Page 9 of Omega
“Well you keep harping on it, and it’s pissing me off.”
“‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much,’” I quoted at her.
Layla laughed despite herself. “Really? You’re going with Shakespeare?”
“If the quote fits.”
To our left, Ushuaia was a crescent of urban life against the wild majesty of snow-capped mountains. Layla slumped over the railing and stared down at the waves. “You ever just have this feeling that something is a bad idea? Like, you don’t have a reason, you don’t have any proof or anything to really go on, you just have this gut feeling that it’d be super, super bad?”
I stared at her in silence. “Layla. Hello? I went blindfolded into the private residence of a mysterious billionaire to whom I owed several hundred thousand dollars.”
“Yeah, and look how that turned out,” she quipped.
“Um. In love? Happier than I ever thought possible? Fucked senseless by the most amazing man on the planet multiple times a day?”
“Whoa! Way more than I needed to know.” She shook her head in disbelief. “And what about the whole business about being pursued by an underworld crime kingpin? On the run for your life? What about the part where you were almost raped, where you were shot, beaten up, kidnapped, and had to be rescued by fucking mercenaries?”
I shrugged. “I’d go through it all again if it meant getting to be with Roth.”
A long, fraught silence. Finally, Layla looked at me intently, skeptically. “Really? You would?”
I nodded slowly. “I would. That’s the honest truth. I mean, shit, yeah, it sucked hard. I’ve never been so afraid in my life. I still have nightmares sometimes. More about shooting Tobias and Gina than anything else. I wouldn’t choose to have all that happen to me again, for sure. But would I run from it? Not if it meant losing Valentine. I’d go through it all again, do it all again.”
“Roth means that much to you?” Layla asked.
I met her gaze. “More.”
“Damn. Wish I had that.” Another silence, then Layla turned away and fixed her eyes on the city in the distance. “This is the first time you’ve really talked about what happened to you.”
She’d asked, of course, but I hadn’t wanted to burden her with the details. Nor did I really relish the idea of reliving it by talking about it. I sighed. “It wasn’t pretty. I’m not sure I’ll ever really be able to talk about a lot of what happened.”
“You never told me you shot anyone.”
I couldn’t respond for a long moment. “Roth was kidnapped by an ex-girlfriend. I woke up one day and he was just…gone, and there was a note. Harris and I went after him. We rescued him. The details don’t really matter. It was shitty, and horrible, and awful. Not knowing where he was, or if he was alive. After we’d gotten him back I worried if he would ever be the same again…that was the worst part. She’d done some horrible shit to him. Not gonna say what, because it’s just too…private, and too awful to say out loud. It was ugly, though, the aftermath of that. We thought we’d gotten away, but then Gina, the ex, she kidnapped me. Shot me in the knee and sent a picture of it to Roth. Just to hurt him. She took me to this private island in the Mediterranean and held me captive in a dungeon.” I paused to gather myself, then continued. “Gina had this guy, Tobias. Huge, nasty, ugly, a vicious monster. They had me tied up, bound and gagged, and naked. Alone. I was terrified. I figured she’d torture me or kill me just to piss off Roth, but that didn’t happen. They left me there for…I don’t even know how long. Days, I think. Eventually Gina showed up with Tobias, and this…innocent young girl. Gina held a knife to my throat and forced me to watch while her trained ape did…unspeakable things to her. There’s no way to describe what he did to that girl. I’ll never—I’ll never ever forget it. It was the most…vile, disgusting, evil thing I’ve ever seen. And that was just to fuck with my head. It was for no other reason.”
“Jesus, Kyrie,” Layla whispered.
“Yeah.” I paused another long moment to summon my fortitude. “I puked on Gina’s shoes, and that was when she cut my hair off. She did it with a pocketknife. Cut it all off, and then dry-shaved my scalp, which felt pretty fucking terrible. Anyway, hours later…Tobias came for me. He wasn’t supposed to, she’d told him specifically to leave me alone. She wanted all the fun for herself, see, and Tobias had a tendency to ruin things…he couldn’t get hard unless the victims were bloody, and after they were dead,thatwas when he got his rocks off.”
Layla’s face twisted. “He was a necrophiliac? That’s fucking nasty.”
“You have no idea. So yeah. He was planning to—honestly, I don’t even want to know what he was planning to do to me. I had a bullet hole in my knee, I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in who knew how long. I’d been beaten up, and I had to pee. So I let him get close, then I got a scissor-hold on his neck with my legs and I—I pissed all over him. Right in the face. And then I stole his gun and I shot him. Three times. Then I put his clothes on and waited for Gina to appear. I waited until she was right in front of me, and I shot her, too. Seven times.”
“Jesus. I don’t even know what else to say, Key. Just…Jesus.” She turned and looked at me. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “I had no idea.”
I wiped her face, pushed her curly black hair away from her wet cheeks. “Don’t cry, Layla. I’m fine, now.”
“You shot her seven times?”
I nodded. “I hope you never know what that’s like. That kind of—hate. It’s…like a bad trip, almost. It consumes you, takes over. And then after I shot her the first time, I just couldn’t stop. It felt so good to see her hurt, to see her bleed. To watch her die. That’s the part that scares me, that gives me nightmares. I didn’t feel bad about it. I still don’t. I mean, I have nightmares about it, because it’s hard to forget when you watch someone fucking bleed to death becauseyoushot them. You see it over and over in your mind, again, again, and again. But I don’t regret it, and I don’t feel guilty about it.”
“And you’d do it again, for Roth?”
“I love him that much. If I never touch a gun, if I never see another dead body for as long as I live it’ll be too soon. But for Roth? Yeah, I’d do it all over again.”
“What does that kind of love feel like?” Layla’s voice was so quiet I barely heard her.
“Indescribable. Loving him isn’t a choice. It’s not something I have control over. Being his, being with him…it’s all of me. I don’t know, Layla. It’s—everything. And it’s worth going through hell for.”