Unravel Me: The Juliette Chronicles Book 2 Page 17

  They’re almost aquamarine.

  “Please,” he says, flashing me an incredible smile. “Come in.”

  And it hits me then, right in that moment, because everything suddenly makes sense. His look; his stature; his smooth, classy demeanor; the ease with which I nearly forgot he was a villain—this man.

  This is Warner’s father.

  I step into what looks like a small living room. There are old, lumpy couches settled around a tiny coffee table. The wallpaper is yellowed and peeling from age. The house is heavy with a strange, moldy smell that indicates the cracked glass windows haven’t been opened in years, and the carpet is forest green under my feet, the walls embellished with fake wood panels that don’t make sense to me at all. This house is, in a word, ugly. It seems ridiculous for a man so striking to be found inside of a house so horribly inferior.

  “Oh wait,” he says, “just one thing.”

  “Wha—”

  He’s pinned me against the wall by the throat, his hands carefully sheathed in a pair of leather gloves, already prepared to touch my skin to cut off my oxygen, choke me to death and I’m so sure I’m dying, I’m so sure that this is what it feels like to die, to be utterly immobilized, limp from the neck down. I try to claw at him, kicking at his body with the last of my energy until I’m giving up, forfeiting to my own stupidity, my last thoughts condemning me for being such an idiot, for thinking I could actually come in here and accomplish anything until I realize he’s undone my holsters, stolen my guns, put them in his pockets.

  He lets me go.

  I drop to the floor.

  He tells me to have a seat.

  I shake my head, coughing against the torture in my lungs, wheezing into the dirty, musty air, heaving in strange, horrible gasps, my whole body in spasms against the pain. I’ve been inside for less than 2 minutes and he’s already overpowered me. I have to figure out how to do something, how to get through this alive. Now’s not the time to hold back.

  I press my eyes shut for a moment. Try to clear my airways, try to find my head. When I finally look up I see he’s already seated himself on one of the chairs, staring at me as though thoroughly entertained.

  I can hardly speak. “Where are the hostages?”

  “They’re fine.” This man whose name I do not know waves an indifferent hand in the air. “They’ll be just fine. Are you sure you won’t sit down?”

  “What—” I try to clear my throat and regret it immediately, forcing myself to blink back the traitorous tears burning my eyes. “What do you want from me?”

  He leans forward in his seat. Clasps his hands. “You know, I’m not entirely sure anymore.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you’ve certainly figured out that all of this”—he nods at me, around the room—“is just a distraction, right?”

  He smiles that same incredible smile. “Surely you’ve realized that my ultimate goal was to lure your people out into my territory? My men are waiting for just one word. One word from me and they will seek out and destroy all of your little friends waiting so patiently within this half-mile radius.”

  Terror waves hello to me.

  He laughs a little. “If you think I don’t know exactly what’s going on in my own land, young lady, you are quite mistaken.” He shakes his head. “I’ve let these freaks live too freely among us, and it was my mistake. They’re causing me too much trouble, and now it’s time to take them out.”

  “I am one of those freaks,” I tell him, trying to control the tremble in my voice. “Why did you bring me here if all you want is to kill us? Why me? You didn’t have to single me out.”

  “You’re right.” He nods. Stands up. Shoves his hands into his pockets. “I came here with a purpose: to clean up the mess my son made, and to finally put an end to the naive efforts of a group of idiotic aberrations. To erase the lot of you from this sorry world. But then,” he says, laughing a little, “just as I began drafting my plans, my son came to me and begged me not to kill you. Just you.” He stops. Looks up. “He actually begged me not to kill you.” Laughs again. “It was just as pathetic as it was surprising.

  “Of course then I knew I had to meet you,” he says, smiling, staring at me like he might be enchanted. “ ‘I must meet the girl who’s managed to bewitch my boy!’ I said to myself. This girl who’s managed to make him lose sight of his pride—his dignity—long enough to beg me for a favor.” A pause. “Do you know,” he says to me, “when my son has ever asked me for a favor?” He cocks his head. Waits for me to answer.

  I shake my head.

  “Never.” He takes a breath. “Never. Not once in nineteen years has he ever asked me for anything. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” His smile is wider, brilliant. “I take full credit, of course. I raised him well. Taught him to be entirely self-reliant, self-possessed, unencumbered by the needs and wants that break most other men. So to hear these disgraceful, pleading words come out of his mouth?” He shakes his head. “Well. Naturally, I was intrigued. I had to see you for myself. I needed to understand what he’d seen, what was so special about you that it could’ve caused such a colossal lapse in judgment. Though, to be perfectly honest,” he says, “I really didn’t think you’d show up.” He takes one hand out of his pocket, gestures with it as he speaks. “I mean I certainly hoped you would. But I thought if you did, you’d at least come with support—some form of backup. But here you are, wearing this spandex monstrosity”—he laughs out loud—“and you’re all alone.” He studies me. “Very stupid,” he says. “But brave. I like that. I can admire bravery.

  “Anyhow, I brought you here to teach my son a lesson. I had every intention of killing you,” he says, assuming a slow, steady walk around the room. “And I preferred to do it where he would be sure to see it. War is messy,” he adds, waving his hand. “It’s easy to lose track of who’s been killed and how they died and who killed whom, et cetera, et cetera. I wanted this particular death to be as clean and simple as the message it would convey. It’s not good for him to form these kinds of attachments, after all. It’s my duty as his father to put an end to that kind of nonsense.”

  I feel sick, so sick, so tremendously sick to my stomach. This man is far worse than I ever could have imagined.

  My voice is one hard breath, one loud whisper when I speak. “So why don’t you just kill me?”

  He hesitates. Says, “I don’t know. I had no idea you were going to be quite so lovely. I’m afraid my son never mentioned how beautiful you are. And it’s always so difficult to kill a beautiful thing,” he sighs. “Besides, you surprised me. You arrived on time. Alone. You were actually willing to sacrifice yourself to save the worthless creatures stupid enough to get themselves caught.”

  He takes a sharp breath. “Maybe we could keep you. If you don’t prove useful, you might prove entertaining, at the very least.” He tilts his head, thoughtful. “Though if we did keep you, I suppose you’d have to come back to the capital with me, because I can’t trust my son to do anything right anymore. I’ve given him far too many chances.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” I tell him. “But I’d really rather jump off a cliff.”

  His laughter is like a hundred little bells, happy and wholesome and contagious. “Oh my.” He smiles, bright and warm and devastatingly sincere. He shakes his head. Calls over his shoulder toward what looks like it might be another room—maybe the kitchen, I can’t be sure—and says, “Son, would you come in here, please?”

  And all I can think is that sometimes you’re dying, sometimes you’re about to explode, sometimes you’re 6 feet under and you’re searching for a window when someone pours lighter fluid in your hair and lights a match on your face.

  I feel my bones ignite.

  Warner is here.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  He appears in a doorway directly across from where I’m now standing and he looks exactly as I remember him. Golden hair and perfect skin and eyes too bright for their faded shade of emerald. His is an exquisit
ely handsome face, one I now realize he’s inherited from his father. It’s the kind of face no one believes in anymore; lines and angles and easy symmetry that’s almost offensive in its perfection. No one should ever want a face like that. It’s a face destined for trouble, for danger, for an outlet to overcompensate for the excess it stole from an unsuspecting innocent.

  It’s overdone.

  It’s too much.

  It frightens me.

  Black and green and gold seem to be his colors. His pitch-black suit is tailored to his frame, lean but muscular, offset by the crisp white of his shirt underneath and complemented by the simple black tie knotted at his throat. He stands straight, tall, unflinching. To anyone else he would look imposing, even with his right arm still in a sling. He’s the kind of boy who was only ever taught to be a man, who was told to erase the concept of childhood from his life’s expectations. His lips do not dare to smile, his forehead does not crease in distress. He has been taught to disguise his emotions, to hide his thoughts from the world and to trust no one and nothing. To take what he wants by whatever means necessary. I can see all of this so clearly.

  But he looks different to me.

  His gaze is too heavy, his eyes, too deep. His expression is too full of something I don’t want to recognize. He’s looking at me like I succeeded, like I shot him in the heart and shattered him, like I left him to die after he told me he loved me and I refused to think it was even possible.

  And I see the difference in him now. I see what’s changed.

  He’s making no effort to hide his emotions from me.

  My lungs are liars, pretending they can’t expand just to have a laugh at my expense and my fingers are fluttering, struggling to escape the prison of my bones as if they’ve waited 17 years to fly away.

  Escape, is what my fingers say to me.

  Breathe, is what I keep saying to myself.

  Warner as a child. Warner as a son. Warner as a boy who has only a limited grasp of his own life. Warner with a father who would teach him a lesson by killing the one thing he’d ever be willing to beg for.

  Warner as a human being terrifies me more than anything else.

  The supreme commander is impatient. “Sit down,” he says to his son, motioning to the couch he was just sitting on.

  Warner doesn’t say a word to me.

  His eyes are glued to my face, my body, to the harness strapped to my chest; his gaze lingers on my neck, on the marks his father likely left behind and I see the motion in his throat, I see the difficulty he has swallowing down the sight in front of him before he finally rips himself away and walks into the living room. He’s so like his father, I’m beginning to realize. The way he walks, the way he looks in a suit, the way he’s so meticulous about his hygiene. And yet there is no doubt in my mind that he detests the man he fails so miserably not to emulate.

  “So I would like to know,” the supreme says, “how, exactly, you managed to get away.” He looks at me. “I’m suddenly curious, and my son has made it very difficult to extract these details.”

  I blink at him.

  “Tell me,” he says. “How did you escape?”

  I’m confused. “The first or the second time?”

  “Twice! You managed to escape twice!” He’s laughing heartily now; he slaps his knee. “Incredible. Both times, then. How did you get away both times?”

  I wonder why he’s stalling for time. I don’t understand why he wants to talk when so many people are waiting for a war and I can’t help but hope that Adam and Kenji and Castle and everyone else haven’t frozen to death outside. And while I don’t have a plan, I do have a hunch. I have a feeling our hostages might be hidden in the kitchen. So I figure I’ll humor him for a little while.

  I tell him I jumped out the window the first time. Shot Warner the second time.

  The supreme is no longer smiling. “You shot him?”

  I spare a glance at Warner to see his eyes are still fixed firmly on my face, his mouth still in no danger of moving. I have no idea what he’s thinking and I’m suddenly so curious I want to provoke him.

  “Yes,” I say, meeting Warner’s gaze. “I shot him. With his own gun.” And the sudden tension in his jaw, the eyes that drop down to the hands he’s gripping too tightly in his lap—he looks as if he’s wrenched the bullet out of his body with his own 5 fingers.

  The supreme runs a hand through his hair, rubs his chin. I notice he seems unsettled for the first time since I’ve arrived and I wonder how it’s possible he had no idea how I escaped.

  I wonder what Warner must have said about the bullet wound in his arm.

  “What’s your name?” I ask before I can stop myself, catching the words just a moment too late. I shouldn’t be asking stupid questions but I hate that I keep referring to him as “the supreme,” as if he’s some kind of untouchable entity.

  Warner’s father looks at me. “My name?”

  I nod.

  “You may call me Supreme Commander Anderson,” he says, still confused. “Why does that matter?”

  “Anderson? But I thought your last name was Warner.” I thought he had a first name I could use to distinguish between him and the Warner I’ve grown to know too well.

  Anderson takes a hard breath, spares a disgusted glance at his son. “Definitely not,” he says to me. “My son thought it would be a good idea to take his mother’s last name, because that’s exactly the kind of stupid thing he’d do. The mistake,” he says, almost announcing it now, “that he always makes, time and time again—allowing his emotions to get in the way of his duty—it’s pathetic,” he says, spitting in Warner’s direction. “Which is why as much as I’d like to let you live, my dear, I’m afraid you’re too much of a distraction in his life. I cannot allow him to protect a person who has attempted to kill him.” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe I even have to have this conversation. What an embarrassment he’s proven to be.”

  Anderson reaches into his pocket, pulls out a gun, aims it at my forehead.

  Changes his mind.

  “I’m sick of always cleaning up after you,” he barks at Warner, grabbing his arm, pulling him up from the couch. He pushes his son directly across from me, presses the gun into his good hand.

  “Shoot her,” he says. “Shoot her right now.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Warner’s gaze is locked onto mine.

  He’s looking at me, eyes raw with emotion and I’m not sure I even know him anymore. I’m not sure I understand him, I’m not sure I know what he’s going to do when he lifts the gun with a strong, steady hand and points it directly at my face.

  “Hurry up,” Anderson says. “The sooner you do this, the sooner you can move on. Now get this over with—”

  But Warner cocks his head. Turns around.

  Points the gun at his father.

  I actually gasp.

  Anderson looks bored, irritated, annoyed. He runs an impatient hand across his face before he pulls out another gun—my other gun—from his pocket. It’s unbelievable.

  Father and son, both threatening to kill each other.

  “Point the gun in the right direction, Aaron. This is ridiculous.”

  Aaron.

  I almost laugh in the middle of this insanity.

  Warner’s first name is Aaron.

  “I have no interest in killing her,” Warner Aaron he says to his father.

  “Fine.” Anderson points the gun at my head again. “I’ll do it then.”

  “Shoot her,” Warner says, “and I will put a bullet through your skull.”

  It’s a triangle of death. Warner pointing a gun at his father, his father pointing a gun at me. I’m the only one without a weapon and I don’t know what to do.

  If I move, I’m going to die. If I don’t move, I’m going to die.

  Anderson is smiling.

  “How charming,” he says. He’s wearing an easy, lazy grin, his grip on the gun in his hand so deceptively casual. “What is it? Does she make you f
eel brave, boy?” A pause. “Does she make you feel strong?”

  Warner says nothing.

  “Does she make you wish you could be a better man?” A little chuckle. “Has she filled your head with dreams about your future?” A harder laugh.

  “You have lost your mind,” he says, “over a stupid child who’s too much of a coward to defend herself even with the barrel of a gun pointed straight at her face. This,” he says, pointing the gun harder in my direction, “is the silly little girl you’ve fallen in love with.” He exhales a short, hard breath. “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

  A new tightness in his breathing. A new tightness in his grip around the gun in his hand. These are the only signs that Warner is even remotely affected by his father’s words.

  “How many times,” Anderson asks, “have you threatened to kill me? How many times have I woken up in the middle of the night to find you, even as a little boy, trying to shoot me in my sleep?” He cocks his head. “Ten times? Maybe fifteen? I have to admit I’ve lost count.” He stares at Warner. Smiles again. “And how many times,” he says, his voice so much louder now, “were you able to go through with it? How many times did you succeed? How many times,” he says, “did you burst into tears, apologizing, clinging to me like some demented—”

  “Shut your mouth,” Warner says, his voice so low, so even, his frame so still it’s terrifying.

  “You are weak,” Anderson spits, disgusted. “Too pathetically sentimental. Don’t want to kill your own father? Too afraid it’ll break your miserable heart?”

  Warner’s jaw tenses.

  “Shoot me,” Anderson says, his eyes dancing, bright with amusement. “I said shoot me!” he shouts, this time reaching for Warner’s injured arm, grabbing him until his fingers are clenched tight around the wound, twisting his arm back until Warner actually gasps from the pain, blinking too fast, trying desperately to suppress the scream building inside of him. His grip on the gun in his good hand wavers, just a little.