Page 8 of Glass Rose (Where Roses Rot #1)

SIX

SOFIA

Gavin doesn’t answer.

My parents have to be okay. They have to be. The alternative isn’t something my brain can process right now.

“They might need help.” I’m out before he can stop me, my feet hitting the pavement.

Mom always hid the spare key under the stupid ceramic frog by the back steps that Dad hates, but she refuses to get rid of.

How many times have I used this key? After school, when I forgot mine, came home drunk from parties, visited during holidays after I moved out. Normal life moments. Before the world went to shit.

“Sofia, wait—” Gavin’s beside me in an instant. “Let me go first.”

I shake my head, kneeling by the frog and retrieving the key.

“If they’re infected?—”

“Don’t say that.” I jam the key into the lock with trembling fingers. It turns with a familiar click, and I open the door on silent hinges—always well-oiled because my father can’t stand squeaky doors.

The familiar smell of cinnamon, coffee, and the faint chemical tang of my mother’s cleaning products hit me. Then, something else beneath it. Metallic. Wrong.

Blood.

“Stay behind me,” Gavin orders.

This time, I listen, letting him step through the doorway first. The living room is untouched.

Family photos lined up on the mantel, my mother’s knitting basket beside her favorite chair, and the remote control precisely centered on the coffee table.

But the smell grows stronger as we move deeper into the house.

“Mom?” I call out, my voice thin and reedy. “Dad?”

A wet, ripping sound answers me. Like meat being torn from bone.

Droplets of something dark lead from the couch toward the kitchen. We follow them like a trail of breadcrumbs in some fucked-up fairy tale. They grow larger, forming streaks along the hardwood floor. My mother’s pride and joy, she had saved three whole years to afford it.

The chewing sound grows louder.

Gavin’s arm shoots out like a barrier. “Don’t?—”

I duck under.

One step forward and the kitchen doorway frames a scene my mind refuses to process.

Blood. So much fucking blood splashed across the yellow sunflower wallpaper my mother insisted on when they remodeled five years ago.

And there, hunched over by the refrigerator, is my father. Or what used to be my father. So engrossed, he didn’t, still doesn’t, notice us. His back is to us, shoulders working rhythmically as he feeds on something, someone, sprawled before him .

Mom’s fuzzy pink slipper peeks out?—

A scream tears up my throat, but before it can break free, Gavin’s hand covers my mouth, trapping the sound against his palm. His other arm wraps around my waist, hauling me back against his chest.

My father doesn’t turn. Doesn’t notice us. Just keeps feeding.

His fingers dig into her stomach, clawing out ropes of intestine that glisten in the half-light.

I choke against Gavin’s palm, swallowing the broken glass of my scream. The room pitches sideways. My childhood home transformed into a slaughterhouse. He drags me backward into the hallway, one agonizing step at a time, while my father, the thing wearing my father’s skin, continues feasting.

The thud of my pulse drowns everything else, a roaring in my ears like standing too close to a waterfall.

Gavin releases my mouth but keeps his arm around my waist like an iron band, his chest rising and falling against my back in measured breaths while mine come in shallow gasps.

His lips brush my ear. “We need to go.”

I shake my head. Violent. Desperate.

“There’s nothing you can do for them.”

“I brought this here. This is my fault.”

His arm contracts around my waist. “Later. Process later. Survive now.”

From the kitchen comes a new sound, boots scraping on tile.

“Sofia.” Gavin’s voice drops lower. “He heard us.”

My legs won’t move. Can’t move. Like those nightmares where you’re paralyzed while the monster approaches.

He spins me to face him, hands gripping my shoulders, and his eyes locking onto mine. “Look at me. Only at me.”

A low moan rises from the kitchen. A sound no human throat should make .

“My father?—”

“That’s not your father anymore.” His fingers dig into my shoulders, painful enough to cut through the fog. “The man who raised you is gone. What’s left will kill you without hesitation.”

The shuffling footsteps grow closer.

“I can’t leave them like this,” I whisper.

“Don’t look.” He releases me and turns toward the kitchen doorway. “Go outside. Now.”

My hand snaps out, catching his wrist before he can grab the knife from his belt. “No.”

“Sofia—”

“My father.” I take the knife, the handle cool and foreign against my skin. How many times had I dissected specimens in the lab, scalpel perfectly balanced between my fingers? This is different. This is… fuck.

Dad appears in the doorway. The kind eyes that used to crinkle when he smiled are clouded over, and his mouth, which told the worst dad jokes on the planet, is smeared with gore, strips of flesh caught between his teeth.

“Papá,” I whisper.

He stops. Freezes. Then his neck cranes at an unnatural angle.

“Sofia, he’s gone,” Gavin says. “That’s not?—”

“I know.” I do know. Intellectually, I understand the virus has destroyed his frontal lobe, hijacked his motor functions, and turned him into nothing but a hunger-driven shell.

My fingers tighten around the knife.

But those hands made pancakes shaped like dinosaurs when I was little. That mouth kissed my forehead when I graduated. That body hugged me tight every time I came home.

Dad advances, hands rising. But he’s not my fat—This is not my… father. Just a shell, a virus. Not the man who taught me to ride a bike. Not the man who danced with me at my graduation.

Just a monster that needs to be put down.

“You taught me to clean my own messes,” I tell it. “Remember? ‘Sofia, we don’t leave our problems for others to fix.’”

He lunges.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

His fingers graze my arm, and instinct takes over. The knife plunges forward, finding my father’s eye, driving through to the brain beneath. His body jerks, a final spasm, before collapsing against me.

I catch him, cradling his weight as we sink to the floor together, and everything inside me shatters into jagged pieces that gouge my insides.

I’ve killed my father.

I’ve… killed my father.

“You did what you had to.” A strong arm encircles me from behind, gently prying my fingers from the knife handle. “You freed him.”

That’s when I notice it beneath the blood and gore. Two tangled triangles. Dad’s wearing a dark green maintenance coverall, the ‘Green Research’ logo etched on the breast pocket.

“He was there.” The horrible truth dawns on me. “He was work—No. Please. No, no, no. I checked his schedule. I made sure he couldn’t be indicated…”

“You couldn’t have known.”

My hands are slick with blood—my father’s blood. “They must have called him in. Emergency maintenance. And he—Did they inject him, too? No, they wouldn’t, right? But?—”

“Sofia, listen to me.” Gavin turns me away from the body, shielding me from the sight with his broad shoulders.

“The virus was already out there. We saw the footage of Novak at the coffee shop. He was infected days ago, long before you brought anyone in. Your father would have been exposed regardless of what you did.”

“But I?—”

“You tried to expose something terrible. That's not wrong.” His eyes hold mine, refusing to let me look away. “The outbreak was already happening. It. Wasn’t. You.”

I want to believe him. Need to believe him. But the guilt weighs too heavily.

His thumb brushes a tear from my cheek. “This isn't on you. Okay?”

I bury my face against his shirt, breathing in his scent that is oddly comforting. He was tortured for over a year, still standing, still fighting, and I’m a mess. “How are you not broken?”

“Who says I’m not?”

I pull back and look into his eyes. Really look. The harsh angles of his face are softened in the sunlight filtering through the windows, but there’s something else—something caught between tenderness and savagery.

“We need to go.” His thumb brushes my cheek, coming away wet. “Are you okay to walk?”

“I—” My clothes are soaked with blood. My father’s blood. My mother’s blood. I can’t tell the difference anymore. “I need to change. Clothes… Is that okay?”

He nods, helping me to my feet and up the stairs to my old bedroom. Everything looks exactly as I left it. Science fair trophies, college acceptance letters, and photos of friends whose faces I can barely remember on the wall.

I wrench off my blood-soaked clothes, letting them fall to the floor in a heap.

“I’ll go find supplies,” Gavin turns away. “Water, food, anything useful. ”

“Wait.” My voice stops him at the door. “There’s a bathroom across the hall. We could clean up a bit?”

“Quick. In and out.”

The bathroom feels surreal, with Mom’s flowery hand towels and Dad’s electric razor on the counter. I turn the faucet, half-expecting nothing, but water gushes out. For how much longer?

I scrub my hands, nails digging into my skin. “It won’t come off.”

“Sofia.” He catches my wrist. “You’re hurting yourself.”

“I should hurt. I should fucking suffer for what I—I’m sorry. I’m a mess.”

He reaches past me, turning the shower knob. Water hisses to life, steam quickly filling the small bathroom. “Get in.”

“What?”

“Shower. Now.” He gestures at my blood-spattered skin. “You’re not thinking straight, and we need to move soon.”

“I can’t just—You said we need to be quick.”

His eyes soften slightly. “Five minutes won’t kill us. Five minutes to wash their blood off you.”

The way he says it— their blood, not just blood—sticks like a needle in my heart. My parents’ blood. My fucking parents.

“I’ll keep watch and gather supplies.” He backs toward the door. “Leave it cracked so I can hear if anything happens.”