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“A masterpiece, not a picture. And you don’t really have a choice. If I decide you’ll die…” His upper body leans forward and he loosens his fingers from around my wrist, his voice lowering to a frightening whisper. “You’ll die.”
I scream when my foot nearly gives way and my nails dig into his arm with a ferocious need for life bubbling in my veins with the desperation of a caged animal. A prisoner that’s been in solitary confinement for bloody years.
I’m pretty sure I scratched him, but if he’s hurt, he shows no signs of discomfort.
“This isn’t funny,” I pant, my voice choked.
“Do you see me laughing?” His long fingers wrap around the cigarette and he takes a drag before pulling it away from his mouth. “You have until my smoke ends to give me something.”
“Something?”
“Whatever you’re willing to do in exchange for mychivalrousact of saving a damsel in distress.”
I don’t miss the way he stresses the word chivalrous, or the provocative way he uses words in general. As if they’re weapons in his arsenal.
The battalion at his command.
He’s enjoying this, isn’t he? This whole situation that started with my attempts to forget has landed me with a nightmare. My gaze strays to the half-smoked cigarette and just when I’m thinking about prolonging time, he inhales what remains in a few seconds and throws the butt away. “Your time is up. Goodbye.”
He starts to release himself from my hold, but I dig my nails in farther. “Wait!”
No change occurs in his features even as the air tousles his hair back. Even as I’m sure he feels me shaking with the desperation of a leaf struggling to survive.
Nothing seems to have any effect on him.
And it scares the shit out of me.
How can someone be this…thiscold?
This detached?
This lifeless?
“Changed your mind?”
“Yeah.” My voice trembles even as I attempt to sound in control of myself. “Pull me up and I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Sure you want to word it that way?Whatever I wantmight include a number of things that are frowned upon by the general public.”
“I don’t care.” The moment I’m on safe ground, I’m out of this crazy wanker’s orbit.
“It’s your funeral.” His fingers wrap around my wrist in a merciless grip and he tugs me from the edge with baffling ease.
It’s as if I wasn’t hanging toward death by a thread just now.
As if the water below wasn’t opening its fangs to chew me in between them. Maybe, just maybe, that’s not a good thing, considering the devil I’m facing.
My harsh breaths sound animalistic in the silence of the night. I attempt to regulate them, but it’s of no use.
I was brought up to have a steel will and an imposing presence. I was raised with a last name that’s larger than life, and with family and friends who attract attention wherever we go.
And yet, everything I knew seems to vanish at this moment. It’s like I’m dissociating from who I’m supposed to be and morphing into a version even I can’t seem to fathom.
And it’s all because of the man standing in front of me. His features are vacant, his eyes still dull and lifeless, and every bleak color in the palette.
If I had to put a color on him, it’d most definitely be black—deadpan, cold, and a boundless hue.
I try to free my wrist from his hand, but he tightens his hold until I’m sure he’ll break my bones just to peek inside them.
