little hummingbird is gone.
