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CHAPTERONE
clay
Eighteen years old.
Dustin observes from the doorway.Even though his reputation is impeccable and the nursing staff and every other fucker in this city are enamoured by him, I still peer over my shoulder to see if we have been noticed.
My hands shake, but I ball my fingers in tight to control them. The beeping of a machine draws me back to the little blonde girl on the hospital bed.
She looks like a doll.
Her face is like porcelain. Below the thin veil of skin, her malnourished body barely thrives, the blue of her veins like soft pen lines down each white cheek.
"Get it over with." Dustin's hoarse utterance cuts through the room, and I react immediately, cramming down my innocence and youth in order to take hers.
I sit on the edge of the mattress, my eighteen-year-old frame shadowing the tiny person already barely clutching at the seams of her existence. And while the perpetual beeping indicates sheisstill alive, her white, lifeless features contradict the mechanical echo of her heartbeat. She could be dead. She looks almost dead. Peaceful. I find solace in those thoughts, accepting the cold, heartless part of me that I need to finish this.
Finish her.
For my Family.
For Jimmy.
She knows too much, but that is all he told me.
And what better way to initiate me, to test my utter loyalty to the Family, than by having me kill a helpless child for him. A child who was involved in things her naïve mind could never understand. And yet, she saw too much, knows too much—that is the bottom line.
Do I understand it?
Yes.
They don’t need to tell me what she knows. It doesn't matter. The ‘bottom line’is my loyalty to them and my faith in Jimmy despite her potential innocence.
The girl doesn’t move. The clock ticks. The machine reminds me she has a heartbeat, and I grit my teeth. Lifting the pillow, I place it over the sleeping girl's face, pressing lightly at first, feeling my heart spike as I try to stop hers.
I press down harder, my mind retracting absently to keep myself—
She responds.
Christ.My arms nearly buckle as ice moves through my veins becauseitis awake—sheis awake.
Alive.
Alive, Clay.
I fist the pillow, my fingers rushing with acid, the hot rage and guilt moving down the length of each digit. Rage for the fucked-up hand she was dealt that led her to be below the weight of mine. I press harder, and her shoulders start to lift off the mattress.
She moans.
She is alive.
Her arms fly up and swing, slicing through the air, frantic in their attempt to fend me off, but they are so small and weak, flailing around a faceless girl below a white pillow. And although I can't see her expression or whether her eyes are open or shut, I remember her face.
Without removing the killer weight of my hand, I lean back, then to the side, narrowly avoiding the swinging limbs as they convulse with desperation.
She is alive.
Her hand is suddenly behind her head, below the pillow, and for a moment, I think she is trying to yank the lower pillow away to give her space to escape, but her hand comes back clasping something shiny and solid.
