100
AURORA
“Please, no wait! I can explain; please let me explain!”
“There is nothing more you can say that I ever want to hear.” Lucian casts one last dark look in my direction, then turns and strides slowly back to his father. I surge forward, desperate for the chance to speak my own truth, but none of them want to listen.
I can’t blame them, but it pains me more than I ever imagined.
One of the men guarding Cassian rushes forward with me and catches the back of my flailing arm when I run. The grip pulls me backward, and my feet slip on the smooth tiles surrounding the pool. Down I go, landing with a hard slap on the ground. Pain radiates numbly through my left shoulder.
Tears pour down my cheeks when I blink. From here, Cassian’s face comes into view once again, and I search his eyes for comfort. There’s nothing there but pain and it dawns on me that we’re both about to meet the same fate.
I am, perhaps, more deserving than he; but to those with the guns, it won’t matter.
We’re both going to die.
His eyes lock onto mine. Unfortunately, I can’t decipher whatever it is he’s trying to tell me. The message is lost in the pain in his eyes and the tears in my own.
“Please,” I beg when a large hand wraps around my right bicep and hauls me to my feet like I weigh nothing. My head whips around and I’m face-to-face with Orion. His face is clouded with anger, and I don’t need to remove his sunglasses to feel the hatred pouring off him.
“Where the fuck are you going?” The guard barks at Orion as if he has any authority over him.
“I’m not staining my favorite pool with the blood of a stinking rat,” Orion snarls. “Unless you want me to paint the tiles with the pretty insides of your thick skull, you better keep your attention on that fucker, alright?”
“You can’t do this. You have to let me explain. Please, it’s not what you think, I swear. I didn’t do anything, I never said anything. I would never hurt you, I would never hurt any of you!”
Orion is silent as he drags me away from the pool and toward the garden where we all used to sit together and watch Selene play. My favorite bench comes into sight beyond the hedges as I’m dragged like a sack of wheat. I can’t catch my feet underneath me with the speed he walks so I’m forced to half hobble, half let myself be dragged through the dirt.
Over Orion’s shoulder, Lucian’s head is low as he trudges back into the mansion, and Cassian is left facing down Vincent and his armed men. There’s no one left at his side to protect him.
Because of me.
Things have crumbled in a matter of minutes and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.
All of them vanish from view when Orion throws me to the ground. I land with a grunt on the grass, unable to stop weeping. The sickly scent of grass and flowers clouds my lungs like poison. I can’t stand the thought of anything nice right now and nausea pulls at my gut. Pulling myself onto my knees, I tear at the grass with one hand while staring up at Orion.
“Please,” I gasp. “Please don’t do this!”
My heart pounds so rapidly that there’s nothing but a blur of sensation within my chest. I can barely breathe, and the sobs claw out of my throat, leaving burning in their wake.
Orion unclips his handgun from his holster and aims it at me, unwavering.
“Is it true?” Orion asks tightly, and his grip flexes slightly on the gun. “Is it really true that you came here as a spy?”
I want to lie. Spin some tale to try and salvage this, but there’s nothing I can think of within these few seconds that will save me. Grass rips under my fingers, and I twist my hands together in my lap.
“Yes,” I sob. “At first. But, please—it’s not what you think.”
Orion doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t shoot either, so I snatch these few precious moments to try and explain myself.
“My mother brought me up that way, okay? It was my whole life. Her hatred was my hatred, and her plan was the only thing I knew. Ever since I was a little girl, she taught me how to make people like me to the point that they would tell me their deepest secrets. She taught me how to navigate computers and crack passwords so I could get into places I shouldn’t be, and then she did everything she could to ensure I got this job.”
Orion’s jaw tightens so hard his teeth grind together.
“B-but I never did, okay? I never did any of the things she wanted me to do because I couldn’t. Please, you have to believe me!”
“What. Did. She. Want.” Orion can barely get the words past the tension in his jaw.
“She—she wanted records and proof of the business. Anything that could hurt Lucian’s finances, because without funding, he loses his power. She wanted to know exactly where his territory was and who his allies were so she could destroy him.”
“Did she want you to kill him?”
“No!” My head dips. “She never asked me to do that, but I-I don’t know for sure.”
“I was there.” The gun waves, along with his voice, when I look back up at Orion. “I sat in those places while you met with her. Lucian worried for your mother since you were so desperate to see her the night of the snowstorm. But it was all a lie.”
“I never did it.” I’ll say that with my last breath if I have to. “I swear.”
“Why?”
“Because…because I felt trapped. What she wanted me to do felt so easy in the beginning, but then I made a life here. I was going to have the family I’d never had before, and I never wanted to hurt anyone. I started to see where my mother was wrong.”
“Then why didn’t you come clean?” His voice raises and I flinch backward, fearing the gun would go off accidentally if he got any angrier.
“Because I felt forced and stuck! The moment I told the truth, I would lose what I had, but please, you have to understand that I never did anything to hurt anyone. My mother didn’t either. She’s just sore and hurt about old things but I told her she had to move on!”
Orion’s trembling finally ceases, and once again, I’m staring down the hollow barrel of a gun.
“Please, I told her you’re all decent people and I told her that she needed to make her peace because I love you! I love this family, please. I would never do anything to hurt anyone here. I don’t know what Vincent’s plan is by getting rid of me, but you have to believe me, please, please!”
Sinking forward onto the grass, I lay myself at Orion’s feet. I have no idea how else to show him how sorry I am.
A strained sigh drifts down from above and when I slowly lean back up, Orion is massaging his temple.
“Did you ever give your mother any information?”
“No,” I sob repeatedly like a prayer. “I never saw anything. I never did anything. You all kept it hidden for so long that by the time you revealed the truth to me, I already knew I could never tell her a thing. Please.”
“So that night, when you acted all shocked and horrified and we were worried for you…that was a lie? You were just pretending?”
Unable to speak, I nod quickly. When it’s all laid out like this, I look guilty as sin, and I know the trust is gone. There is absolutely nothing I can say or do that will save me.
Briefly, I consider the pregnancy. If I tell him, will that change anything? Or will it make the pain so much worse, given Selene’s condition? Nothing in my head makes sense and before I can unravel what to do, Orion speaks.
“Lucian is too distraught to make any decisions so I’m going to do it.” Orion straightens his shoulders and stands a little taller, then he juts out his chin. “Leave.”
My breath catches in my throat, burning the back of my tongue, and my pounding heart skips a painful beat. “Wha—leave? What—What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Orion growls. “Get the fuck out of here.”
He’s…letting me live? The heartbroken fragments of my heart lift with the slightest ray of hope that crushes a second later as Orion continues.
“I will shoot at you and you will go down. I’ll kick your body away and once I’ve left, you will get the fuck out of here. I don’t care how, and if you get caught by anyone else then I will not save you. This isn’t a mercy.”
It feels like a mercy, though. My fingers twist together so tightly that my knuckles ache.
“This isn’t forgiveness; this isn’t anything other than me knowing Lucian wouldn’t be able to live with another death of someone he loves on his conscience, and he’s already suffering enough. I don’t need you to hurt him more than you already have.”
The broken shards of my heart slice away inside me with every breath, turning my emotional distress into physical agony.
“Whatever the fuck your goal was here, whatever you wanted to do, I don’t care. It’s over, do you understand? Get the fuck out of here.”
“Why?” I gasp wetly, unable to process what he’s saying quickly enough. “Why not just kill me like you said you would?”
Deep down, part of me aches for that. The easy way out away from all this guilt and pain.
“I can’t,” Orion says, his voice strained as he lifts the gun an inch higher. “I can’t kill someone I love.”
Then he pulls the trigger.
