AllFreeNovel
Share Us
How silly I was to think my bloodline wouldn’t taint me the same way it taints all who bear the Capulet name. Power doesn’t just corrupt. Power destroys.
Maybe I’m thinking about Nathan and my father now because I hope they’re trying to find me. If Daddy is even alive, that is. Maybe it will just be Nathan coming to my rescue. Maybe he and Will are plotting my escape, right this moment.
Maybe they’re planning my funeral.
Who fucking knows.
Not me. I don’t know anything, other than the biting pain of the fresh cut on my arm. I don’t know anything, other than the arms squeezed tightly around me. I don’t know anything, outside of this room.
Rome’s lips brush against my forehead in an almost-kiss that sears my skin in the most delicious way, the comfort of his affection like a balm to my steadily eroding soul. “You’re okay,” he says one last time, releasing his tight grip on me. He takes the bloodied newspaper and places it in front of the door, an offering for our merciless, masked god who decides everything in the universe he’s constructed for us down here.
Rome finds the first aid kit - the same one I was using to bandage his bullet wound only days earlier - and sets to work on my arm. My tears are dried now, precious water that I probably shouldn’t have shed from my thirsting body. Now there’s just salt tracks lining my cheeks, stiff and uncomfortable.
“You should lay down,” Rome says, after he’s finished bandaging me up, now that today’s copy ofThe Verona Timesis sufficiently soaked in my blood.
I want to tell him that I shouldn’t, that if I close my eyes, I might never open them again, but I’m too tired to form the words. Instead, I let Rome guide me over to the mattress that sits bare on one side of this tiny room we’re locked in. He gently lowers me down, so I’m lying on my back, even though it must hurt the shoulder where he took a bullet. He doesn’t show his pain to me. He’s made of something far stronger than I am.
“Here.” I feel the ridge of a plastic water bottle at my lips. We have one small bottle of water to last us days at a time - I made the mistake of drinking the first one too quickly. I thought I was going to die when it had been days without a refill. There’s a bathroom attached to this room, and the faucet works, but the water made me sick when I tried to drink it. I haven’t been game to try it again. We’ve just rationed our water to a few sips, twice a day.
I choke a mouthful of the water down. I’m so tired my ability to swallow is barely existent anymore. Rome replaces the lid of the bottle, without drinking any himself. “Rome,” I whisper. “You have to drink, too.”
Reluctantly, he screws the lid off again and has a thimbleful of water for show. I would argue with him that he needs to have more, but I can’t. I’m slipping away again. I blink furiously, trying to stay awake, when I feel Rome’s cool hand against my clammy cheek, his fingers still sticky with my blood.
“Rest,” he says. And I have no option but to obey.
As I drift off, I think again about his bloody fingerprints all over the newspaper. Somebody is setting us up. For what, I don’t know yet. But it’s big, and it’s terrible, and I don’t know if we’re going to survive to learn what the bigger endgame is.
I just pray we survive long enough to figure out who’s really responsible for putting us here. I might be too weak to walk, too injured to escape, but there is one thing my blood still sings for in those endless moments.
Vengeance.
Red and crisp, like the apple the snake offered Eve. My heart yearns for it. If I make it out of here alive, I’m going to spend the rest of my days making sure the sick fuck who put us here - who is keeping us here - suffers.
Sometimes I think the thought of getting my revenge is the only thing that keeps me alive. It doesn’t worry me, though. It excites me.
We all need something to look forward to. A goal that pulls us out of bed each morning. Mine is quite simple.An eye for an eye. So what if the whole world goes blind? It’s already too dark down here in this hellhole to see.
CHAPTER TWO
AVERY
Iwake up on my back, to the sensation of cold metal tracing a line from my sternum to my belly button.
This is it, I think.I’m dead. I’m a dead girl in a body bag, about to be opened up and searched for answers. This is my post-mortem.
I wonder what they’d find. A broken heart, crumbled into little pieces inside my rib cage. An emptiness. An aching void.
But would they find who did this to me? To us?
This is my post-mortem, but I’m not a dead girl. At least, not yet. The metal is gone, and now there are hands around my throat, squeezing. I panic, until I realize the hands aren’t squeezing - they’re removing the shock collar from my neck. I lie perfectly still, terrified that if I fight, the collar will go straight back on. I’d do just about anything to keep that instrument of torture away from me.
The fingers forcing my eyelids open are testament to that. My eyes, forced to focus, make out the blurry figure kneeling over me.
It’s not Rome.
It’s the man in the mask.
The one who took me. The one who raped me. The one who cut me so deeply I almost bled to death.
