Breathless

by W Winters

The pang in my chest strikes hard and I feel like I’m suffocating as I pray to know the same, but about Carter.

  The phone is silent. My text to him unanswered.

  * * *

  Are you okay?

  * * *

  It’s all I wanted to know. And he didn’t answer.

  “Basement. Now!” Cason yells just as bullets fly past us. The windows shatter, the small pieces raining over Addison, who covers her head with her arms and drops as far as she can forward onto the bed. I fall instantly, lying flat on the floor as I hold my breath, too afraid to move at all. Her shrill scream fills the room again as bullets ricochet and leave a trail of marks from left to right over the wall and bedroom door.

  My eyes reach Cason as he stands up straight. He didn’t move. He never had the chance to move. The bullet holes in his chest slowly bleed out, the bright red diffusing and spreading like watercolor paints on canvas.

  “No,” I breathe, tears pricking my eyes as his hand moves to one of the punctures at the same time as he falls to his knees. “Cason!” I scream out his name and reach for him, but it’s useless.

  The gunshots have stopped; it was a single string of bullets that clattered across the house. But they return again within seconds. Hitting him again in his neck and head, eyes closed before he falls to the floor.

  Addison doesn’t scream this time although I can hear her sobs from where I am. Reaching up for her, I pull her down and together we crawl on our stomachs under the bed.

  “Daniel,” Addison cries his name over and over, her hands clasped as she prays for him to be all right.

  I can’t breathe. It’s so hot and the bullets rain down with no signs of letting up for minutes. More time passes with nothing. No signs of anything and that’s when I see the gun on the floor. Cason’s gun. As I crawl out, Addison grabs me and yells for me not to leave her. My heart lurches at the sound of a door being kicked in downstairs.

  “Shh,” I hush her, putting my finger over my lips and then nodding to the gun. With wide eyes, she watches me as I crawl out to get it. The cold beating in my veins picks up as the sound of a man coming up the steps gets louder and louder. The open bedroom door shows his shadow in the hall just as I reach the gun with my fingertips.

  The cold metal slips in my grasp and the sound of it sliding across the floor rips my gaze up to the doorway. Without looking, I snatch the gun and Addison pulls me back under the bed.

  The gun is heavy, so heavy in my hand. Addison’s hands are covering her mouth as a shadow steps into the room. The floor creaks with the man’s weight and his black boots are splattered with blood.

  I grip the gun with both hands as he takes three agonizingly slow steps closer to Cason’s body, right before kicking his shoulder over with his boot to see his face.

  Bending down, I get a partial glimpse of the man as he steals Cason’s phone from his pocket. The fear is paralyzing. I can’t breathe. I can’t do anything.

  My gaze moves to the vanity and I can see my reflection, but I can see the man’s too as he scowls down at Cason’s dead body and lifts his gun to his head.

  Bang, bang!

  The gun goes off and Addison jolts each time, her eyes closed tight and her hands pressing harder against her mouth.

  My heart hammers, praying he didn’t hear her, but it doesn’t matter if he did or not, because the man’s eyes reach mine in the mirror. Cold and dark, with wrinkles that show his age. He’s in the same black hoodie as the man I killed earlier, and I know this man is not one of my father’s men.

  The attacks out there, I think they’re from my father. But the men who have made it to the safe house… they’re not.

  He’s quicker than me, taking a large stride and grabbing me from under the bed. His grip on my left forearm is paralyzing and I nearly drop the gun. My back scratches against the underside of the wire bedframe and the pain forces a scream from me.

  My finger is on the trigger and I can’t get it to go off. I pull it again and again.

  “The safety.” Addison’s voice is hoarse, and the words pushed through clenched teeth.

  He reaches down with his other hand, grabbing my other wrist and that’s when Addison rips the gun from me and fires. The heat from the barrel of the gun singes my skin and I scream from the pain.

  Bang! Bang!

  She pulls the trigger again and again as my left side falls to the floor with the man’s grip nonexistent.

  I can hear Addison’s gasp and the clunk of the gun as the man’s dead white eyes stare back at me.

  My hollow chest is gutted as I stare at him and then to the doorway. My heart beats too loudly to hear anything and I have to swallow and blink away the fear to grab the gun Addison dropped and point it at the door.

  I lie half under the bed, half out, with a burn scorching my forearm and wait. Time passes quickly, as quickly as my blood races through my veins.

  “He’s dead,” Addison whispers a painful truth. “I killed him,” she whispers.

  “Shh,” I hush her, “Quiet!”

  The pounding of my heart slows as I realize the man almost got me and she saved me.

  “You saved me,” I whisper with tears in my eyes although I stare straight ahead.

  “I killed him,” she says back in a harsh whisper.

  It’s only then that I realize it’s silent once again. No gunshots. Not from outside and not a sound inside the house.

  I listen closely and hear cars outside a few blocks down, but they aren’t rushed and the tires don’t squeal. Rising slowly, I nearly scream when Addison grabs my ankle.

  “Fuck,” I barely get out the word over the harsh beat of fear in my chest.

  “Is it safe?” Addison asks, and I tell her the truth, “I don’t know.”

  It’s hard to contain terror, even when there’s no present danger. My gaze doesn’t leave the doorway as I crawl to the window. Even as I rise up slowly and pull the curtain ever so softly, I don’t dare take my eyes from the doorway for a few minutes longer.

  No more gunshots and lights are on inside the houses that were black now. A car passes with its headlights and I see some men I recognize a street down.

  “I think it’s over,” I whisper to her but still crawl to reach her. “Take the gun,” I put it in her hand and when she objects I tell her I’m taking the dead man’s gun.

  “I’m going downstairs.” With my words, Addison’s eyes go wide and she grips my wrist with a bruising force. My breathing is still unsteady, and my heart doesn’t find a normal cadence either.

  “I have to make sure it’s okay. I’m going to find Eli,” I tell her, and the mention of Eli seems to calm her down. Her cheeks are red, and tears still linger in her eyes.

  “Stay here,” I whisper and put my hand over hers. I squeeze it once before leaving her, crawling past the dead man, and taking his gun with me. I don’t stand up until I’m past the door. Blood coats my pajama pants from where I crawled through it. Standing outside the door and staring at the stairwell, I breathe in deeply over and over, trying to calm myself.

  Small shards of glass pierce my forearms and I pick them out, wincing as I do. The pain is nothing with all the adrenaline running through me, but still, I’m mesmerized by the bright red and the evidence of what we’ve just been through.

  The moment I close my eyes, a phone rings behind me.

  Ring, ring and my heart shudders in my chest. A shuddering as if being brought back to life. “Daniel,” Addison’s voice rings out clear, the moment I think Carter’s name.

  My throat goes dry as I swallow and hear her tell him how worried she was.

  Carter didn’t call.

  It’s not Carter.

  It takes everything in me to step forward. The feeling of loss runs deep in my blood and I struggle to keep it together. One heavy step after another, with the gun in my right hand and my left hand gripping the railing, I walk down the steps quietly, hearing the faint sounds of Addison from the bedroom and nothing else in the house.


  I may not have felt anything for the man I killed upstairs, nothing but hate, and less than that for the other man in the same black hoodie who died earlier today, but as I stand over Eli’s dead body in the foyer, I cry.

  Heavy sobs that bring me to my knees and steal the warmth from my body.

  I can’t breathe as my trembling fingers touch his throat, searching for a pulse, but finding none.

  My feet kick out and I crawl backward, away from his body until my back hits the wall.

  Covering my face in the crook of my arm, I can’t stop crying.

  His life was wasted on mine. Cason’s life wasted on mine.

  How much death can I be responsible for, before I lose any love I could possibly have for myself?

  The opening of the back door, the slamming of the knob into the wall forces me to go silent. I hold my breath and crawl to the other corner as the footsteps quicken.

  “Fuck, no,” Daniel’s voice carries into the foyer as he reaches Eli. “Shit,” he breathes the word with true mourning before his heavy footsteps hit the stairs.

  “Addison!” he cries out her name as my head hits the wall and my breath comes in staggered, sharp pulls.

  The back door is still open, the wind carries through the house and the cool air calls to me like a siren.

  I’m numb as I stand and make my way to the door, with trees lining the back of the yard, it’s pitch black, but I can see there’s no one here.

  There’s nothing here.

  Nothing but the dark and the quiet as I take a single step out. And then another as the cold flows over my skin. And another.

  The thoughts of how life has spiraled downward ever since I laid eyes on Carter Cross run through my mind. Or maybe ever since he laid eyes on me. It’s hard to know which, really.

  The thoughts consume me as I breathe in the cold air.

  The thoughts… and then the hard chest that slams my back into it and the large hand that covers my mouth as I scream.

  Chapter 21

  Carter

  * * *

  I recognize some of these faces. Men who have stared at me from a distance with hate but didn’t have the balls to pull the trigger. I’ve passed so many of them on street corners as I drove past Carlisle and sometimes into Talvery territory over the years.

  Bang!

  I’ve imagined the bullet holes in their foreheads for years.

  My blood is ringing with anger as I point the trigger at a man hunched behind the car and waiting with his back to me for one of my men to come into his view. He won’t even see it coming. Bang!

  Declan’s iPad shows each of the streets, lined with dead bodies and riddled with bullet holes, broken glass and the shells of bullets that have stolen dozens of lives tonight.

  War comes with a hefty cost and it’s sickening but it fuels my need for vengeance.

  “Four more on Second Street,” Declan speaks into his mic.

  Jase and I watch him carefully and keep an eye out on each side of the building we’re stationed behind. Declan cheats at war, using surveillance that doesn’t let a soul hide.

  “Straight down from the street sign, head up the right side of the street and get them from the back. They’re behind the--”

  Shots ring out and I glance at the screen to see each of the four turning around too late. Their guns held in the air, aiming, but too slow to do anything before their bodies drop.

  The night air is quiet.

  It hasn’t been more than thirty minutes since I’ve left, but the realization of how much time has passed since I’ve heard a word about Aria sends a tremor of terror rocking through me like a slow wave.

  “We still have the two,” Jase reminds me and tugs my arm to follow him.

  Only two of Talvery’s men are left. But he wasn’t among them and neither was Nikolai.

  The thought reminds me of Aria, crying on the bed as she confessed how she’ll never forgive me if I killed them. How easy it would have been for the two of them to have died tonight at the hands of other men.

  Swallowing the regret, I check my phone and see Cason’s text that they’re secured and safe. He sent it only ten minutes ago. She’s safe. And at this moment, she’s still in my grasp. That’s all that matters.

  I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I read that message and then the next, a text from Daniel saying that he was almost to the safe house.

  Go straight to them, I text him and then add, It’s over. There’s just a message left to send.

  Jase is peeking over my shoulder and his lip twitches as he mutters, “message to send,” and then kicks in the back door, a door scarred with bullet holes. It reveals two men on their knees with a row of my men behind them.

  * * *

  “What are your names?” My voice bellows in the small room that looks like it was once used for entertainment. A busted bookshelf stands in the back left corner, board games spilling out over the floor and the projector screen straight ahead is littered with small holes.

  Nearly every house on this block and the next will be just like this. The people were cleared out two days ago, bribed or threatened to leave, whichever method was more effective.

  Jase crouches down in front of one of the two men and says, “If I were you, I’d answer my brother.” The man behind him, the one pointing a gun at our captive lets out a single rough laugh and the man next to him follows.

  “Fuck you,” the old man says. He’s on his knees and bent like that makes his stomach look even larger. He’s got to be in his forties and as he spits at Jase’s feet, the wrinkles on his face tighten. He nearly topples over without being able to put his hands out in front of him; they’re cuffed behind his back, just like his friend to the right of him.

  Jase stands up and moves to the next man, but when he does, my heart drops and a sick feeling spreads through my veins. “Where’d you get that hoodie?” I ask him and come closer to him, close enough to grab his collar and pull him up to look at his face.

  He’s younger with beady eyes and thin lips. He doesn’t say anything at all, but there’s a hint of a smile on his lips like he knows a secret I don’t.

  “You,” my voice comes out harsh as I drop the asshole in the black hoodie and let him fall hard on the ground. He coughs up a laugh and I grab the old man’s shirt, fisting it and the back of his head with my other hand.

  “What’s his name,” I grit out the question and shake the old man, repeating myself in a scream that rips up my throat when he doesn’t answer. “What’s his name!”

  “Fuck, I don’t know!” The old man looks back at me like I’ve gone mad as I breathe heavily, my lungs heaving air.

  “This one is Talvery,” I drop the old man and move to the one in the hoodie, the one whose eyes are nothing but a well of blackness.

  “This one is hired,” I speak as I crouch in front of him, feeling my heart race.

  “Talvery doesn’t need to hire anyone.” The old man speaks up until his executioner chambers a round and the click shuts him up.

  “Where did you find this one?” I ask the man standing behind him. When I peer up, I see it’s Logan.

  He looks to his left and then to his right, stuttering to answer.

  “Logan,” I stand slowly, “Where did this one come from?”

  “He was inside the line, shooting at the target, sir,” another man speaks up.

  “The target?” My heart pounds, but I remind myself that Daniel should be there.

  “The safe house,” the soldier clarifies.

  A cold numbness runs through me as the man in the black hoodie, barely on his knees says, “My partner went in and finished what I started.”

  I turn to my brother, who’s already on his phone. “Where’s Daniel?” I ask him as my chest heaves for air. I squeeze the gun harder and when the fucker laughs at me, a deep laugh that chills the very marrow in my bones and fills the room, I whip it across his face, feeling the force of it splinter up my hand.

  “
Confirmed man dead in the safe house, wearing a black hoodie,” Jase’s response soothes the fear, bringing my rage down to a simmer.

  “He’s dead?” I ask Jase to tell me again as relief teases me.

  “Addison said Aria shot him.”

  “She never fails to amaze me.” As much as the pride fills me, there’s nothing but rage that shows. Anger that they got close to her. To my songbird. They came close enough to hurt her. My fists clench tightly, spreading the thin skin across my knuckles as I breathe in slowly, deeply, seeing nothing but red.

  “Daniel came up the south side, where there was less action and he’s with Addison now.”

  I hear Jase’s words, I know I do, but they don’t register.

  This man with the sick smile on his knees in front me, he conspired to hurt her. My stomach churns at the thought of how narrowly Addison and Aria escaped being hurt, or worse.

  The first punch to his jaw, I don’t even realize came from me. Not even as the skin across my knuckles splitting sends a pain up my arm. Again and again, I land punches across his face, listening to the cracking of bone in the deafening silence that fills the room.

  The pulse of my racing blood is all I can hear. That and the sound of the man spitting blood across the floor as I grab him by the collar and roll him on his back to crouch on top of him. With his hands cuffed behind him, his back arches and he tries to roll back to his side, clenching and giving me daggers through his narrowed eyes.

  * * *

  “Who hired you?” I grit out the question and a beat passes, then another. He huffs a breath through his nose and the corners of his lips pick up in an asymmetric grin, displaying a ring of crimson blood around his teeth.

  The fingers of my right hand crush his throat, forcing it to the ground and feeling his blood rush beneath my grip as I slam my fist into his face again. His eye is swollen and when I punch him again, I hear his nose crack and watch blood seep around his eyes, making them black although not nearly as black as the depth of his irises.