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It was so loud. That was what I registered first, before anything else, before I could react to what had happened. My ears rang painfully and I opened and closed my jaw to help with the pressure, but then I came back to circumstance in a hard crashing avalanche.
Feet slipping on smooth stone, I pressed myself against the wall, afraid of where or at whom Lucia would fire next. My breathing was so fast and hard it hurt my chest. My nails dug into my palm. My eyes shot from her to Papa, limp on the ground in his cell.
Lucia eyed me, then Papa. She walked over to him, graceful and deadly all at once. She opened his cell, and Papa moved. He’s alive! He dragged himself into a corner, blood making a sluggish trail.
“What are you doing?” I asked again, surprised at the fear in my voice—not for me, but for Papa. I should have been afraid the bullet had barely missed me, but my eyes were glued to Papa. This couldn
’t be the way it ended. I was still so angry.
I hadn’t been given enough time to forgive him.
I stood off the wall, ready to rush to him, when a man appeared, big and mean and ready to do damage. He and Lucia exchanged some kind of wordless communication and then he came at me, grabbed my elbow, and dragged me toward the jewel-lined hallway. I dug my feet into the ground but it did nothing to sway the ogre.
“Stop!” I yanked at him but he just dragged me farther away. “What are you going to do him?” Lucia turned back, exchanging more silent words with the asshole dragging me, and suddenly he stopped. We paused right before the curve of the hallway, where Lucia and Papa would have been out of sight. I elbowed the brute holding me, but he was like a fucking oak. I was stuck in place so I couldn’t rush back down.
“He’s served his purpose,” Lucia said, raising an eyebrow at Papa. Her voice wasn’t cold; it was emotionless. Not even the chill ice of anger slipped through. “And rather poorly, I should say.”
“But…” I struggled to find the words to save him. He’d been a terrible father. He’d left me to fend for myself my entire life. He’d given me to the Beast with no idea how that would turn out. He wasn’t even my father, but… “We can’t just kill him.” He was just about to tell me something real.
She spun around and raised a brow. “Why?”
“It’s wrong?” It sounded lame, even to me.
Lucia laughed. “That’s rich. As if I don’t know about your extracurriculars?”
“What?” I attempted to push off the ogre off again. “What are you talking about?”
She smiled venomously. “Did you think you were the only one who knew about your little excursions? That it was a secret?” My eyes widened and my heart stopped. The worst part wasn’t that she might know, it was that I had to think about what she knew—the letter I stole? Or Nikolai? Me sneaking to meet Anteros? Big O?
When had I become this person? Filled to bursting with secrets and bad deeds.
“I…” I didn’t know what to say. Anything was an admission of fault, and I’d been living in this nice little world where if people didn’t know, then I was still me. A person who didn’t kill, a person who hadn’t fallen to the darkness.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I eventually said. She gave me a raised brow, indicating she found my answer as lacking as I did. I was losing this. Papa was going to die. I bit and chewed at my inner cheek, watching and feeling helpless.
“Don’t you see what’s happening, Frankie?” Papa screamed. She lifted the gun away from Papa’s heart, and for a moment I was hopeful she’d changed her mind. Then utter horror stripped my mind blank and replaced it with screaming when she turned back. She pointed the gun at Papa’s head instead and I could do absolutely nothing. I made a break for her, but the ogre wrapped his hands around my waist.
Papa made one final appeal: “Frankie! She doesn’t want you to know—” but his words were cut off as I was dragged around the bend, down the velvet-curtained hallway, and up the stairs. I wasn’t sure if I screamed; I knew I kicked, but it didn’t matter.
The door to the basement slammed shut in my face. The brute let me go but only because his job was done. I pulled on the doorknob—it wouldn’t budge.
“Wait!” I screamed. “Stop!” I pounded furiously on the wood. She couldn’t kill Papa. Papa couldn’t die. He had been about to tell me something real, but he was also my papa. He was the only father I’d ever known. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t. It couldn’t end this way. I couldn’t be alone. I couldn’t be lost in this world. I slammed harder, the wood splintering beneath my fist just as I heard the gun fire.
“No,” I whispered, fist turning into an open palm on the wood. I stared at my hand on the door, unsure what to feel. Icy knives tore through my body. Suddenly I was sluggish, soul feeling drowned in swamp water. I put my head against the door. “No…”
“What are you doing?” I didn’t need to turn; I knew whose voice it was—Nikolai.
“She won’t let me inside!” I made another fist, slamming so hard my skin bloodied. Nikolai pulled me away from the door and I grabbed for the handle, but he was surprisingly strong for his small frame. “Let me go,” I yelled. My bloody grip slipped from the metal knob and I redirected my ire, slapping him with my newly freed hand. Nikolai touched his cheek, bloody from my hand, and glared.
“I’m trying to help you,” he hissed. “You’re drawing attention.” Some club goers had stopped indulging themselves to watch me, the one-woman implosion show. Fuck them.
“Snake,” I spat. “You’ve never helped anyone but yourself.” I shoved him with both hands. I was pretty sure the only reason he fell was because he wasn’t expecting it, but he fell backward, knocking over a bunch of suits and glittering dresses. They all hit the dangling mirrors with a crash.
Just then the door opened behind me. Lucia stood in the entryway, calm and collected in her ivory suit with gold buttons. Upon seeing her, everyone who’d been staring at me instantaneously went back to debauchery. Even the people on the floor acted like everything was fine. I had half a second to register the blood on the buttons, the only thing betraying her stoic countenance.
I pushed past her, knocking her off balance, and flew down the stairs. I ran so fast the curtains swayed. When I reached Papa, he was slumped on the ground. I moaned and pulled his lifeless body into my arms. I expected them to follow me, so I lifted my head, ready to shoot daggers into Lucia, but the room was empty. Not even Nikolai was there.
I’d never expected to feel this way, this hollow emptiness, at his death. I’d spent the time he was here feeling such anger at his abandonment, thinking of all the ways he’d hurt me in the past, of his flagrant abuse. I’d spent the past month punishing him, never really talking to him.
