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“Got what you need?” I asked Yuri.
He handed the phone back to Devin, nodded, and backed away. Ivan took the hint and backed away too. They moved to the far edges of the room, and I took a step forward. I hated how unstable I felt, how weak, but I wouldn’t let that ruin this moment. I had been daydreaming about this for weeks, and the visions had become especially vivid in the last few hours.
Devin turned and noticed Yuri wasn’t standing behind him anymore. Then he saw Ivan leaning against the wall. His eyes widened. I saw the panic fill them, saw the fear as it morphed the features of his face like clay, making his face long.
He shook his head. “What’s going on?”
I took another step towards him, and Devin fell backward in his attempt to get away from me. He kicked his feet against the carpet, scooting himself away. “You said you’d let me live.”
“I did, didn’t I?” I said, tilting my head to the side and scratching my temple with the muzzle of my gun. “But then, I said I’d let you live so you could feel the weight of how truly terrible you are. But you know what, there is a problem with my plan. Do you know what it is?”
Devin’s mouth was hanging open. His eyes darted in every direction, searching for a way out, but there wasn’t one. He was trapped.
“The problem is that you don’t have a conscience. To feel remorse, you have to care, and you are heartless. You kidnapped your own sister and locked her away. You were going to make your sick mother think your sister was insane to cover your tracks. And you were going to kill her child.”
“I never said that. I wasn’t going to hurt the baby.”
We both knew he was lying, but I appreciated his effort, at least.
“How would the baby have fit into your lie?” I asked. “Your mother would have noticed your sister’s growing stomach. She would have wanted to know who the father was. And even if you were able to lie to your mom, your sister would have the proof of her connection to me. She would have my child, and you would have to look at the child every day and see me there in their face. No, the only answer was to keep the pregnancy from progressing, isn’t that right?”
Devin didn’t say anything, but his eyes lowered to the carpet. He couldn’t even look at me. “I wasn’t going to hurt her.”
“STOP LYING!” My emotions were boiling just under the surface, and my entire body hurt. My brain pounded inside my skull, and I just wanted to see Sam. I wanted to hold her and know she was okay.
He closed his eyes, and I saw tears glisten as they rolled down his cheeks. “Are you going to let me leave?”
His eyes were still closed when I stepped forward and held the gun up, the muzzle less than six inches from his forehead.
“Look at me.”
He waited a minute, a soft breath pushing his lips apart, and then he opened them.
And I pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twenty
Samantha
I felt stiff all over from laying on the floor for so long. With my wrists and ankles tied, I couldn’t do much more than roll from one side to the other. I sat up for a while, but my body ached for rest, and I always found myself laying down again.
The room smelled musty, and my lungs burned from breathing in the damp air for so long. The footsteps moving across the floor above me had gone from lazy and slow to frantic as time wore on. I had no way to know exactly what time it was, but I knew it had to be getting late. And while I had no idea what my brother’s planned schedule was, it felt like perhaps he was falling behind.
Good. More time for Gavril to find me. Again, I had no way to know that Gavril was looking for me, but I could feel that he was. He had to be.
At some point, I began to doze. I wouldn’t say I fell asleep because that would insinuate I was relaxed, and I absolutely wasn’t. Rather, I was fading in and out of consciousness, my brain attempting to give me some manner of relief from the uncomfortable position I was in, both physically and emotionally.
I was tired, and my nausea was only getting worse the longer I went without eating. I knew the baby would be okay for a few hours without food, but it still worried me. What if the stress caused by this whole situation was enough to hurt the baby? What if I lost the baby even if Gavril found me before Devin forced me to swallow the pills?
