Shards of Us

by K R Caverly

  Something else is going on. Something else has to be.

  I run my hand along the cool rail as we make our way up the stairs. The top floor is a huge thing, filled with decorative paintings and sculpture against the walls, with several giant chandeliers hanging overhead. A large patterned carpet stretches the expanse of the floor, soft beneath my feet.

  When I reach the upstairs, I find myself looking around. There is nothing here. Nothing but a few closed doors leading into other rooms. I look at each of them closely, as if it will tell me which leads to whatever it is Sebastian is hiding up here. But they're all identical, brown-lacquered wood and seemingly untouched.

  I turn to him. "Which door?"

  "What do you mean?" He's leaning against the wall, and his lips have fallen into a flat line. He looks almost apologetic, if that makes sense. Like he knows whatever I'm going to discover is going to end very, very badly.

  "You know what I mean," I say. My voice has started shaking again. I really don't want to do this. Not at all. But I know that I have to. I can't live my life thinking Sebastian could have killed my parents. I can't live my life with him keeping so many secrets from me. I need to know everything. I need to know him. And whatever is up here could be the key to that, but I can also tell I'm not going to like it. "Which door has what you're hiding?"

  "Are you sure you want to know?" Sebastian's voice is almost pleading.

  "Yes. Which door?"

  He sighs. "The one on the left," he says, pointing to the door nearest me. He tosses me a key. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

  I nod, catching it in my hand and turning to it. No sound appears to come out of the door, only the distant hum of a song, probably something Sebastian left on. Heart pounding, I move the key down to the lock, wondering what could possibly be inside here. I feel myself starting to regret this already. Do I really want to know? Do I really want to see what Sebastian's hiding? I tell myself the answer is yes. I need to see. I need to know if I can trust him.

  I need to know if I can be with him.

  So I slip the key into the lock, take a deep breath, and turn. It clicks, sending a jolt of fear throughout me. I reach for the doorknob, breathing heavily, but as soon as my hand wraps around it, I spin back around.

  "Wait," I say to Sebastian. "Before I go inside, answer me something else."

  "What?" Sebastian asks.

  "Why didn't you turn them in?" I blurt out. The question has been bothering me for so long, that it seems I might as well ask it now. "The people you were supposed to kill but didn't. Why didn't you just let Marco take them, to save me and you? To save us both? Why did you care so much that you put us both in harm's way?"

  I watch Sebastian intently. I'm still clutching the cool brass doorknob, waiting for answer. What I don't expect is for him to smile. Actually smile. Like a full-on, amused kind of smile.

  My stomach drops.

  "What?" I say, maybe too defensively.

  "Nothing," he says, still smiling. He shakes his head. "I think you should go find out for yourself," he says, motioning to the door. "Your answer is in there."

  My heart starts hammering in my chest as soon as he says it, and I turn back slowly around to face the door. I take a deep breath, opening and closing my eyes, willing myself the strength to look inside. Every part of my body hums with a mixture of excitement and fear as, head throbbing, I twist the knob and step inside.

  Cool air blasts me as soon as I pull the door open, coming out so fast it practically blinds me. The smell of death permeates through the air as well, and I step inside, looking around nervously, not wanting to see what's in here.

  The room is an ordinary bedroom, like the kind you see at a hotel. A bathroom sits directly to my right, and a king bed with a bedside table and lamp around it is positioned just a little beyond that.

  But that isn't what I'm looking at.

  My eyes immediately lock on a man and a woman sitting at a small table at the end of the room, with the sliding glass door swung open, letting in buckets of icy air from outside. They're both holding red wine glasses and looking out into the distance.

  My heart pounds furiously. This is the couple Sebastian saved, I realize. These two are the reason Marco is after us. They are what made all of this happen. I take a step forward, my head throbbing.

  And then I guess they hear me, because all of a sudden, the couple turns around, ever so slowly.

  I recognize them immediately. I recognize everything from the woman's wispy dark hair to the man's thick-rimmed glasses to the warm brown in both of their eyes. I recognize the brown suit the man wears, and the little black dress the woman has on.

  I recognize them, and then I feel everything come crashing down.

  "Mom?" I whisper, unable to believe my eyes. "Dad?"

  "Good to see you again, Crystal," they say in unison.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Everything seems to slow in that instant. All of the air is sucked out of my lungs, and I look back between Sebastian and my parents, shaking all over. This can't be happening. This can't be.

  My parents can't be alive.

  They can't be alive and in Sebastian's house.

  This doesn't make any sense.

  I start shaking my head too, not daring believing that any of this is real. This must be a dream. Or a nightmare. Or something. I don't know what but this cannot. be. freaking. real. "No no no no," I say to myself, biting back tears.

  My parents are dead. Dead. Because if they're alive… then, well, all of the pain of the last two years has been for nothing. Every time I felt hopeless and alone, it was for nothing. Jumping off that building two years ago and losing my ability to dance, it was for nothing.

  Mom and Dad are standing up now, walking toward me, small smiles on their faces. Two years of pretending to be dead, and all they can manage to do is smile.

  They look different than before, though. Older, I think. Their faces are more wrinkly, paler even, and in general somewhat… off. They don't look as warm as they used to be. Their expressions look fake, look wrong somehow, and as they approach me, I find myself backing away, my hands trembling at my side.

  No no no.

  They can't be alive.

  They just can't be.

  It doesn't make any sense.

  I back so far out of the room that I crash into Sebastian's warm and muscular body. I stumble, losing my balance, but he catches me. His arms go around my waist, drawing me toward him, protecting me. "I'm sorry, angel," he whispers, trying to keep me together. "I'm so sorry."

  My hands are trembling, but I let him hold me. Mom stops walking at the door. Frowns at me. Gives me that same disappointed kind of look she always used to give me when I was younger. "I've been waiting for you, Crystal," Mom says, taking a sip of her red wine. Her brown eyes seem warm and heartfelt, but I sense the coldness behind them, the usual silent manipulation. That's the thing about my mom: she wants something. She always wants something. I try my best to paint my parents in the best possible light after their death, to tell myself that I loved them, that I was happy with them, because that always made things easier to deal with. Facing the truth was far, far worse. It hurt too much to remind myself that my parents were horrible to me, to remember how they abandoned me and made me miserable all those years, and the only time they paid any attention to me was when they needed something from me.

  But still, I clung to them, because I had no one else to cling to.

  And when they died, I felt so bad I never told them I loved them, felt so guilty over all of the things I never did, but now that I find out they've been alive all along… well, the rage has started boiling inside of me.

  Sebastian tries to wrap me up deeper into his arms, but I push him away. My body is still shaking, and I can't deal with this. I can't deal with the betrayal. This could be the one thing worse than Sebastian killing my parents: him keeping them alive without telling me.

  And them going along with it.

  I l
ook into my mom's eyes, so full of false care, and I just want to scream. They have no idea how much they hurt me. They have no idea how leaving me in the dust like they did, and Sebastian covering it up, as he said so himself, left me more alone than ever before. Made me so depressed I almost fucking died, and not to mention lost the one thing in my life I cared about more than life itself: dancing.

  But they don't realize that. My parents look at me like I'm supposed to be happy to see them again, when really all I feel is rage, hot and thick, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside of me.

  Sebastian is the only one who understands me enough to notice that. He stares at me with such intensity, his face filled with a thousand apologies, but I can't even look at him right now.

  "So you caused this," I say to my mom in a low voice, clenching my fists at my side. "You're the reason those men almost killed me. You're the reason Marco is after us."

  Mom sighs and glances back at Dad, looking for backup, like I'm back in middle school and we're arguing about some stupid shit again. It's sad, how our relationship has never grown beyond the push-and-pull of my middle school years.

  "Why don't we sit down?" Dad says quickly, sensing the tension in the air, but I won't have it.

  "Answer me," I say harshly, my eyes trained on my mom. "Are you the reason Marco is after us?" I swear my head is about to explode, but all I feel is fiery, exhilarating fear coursing through my veins.

  "Angel," Sebastian says behind me. "Please. Let's talk about this, all right?" His voice is quiet and soothing, and it would normally work on me, but not today.

  "Shut up, Sebastian," I hiss, not even looking back at him.

  I can feel his anger at my words by the way his stare gets three million times as intense, but he doesn't push it. He knows me well enough to leave me be.

  I keep my gaze focused on my mom. I'm biting my lip so hard that blood is trickling out, but I don't even care. "Well? Are you? Answer me, Mom! It's the least you can fucking do after all this time," I yell, eyes burning into hers.

  She sighs as if pretending she's been dead for the last two years has been some sort of inconvenience, like having to do the laundry when you're tired. Bile rises in my throat at that, and I just keep glaring at her, hands tensing at my side.

  She sighs. "I never meant to hurt you, you know."

  "But you did," I say. My head starts pounding. "Tell me why, Mom," I whisper. "Tell me what's going on."

  She looks at me sadly. "It's a long story, hun."

  "Mom," I hiss. My heart pounds faster, and I just let all of the rage pour out of me, my tongue hurting from the intensity in my words. "You pretended to be dead for two goddamn years. I almost died because of you! The least you can do is tell me why."

  She takes a breath, leaning against the threshold of the door and shaking her head. She glances back at Dad, who comes up behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "It's time," he says, and then they both look at me.

  Fear clings to me in that moment, because suddenly, I question whether I really want to know.

  I mean, my parents are still alive.

  My parents are still. freaking. alive.

  I should be happy about it, that's for sure. I should be thrilled to see them again. But I can't be. I can't bring myself to feel anything but hurt. I've spent so much of my life totally alone because of them, and these last two years, every single shred of misery I felt was because I thought they'd been murdered, thought they'd left the world. My life felt so painfully empty at the time, and now I find out it was all a lie. It was all because my parents just… what? They felt like it? They up and decided to abandon their daughter and let her spiral into depression and not even give a fuck?

  I grit my teeth, clenching a fist. I'm done making excuses for them.

  Mom sighs again. "Crystal, sit down. We need to talk."

  "No," I hiss. All of the rage, the fear, and the loneliness of the last years rise up, and it feels good to let it out, to let the pain pour out of me. "Tell me now, Mom. Tell me or I'm leaving."

  I start to turn away, too, pushing past Sebastian, wanting to just get out of here, but Mom stops me. "Okay!" she says quickly. "Okay." A breath. "Okay." I turn around, glaring at her, waiting for her to continue, but she seems to be struggling.

  "We aren't sports agents, Crystal," Dad says for her, stepping in front of her.

  I grit my teeth harder now, working to keep my expression unfazed. "What?" I hiss. Of course they're sport agents. That's why they have so much money. That's why they're always traveling. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean," Dad says, looking at me sadly. "We're… consultants of sorts, Crystal." He locks eyes with mine. "We work for a drug cartel."

  Everything stops then. My whole body feels like it shuts down. My heart sinks.

  They work for a drug cartel.

  My parents work for a fucking drug cartel.

  All those times they were traveling, they weren't going to client meetings like they said. They were helping people sell drugs.

  I clench my hand into a fist so hard that it starts whitening, but I don't even care. I'm fuming now, and I can feel the rage pulsing through me. My jaw gets tenser and tenser, but I keep my glare trained on my parents.

  "We worked for Marco's competition," Dad continues. "We were logistics people, basically. The husband and wife duo. We helped them plan their transport of drugs, designed where they'd be and when, helped them find the drugs they needed and gave them price points to sell it at, and… well, we did whatever we could to make sure their system worked. We helped them do what they had to do. And sometimes, that meant helping them… dispose of the competition."

  "You helped them kill people?" I whisper. My hand is shaking now. None of this makes any sense. First they're alive, and now I learn they worked for drug dealers. They're worse than Sebastian, and they don't even seem remorseful about it, don't even seem to care how much it all affects me.

  The rage continues to build up inside of me, and suddenly I just want to scream. Want to run away and never come back. I hate this. I hate all of this. I hate everything that's been happening to my life--everyone, but Sebastian. He is the one who sees through my pain, who loves me for who I am. He's my shard of happiness, hidden and buried, and now, finally, in front of me.

  But he's been keeping things from me. Things that may be too much for us.

  "Yes," Dad says slowly. "Sometimes we needed to kill people. But it was all for good reason, remember that. These people deserved to die. They were bad and we got rid of them. It was just part of the job. You can understand that, can't you, Crystal?"

  I keep shaking my head, not believing any of this. Dad's and Mom's gaze are sad and distant, but not compassionate. They hardly even care, especially not about the fact that I'm standing here, trembling all over.

  Sebastian whispers, "It's okay, angel. It's okay" behind me but it doesn't help. I'm too shaken up and furious that both my parents and Sebastian would betray me like this.

  "I don't understand," I whisper, trying to keep my voice from cracking. "I'll never understand you."

  "Honey, I'm your mother," Mom cuts in, putting down her wine glass and taking a step toward me. "I'm here for you, okay? I'm just trying to do the right thing."

  "And where were you these last two years?" I scream. "Or if we're getting technical, these last twenty-two years of my life? Because you were nowhere, Mom. You left me. You almost got me killed because of what you did. You didn't even warn me." My voice falters. Tears burn at my eyes, but I try to stay strong, try to keep it together. I won't let them see me weak. Not ever.

  Mom winces at that. "I know," she says. "I know. And I'm sorry."

  "Stop it," I say. "Just stop pretending."

  She raises her eyebrow in surprise, but I can see right through her. I know she's just trying to manipulate me. She's always trying to manipulate me. I'm her own child, and all she sees me as is some chess piece, some stupid little doll that she can toss away and then retrieve whenever sh
e needs something from it. From me. Mom opens her mouth to argue, probably spit out another fake, half-assed apology, but Dad beats her to it.

  "To answer your original question," Dad says, "yes, we're the reason Marco is after you and Sebastian. It's also the reason we... pretended to be dead." His brown eyes stay on mine. My head keeps throbbing, and suddenly I'm not sure I want to know anymore. "It was all because Marco, though, Crystal. He had a son. And the cartel we worked for… well, they asked us to plan a way to kill this son. He was not a good person," Dad adds quickly. "He deserved what he got. He was hurting innocent people and we needed to get rid of him. Anyway, so we planned the killing as we always did. Our boss asked us to map out the details, and when we got them for him, he asked us to accompany the hit squad--just in case. So we did. It was just a formality, though, because Marco's son was supposed to be all alone in his house at the time. It was supposed to be a quick job. Get in. Kill him. Get out. But… well, it wasn't." Dad looks at Mom, then back at me. "Our hit team died, Crystal. All of them did. We were waiting in are cars when the explosion went off. Apparently, the door had been booby trapped, and so the second they stepped inside, that was that. Your mom and I, we started to race out of there and abort the mission as we were supposed to in case anything went wrong, but then we saw Marco's son running out of the building, still alive but totally alone, and we looked at each other and knew what we had to do. And so we killed him," Dad continues without a hint of remorse. "Shot once in the head. He was dead in a second. And then we left. Marco has been out for revenge against us as soon as he found out we pulled the trigger, and we've lived these last two years in hiding because of it."

  "But remember, his son deserved to die," Mom adds. I turn to her. Her voice is sharp and condescending, and her eyes are filled with annoyance as she places her wine on the table beside her. "I'm telling you, Crystal, we did nothing wrong. Look at all those men he killed. Look at all the bad things he did. Look at what he could've done as Marco's successor to our rival cartel. We helped people, Crystal. Don't forget that. We helped people because we killed his son, and so he needed to die."