Endurance: A Salvation Society Novel

by Alexandra Silva

  It’s dark and late, and I don’t know what I’m doing down here when the only place I need to be is waiting for Garrett to come out of surgery. It’s been almost five hours. I can barely remember the last thing I said to him before Mark pulled me off him and Charlie took me away. It was so loud I could barely hear myself think, let alone what I was saying. I hope I told him I love him. I hope it was the one thing he was certain of.

  “Ma’am.” A tall, broad security guy nods at me as I pause in front of the automatic doors.

  I listen to the rain hammer the concrete outside and the asphalt beyond it. It’s the first thing that makes me smile even as the sweetest memory stabs at my chest. I’m entranced in that enthralling melody of Garrett’s. The one he hums when we’re lying in bed or swaying barefoot in Jo’s kitchen. The one he hummed in my ear when he danced with me on Duke’s boat and under the stars the night he asked me to move in with him.

  Five nights. Four days. All the fear I felt then is nothing to the grief I feel now.

  “Want me to take you somewhere?” A heavy arm wraps around my shoulders, and I keep inhaling breath after breath, waiting for the leather and brine scent that I love so much to fill my lungs along with the peppery and citrus notes of expensive cologne.

  There’s nothing but the sharp metallic bite of blood. He bled so much that his blood is still following me everywhere. I’m drowning in it. Thick molasses that make it impossible to see past the stain on the pavement and that awful startle and panic and fear that darkened his eyes. It’s all I can see. The shudders and shivers of his entire being fighting the urge to let go still rack through me.

  “I gave up on him once.” Mark blows out a quick breath. He sounds winded enough that he must have taken the stairs all the way down. “I won’t do that again. I’ve lost far too many brothers already, and I won’t lose Garrett.”

  “I was holding on so tight—” A half hiccup and half sob cuts me off. “—but I can’t remember if I told him I love him. I can’t remember if I kissed him properly this morning. We had breakfast, and I was so wrapped up in today that I don’t know…I can’t recall…”

  Stepping outside, I head straight for the rain, only stopping short when it dawns on me that it’ll wash away the blood. Garrett’s blood. The only thing I have of him right now. I can’t part with it, not until I have him again. Only when I’m certain that he won’t leave me.

  “I’ve been counting the seconds and watching the minutes turn into hours, and I keep trying to remember what I told him. But all I can think about is everything.”

  “A lot has happened,” he tells me with a somber nod.

  “No, not the mess. It’s what I keep calling it. The Mess.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  “I keep thinking of everything he promised me. Everything we spoke about. Everything I know about him and everything he’s ever wanted. I don’t think he truly realized that he is everything. I don’t know how or when, but he became the air I breathe. And since this afternoon, I’m suffocating. Slowly but surely suffocating, and I’m scared that if this is it, I won’t be me anymore. Mark—” I look up at him to find him staring me back, head tilted to the side and jaw clenched pensively. “—I’m scared that he’ll open his eyes and he’ll take one look at me and realize that he’s better off without me. What will happen then? How will I carry on? How will I be a good mom if my heart is gone?”

  An unexpected smile pulls at the corner of his lips, and a long chuckle pushes past them as he combs his hair back off his face. “When Doc opens his eyes, he’s never going to let you out of his sight again. Trust me, Mermaid, you’re one of the family now. I wouldn’t be standing out here in the fucking cold if you weren’t.”

  “I feel awful for dragging him into this whole rigmarole.”

  “Tell you what, Avery—he wasn’t wrong this morning. You really do shoulder all and any blame going. No wonder he didn’t want to lay it all on you.”

  “Lay it all on me?” My finally steadying pulse hikes up again as I let him take my hand and watch him study the blood on it.

  “We met up this morning to go over what Charlie and I managed to dig up on the information your father left.” He takes a deep breath before he adds, “I know he wanted to make sure you were calm and easy before he told you, but it’s too late. And I can’t have you walking around without knowing the danger you’re in. Not after this afternoon.”

  “I thought Kayla was taken care of.”

  “She is, and Carl…he was found last night. There was no sign of a break-in or a struggle, just a bullet to the head.”

  Shock and grief are the last emotions I would expect to feel right now. It doesn’t make sense that I hated Carl so much—that I still do—and yet, fresh tears prick at my eyes. Maybe it’s relief that finally his evil has caught up with him. Or maybe it’s the realization that this is it. I’m free of him and his demons. The longer I analyze it, I feel the loss and the anxiety of having to tell Iris that her father is gone, and it makes me feel sick. It fills me with dread, and I can’t help but recall wishing him a miserable end. Wishing that he was dead to his face.

  “Coffee from the machine is shit, but I need something to warm me up right about now.” Mark guides me back into the hospital lobby and straight for the hot drinks machine.

  Sitting me down in the row of seats beside it, he gets us both a black coffee that we nurse between both our hands as he tells me more about their findings.

  “The reason the feds came looking for you was because your father was taken out before he could hand them over the information he had.”

  “What would Charlie say if she heard you making excuses for them?”

  A low scoff tips his lips up into a grin before he sobers slightly and says, “This once, even Charlie will tell you that the agents were trying to look out for something other than their investigation.”

  “And yet, they let Kayla get close enough to hurt Garrett.”

  “They weren’t expecting her.”

  “Who were they expecting, then?”

  The way his face falls and he holds me with his stare promises the blow before it hits. Still, I’m staggered when he tells me, “Michael.”

  The initial shock of his statement has me bursting out with a high-pitched laugh that makes me look around nervously to make sure that we’re not a spectacle. There’s no one around barring the couple of security guys and another person sitting close to the corridor that leads to the restrooms. Maybe I wasn’t that loud because he’s still reading his newspaper rather than gawking at me like the security.

  The surprise wears off, and all I can manage is, “No.”

  “Avery—”

  “No, Mark. No.” No matter how hard I shake my head, he doesn’t backtrack. If anything, the look on his face takes on a certainty that not even I can doubt. “He’s family. He’s… No…they were friends. Partners. Mike… No… No, no, no…” My protest fades, turning into a “Why?”

  “The short of it? Freedom…money…”

  Then it hits me like the heaviest ton of bricks. I can barely breathe, let alone speak.

  “I called him this morning. I called him. Oh my God…” I clutch at my mouth, trying to mute my scringing cry. “Garrett knew. He knew all along, and he asked me to trust him. He asked me not to say anything and now…now…”

  “Now we know who’s responsible, we can end this for good.”

  “I told him about the file this morning.” My limbs are trembling, and I can’t force myself to sit down any longer. Getting up, I put the coffee in my hand down on the metal armrest before I stand in front of Mark. “I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry. I panicked. The agents were following me and…and I tried to call Garrett. I tried to call him and Charlie. I tried, but they didn’t answer, and I was scared.”

  Mark nods, his usual light demeanor gone, and while I know I’m safe with him—he’s a good guy, and I don’t doubt that one bit—my pulse still hammers so fast that my head begins to swim.
The back of my throat dries up and swells to the point that my vision starts to spot.

  “You trusted Michael, and he let you down. That’s his bad, not yours.” Wrapping an arm around me, Mark hugs me to him. It’s not tight or hard but soothing nonetheless. “You ready to go back upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, because I doubt it’s this God’s gift Doc will want to see first thing he wakes up.” Mark chuckles, and I can’t help but chuckle along with him. It’s hoarse and shaky, but it’s my first tentative laugh in what feels like forever. “You should probably get cleaned up. They won’t let you into ICU all crusty.”

  “It feels wrong to wash it off when—”

  “Believe me, I know that feeling, and while washing it off doesn’t change anything…it won’t make you feel any less responsible or…”

  “I feel as guilty as the people that hurt him are. I should’ve seen it that day he came to visit and he got so mad at me for looking into my dad.”

  “Sounds like he was concerned about covering his back.”

  “All that time, I thought that he was concerned about me and Iris. I don’t understand why he would do any of this. Why?”

  “Why does anyone do anything?” He shrugs, pulling back. “Everyone has their own reasons for their actions and choices. We’ll never really know why because our moral compass is clearly very different to his.”

  “What moral compass, Mark? He killed my father, and he could’ve gotten Garrett killed. There’s no morality in that. In any of his actions. It all looks like nothing but greed to me.”

  “I’d say that’s exactly what it is.”

  “So what now? How does it end?”

  “It’s why the agents are here. They want to talk to you.”

  “I have nothing to say to them. I don’t know anything.” I shake my head adamantly as though that’s all the proof he needs to convince him.

  “Yes, I know, but this was all triggered by an email sent to the Post. An email sent from your father’s personal email two weeks after he died.”

  “That’s impossible,” I tell him while we start for the elevator. “Apart from the obvious, no one had access to his laptop. It’s in the safe in his office back at home. The only people that went to the house were me, Pricilla, and Mi…Mike. He went with me when I had to get the suit. He said he was locking up while I…”

  Of course, it’s another detail I’ve missed. Another person I trusted that I shouldn’t have.

  “Why would he do it?”

  “Because there were emails between Carl and Kayla that clearly showed she was the one negotiating deals and handling the funds. Believe it or not, Carl’s only crime was covering up for her when he discovered the nature of the funds he was vetting.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t sympathize.”

  Mark chuckles at my quip, coming to a stop by the restroom corridor so that I almost bump into him.

  “If anything, the fact that he got himself killed and left me to deal with his shit…he’s left me to tell my daughter that her father is dead. How do I tell her that? It was so hard telling her about Dad, and now…”

  “Iris is a smart girl. She’s spunky and tenacious. I’m beginning to see she takes after her mother.” Taking a deep breath, he adds, “I’m not an expert on fatherhood. Charlie threatens me with physical violence whenever she leaves the kids with me.”

  “Because you like to forget who the kids are.”

  “True.”

  “The reality is that you’re a great father, and I guess I should be grateful Carl wasn’t. Maybe it’ll make it easier for her.” In a dark, twisted way, maybe all the fights she witnessed between me and Carl will help take away from the pain.

  Or maybe she doesn’t ever need to know. The thought crosses my mind for the umpteenth time today. It doesn’t matter how many times I think it, I know I can’t keep that from her. The truth is always harder to stomach, but in the long haul, so much easier than an eternity of lies. I can’t do that to her.

  “How about you save that worry for tomorrow?” Mark starts for the elevators again, and I’m following when the doors ping open and a well-dressed woman walks out.

  Her eyes widen at the sight of me, and it dawns on me how I must look while she almost trips over herself. Looking down at my hands, I stop in my tracks.

  “Wait,” I call, making Mark look back at me, holding the door for the elevator. An assessing look crosses his face for a short second before I tell him, “I don’t want him to see me like this.”

  It seems so silly and unimportant, but I don’t want Garrett to look at me and see what happened. I don’t want to look like I’m about to fall apart so that he worries about me rather than focusing on taking it easy on himself. I know what Garrett’s like—he’ll ignore his needs to put mine first. Just like he risked his life for mine.

  A small fluttering smile hitches one side of Mark’s mouth. When he runs his hands through his hair, I notice the specks of blood on his tattooed forearms and the way the insides of his sleeves are stained a rusty red.

  “A part of me hated you for taking me away from him. I just wanted to hold on to him like you did. So stupid to be jealous at a time like that.”

  “Crazy, yes, but not stupid,” he scoffs, heading back toward the restrooms with me.

  When we get to the corridor, he takes a searching look around us before walking me to the restroom door. It’s swinging shut, and as I go in, he pulls me back by my elbow.

  “Anything and you scream, got it?”

  The lump that’s been in my throat since this afternoon sinks to the pit of my stomach as I nod and head inside only for him to stop me again.

  “I got it,” I tell him with the easiest smile I can muster. “I’ll be out in a couple minutes.”

  Gesturing with a tip of his head for me to go, I don’t miss the way he stands back staring straight at the door. It’s almost like he can see through it or something because I keep looking back, trying to get to grips with the weird feeling that’s followed me all day since I spotted the agents following me.

  I watch the water run for a moment. With my heart beating fast and my aching body protesting as much, I hold my hands only just away from the tepid stream. It’s not warm nor cold, something in between that barely does anything to wash away the caked blood dried into the lines of my hands.

  So much blood. That’s all I can think as the pink-tinged water darkens when I start scrubbing and working the soap into my hands. The gummy scent of it does nothing to disguise the smell of blood that strengthens the more I scratch and scrub at my tender skin. Hot tears roll down my face as the water whirls around the bowl before it drains away.

  When I finally look in the mirror, I gasp at the sight of my matted hair and the spattered blood on my neck. The longer I study my appearance and scrub at my hands, the harder it is to breathe. I’m right back to this afternoon, trying my best to hold Garrett up while gravity pulled us both down.

  Cough after bloody cough, all I can do is watch as he chokes, and I have no idea what to do. All I can do is hold on. Hold on and tell him it’s okay even though I don’t think it is.

  “Help is coming,” I shush him, trying to conserve his energy so that he can keep fighting. “It’s coming, honey. It’s coming…” I chant and keep chanting as I hold him tighter and think of every prayer I’ve ever heard or been taught even as blood collects in his mouth.

  Light golden skin pales. Green eyes darken. White teeth stain pink. Every gurgled gasp dribbles a fresh stream of blood over chattering, purpling lips. It’s the one lonely tear that shatters my hope. Running from the outside corner of his eye down to his temple, it disappears into dark golden hair, and I can’t bring myself to wipe it away. All I can do is hold him to my chest as I rock back and forth.

  Bile fills my mouth as my stomach twists and twists at the memory. The only thing I’ve felt since the moment he took that bullet for me is loss, the kind I’ve never felt before, and as I stagger into the cu
bicle behind me, I can barely hold myself up as I retch into the toilet and try to wipe all the blood from my skin.

  It doesn’t matter how many times I repeat the words the doctor said earlier. It doesn’t matter that Iris is safe. Nothing matters because I am drowning in feelings that I’ve never felt before. Grief, loss, and hate. So much hate that the need to scream overwhelms me. I wish I could rip myself open and tear it all from my veins. But instead, it pulls from me in wicked retches and deafening sobs.

  The bathroom door clatters open with an echoing punch that reverberates through me. My throat closes up as I peer out back at the mirror. My pounding heart hangs itself somewhere between my knees and the floor. It doesn’t matter how fast I act, he was already anticipating me.

  “Come on now, doll,” Mike grunts as I try to shut the cubicle door, and he rams into it, sending me stumbling back. “Don’t make this hard,” he sighs, shaking his head as though he’s hurting himself with his actions. “I didn’t want it to come to this, Avery.”

  Do something! I yell at myself, shaking off the shock and my ridiculous stupor.

  Mike is coming closer, and while my natural instinct tells me to cower away, I stand my ground.

  “It was always going to come to this,” I spit as he pulls out a small gun, and the only thing I can think to do is slam the door right into his face.

  It all happens so quickly that the jarring sound of the shot ricocheting off the walls winds me for a brief moment as the door bounces back on its hinges. Without a second thought, I run as fast as I can past him. If I can get out of here…

  Almost. My fingertips graze the long door handle as he pulls me back by my elbow brusquely. While I stagger back, slipping on the water I dropped on the floor earlier from my hands, Mike grabs me by my hair, tugging it so that I’m looking straight up at him.

  Fear evades me in that one moment where his dark eyes narrow to slits on mine.

  “I tried to warn Robert to stop, but he couldn’t help himself. Like father, like daughter. Your husband was right about one thing after all.”