Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 33243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 166(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 166(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
A part of me went with Zara when she left. I will never be whole again. And the sad thing is, I understand why.
For years, I fought with the darkness. Most of the time, it won. I spent days, months, weeks floating, like a drowning man clutching at straws. Reaching out and grabbing nothing. My hands coming up empty.
The only thing that helped me face the demons was the single-minded goal of destroying Jackson. Killing him? No. He doesn’t deserve that kind of mercy. A quick death won’t do. He has to suffer like the rest of us, like the rest of his victims. Slow, long, drawn-out torture is more like it.
Thinking of that used to calm me down and clear my head.
It doesn’t work today.
Not the next day.
Not the next week.
Zara occupies my mind. As I work. As I sit in the conference room, going over our final plans for Seine House. As I mindlessly eat, not tasting anything. As I go through the motions of existing every day. Existing, no longer living.
She doesn’t want me to remind her, so I purposely avoid bumping into her … only to find out that she’s moved.
I allow myself to feel the pain of losing her—not to move on, no. I don’t want to move on from whatever this is because it’s the only way I can keep her memories fresh.
And then, I lose track of time.
One day bleeds into the next, and even my brothers have started looking at me with pities on their faces. Jameson has yet to approach me and do the big-brother talk. I hope he doesn’t. This isn’t like what happened when we were young.
It’s a different kind of pain.
The only thing that can wake me up from this depressive stupor is the news that we’ve found Jackson. That way, I can take the anger out on him.
And I can avenge Zara, me, and the future we could have had.
Weeks after that scene in my living room, the world has lost all its color. It’s all blacks and whites and grays to me. The sun shines, I get up, drink coffee, shower, brush my teeth, pick my clothes, and leave for work. At work, I listen to my brothers, speak only when I have something useful to say, and spend the rest of the day in front of my computer. When I get home, I eat dinner, watch TV shows without seeing anything, take another shower, lie in bed, and stare at the ceiling for hours until sleep takes me.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
The Seine House auction is coming up, but my mind is elsewhere and nowhere at the same time. I wonder how Zara’s doing. Did she only move apartments or did she go back to her hometown? Does she think about me the same way I think of her? Probably not. I remind her of the bad stuff, and that’s okay.
Even while I walk in the middle of a crowd, I cannot silence what’s going on inside my head. My brain is muddled and becoming a tangled web of thoughts. The hum of traffic, horns honking, chatter of voices—they all seem distant and irrelevant. One foot in front of the other. Hands dangling at my sides. Other pedestrians bumping my arm, my shoulder, my chest. Someone impatiently shoving me.
I’m nearing the end of the pedestrian lane when a sudden bolt of pain shoots through my side. And then another. And another. My knees buckle and I fall, my vision blurring, leaving me gasping for breath.
Crumpling to the concrete, my hand goes to my right stomach. It feels like someone drove a hot poker through my ribs. Something soaks through my shirt, and when I remove my hand, blood shines on it.
My heart beats wildly, and panic sets in. I collapse sideways, clutching a hand at my side, noticing people crowding me but not seeing anything else.
The last thought I have before succumbing to darkness is Zara. Zara who was once mine.
14
ZARA
“We’ve got a white male patient with multiple stab wounds to the abdomen. He’s conscious but in severe pain. Pulse is weak. Blood pressure at 110/70 and dropping.”
Spotting the EMT rushing toward me with a stretcher in tow, I meet him halfway, listening to him rattle off the patient’s condition and vital signs. I’m already mentally running through what I need to do next when I swing my gaze to the man lying on the stretcher and suck in a big breath.
The world spins off its axis when I see Alec, his face pale, his eyes closed.
I struggle to process what I’m seeing. The sight of him in the ER fills me with a sense of dread unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. I’ve been working as an ER nurse for years, and nothing fazes me.
Yet, panic descends on me and settles on my chest like a heavy weight. It squeezes the air from my lungs, my thoughts spiraling into a frenzy of fear and uncertainty.