Mack shuffles his feet back and forth for a moment as if he’s nervous. Then he talks, and my life spirals out of control.
“I found out from one of Luccio’s men that her father works for the FBI.” The second the words leave his mouth, I’m retaliating.
“Lies! It’s all lies! This whole thing is a lie!” I frantically assert over and over again. Tears escape my eyes, and I go to turn around, but am stopped. Zerro’s hold on me is tight as he places the gun against my lips. His eyes hold no mercy as he bruises me.
“Is that true?” he inquires, deathly calm. The tears keep coming, so I’m unable to gain my voice to say anything. Without an answer, he loses it.
“Is that fucking true?” he screams, his face right on mine. His hands grip my arms as he shakes me until my teeth rattle in my head.
All I see is a blur of him as I try to get my mind and body to function so I can answer him. My legs hit the floor as he pushes me down, releasing me to walk away. His hand grips his hair as he stares at the gun in his other hand and then back down at me.
“No. No, it’s not true,” I whimper, tears still falling.
“That’s not all, sir.” Mack breaks in. What now? What additional lies can he come up with? What more could rip me to pieces than Zerro thinking that my father is in the FBI? That I had betrayed him?
“Tell me,” Zerro grits out, his eyes still on mine.
“Don’t listen to him,” I plead, looking him straight in the eyes.
“Silence,” he orders, walking over to me with his hand raised. Will he hit me? Will he hurt me?
“Talk.” He turns back to Mack. All I want to do is cover my ears. I don’t want to listen to the lies that bastard will spew.
“Not only is her dad in the FBI, but he was the one who shot and killed your mother.”
The accusation has me flailing for air. What did he just say? Though nothing about this is funny, I feel like laughing. Mack is crazier than I ever thought.
“That isn’t true!” I shoot back. “Nothing he is saying is true…”
Then it’s as if Zerro loses it. I feel a hand sweep roughly across my face, knocking me off my knees. I am unaware of what’s taking place because my mind goes blank for a second as my eyes roll to the back of my head. My head throbs, and something trickles down my face, but I can’t quite get my wits together to sit up.
“There’s more… Her father borrowed the money because he was trying to pin you for something. When it backfired, he sent his daughter in for him. She knew this whole time. She was simply pretending to be something that she wasn’t.”
“No…” I cry out as my vision swims. Did Zerro hit me? Why does everything I see have black spots in it?
Silence ensues for a long second before Zerro speaks. “Get the ropes and tape!” he yells to Mack. I’m lying on the ground on my side when his face comes into my vision.
“Was it all a lie, Bree? Was it all some fucked up lie, so that you could get into my head? So you could get the inside job done and walk away unscathed?” His voice is so loud in my ears, I push away from him.
“WAS IT?” he demands, his fingers gripping my chin, pulling me closer again.
“No!” I gasp. “I love you. I really do. I don’t know what he’s talking about. He’s a liar.”
I try and push myself up. I need to get up to escape, but I know there’s no point in running. Zerro wants me dead. The man I love wants me to die.
“Bind her feet and duct tape her mouth,” he orders Mack. Zerro takes a step back, and I await my fate.
“I didn’t do it…” I cry and beg. My pleas go unnoticed, though, as Zerro finds a container of something and starts drinking it straight from the bottle.
“Shut up, you stupid bitch,” Mack says smugly, pressing my face into the wood floor. More blood falls from my face, and I feel the blackness begging to take me under.
“Listen to me!!!” I demand over and over again. Nothing changes in the way he looks at me. I know the hate he has for the people who killed his mother, and I know that even the absurd possibility of me having any relation to them will do me no good.
“Leave the duct tape off. I want to hear her screams when I shoot her in the head,” Zerro coldly commands. His voice is far off, and I wonder if it’s me who’s slipping away or him.
My body is pulled up until I’m resting on my knees before him. Is he really going to kill me? Is this the end?
I look into the eyes of the man who took me, the man who I had saved from death, but I see nothing of the person I fell in love with. I know today isn’t just my funeral, but his as well. With my death will come guilt and heartache like he has never felt before.
The gun in his hand is cocked and loaded. The light glistens off the metal as I watch him raise the barrel toward the side of my head.
“Tell me you didn’t know, Bree…” His face is the same of the beautiful man I made love to merely hours ago. Our love is magnificent, but in the big world of things, it is nothing. Fear courses through me as I wait for him to pull the trigger. He will… I have watched him kill too many people to think otherwise. He always pulls the trigger…
“Tell me! Tell me you didn’t fucking do it, Bree! Tell me that this bullet isn’t for you. Tell me because right now, I’m contemplating killing the one person who means more to me than anything else in the world!” Zerro’s voice, though frantic and anguished, is soothing me and giving me hope. Maybe, just maybe, our love can conquer the darkness that is lurking close to his surface.