“I thought you said you were going to take the week off?” Jenna appears at the edge of my desk, her hair already pulled down from its stationary bun. Her eyes are tired, along with the rest of the staff, after pulling six dead bodies from the river.

The cartel has been a cluster-fuck. They’ve begun pointing fingers at cops, while blaming the agency for allowing the mafia family in Noxus to invade Georgia. It’s funny to me how a fucking gang can have the gall to complain like they aren’t feeding teens drugs and forcing women into sex work.

The entire system is one giant joke, but I can’t say that out loud. Can’t admit that I can see why no one’s looked into the murders in the river because the bodies there belong to assholes who are better off dead. I damn sure can’t confess, even in the farthest, most isolated corner of my thoughts, that I understand why she killed them. Why she took matters into her own hands.

Because that would mean forgiving her. For bypassing the fact that I was almost one of her victims.

Hell, I still may be. Who’s to say everything between us wasn’t fake? That those moments when she finally gave me a smile, or a laugh, that they weren’t premeditated emotions, given only so I didn’t become suspicious.

Who’s to say everything wasn’t a fucking lie, and I’m as stupid now as I was when I thought being with Alexi would take away even an ounce of my pain.

“Jess.” Jenna nudges my shoulder, reminding me she’s still at my desk. “You should have taken more time. You’ve been a complete zombie all day. Everyone would understand.”

I huff, shutting down my computer that I haven’t even bothered looking at the entire day. “There’s a war between a gang and the cops literally on the brink after six cartel members were found floating down the river. It’s all hands on deck.”

She nods, biting into her bottom lip. “Yeah. At least we found them quickly and were able to get them examined relatively shortly after TOD.”

My nerves prickle. “Have we heard back?”

Other than profiling the cause of death and matching them to the killer we already had, my uncle is keeping me as far away from the investigation as possible. No one beside me, him and Fikes, know that three of them were who attacked me, but he doesn’t want to take any chances. The cartel is already pissed off and giving them any fuel will only expose the deal he’d made, making matters much, much worse.

Still, even though I threatened Elena, and I’m hurt far more than I want to admit out loud, I would never connect her to the murders.

I can’t. Not even when my heart closes in with every pulse. Not even when I wake and tears are the first thing to spring to my eyes, and stain my pillow when I go to sleep. Or when I can’t function enough to feed my sourdough or walk by my back door where that damn plant—Pamela—hangs in her new macrame.

Not even now, after learning I was simply a task on her fucking to-do list, do I want to see her behind bars.

“Yeah, but they didn’t find anything. Whoever did it was a professional. But we knew that already.”

I sigh, but don’t respond. Being able to see it all in hindsight, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Elena is professional. Methodical. A perfect killer.

It’s too bad my infatuation blinded me to the obvious.

Guess I’m just as much to blame for my attachment as she is.

“Come on. Peanut. One more time.” I wrap Jessica’s hand around the silks, and readjust her so she can try the move again.

We’ve been out here practicing for well over an hour, and I know she’s getting tired. Know her strength is dwindling. But I also know how badly she wants to get this move. How hard she’s worked to get it just right.

Jessica groans but nods, allowing me to help her regain her center before jumping, twirling around and flipping over to wrap herself in the fabric. The sun beats down at her back, the warm glow illuminating her like an angel, but she doesn’t complain, not even now that sweat drips into her eyes.

I’m careful when I move forward, whipping it away quickly so she can try to rotate into position.

And she does…almost. Her hand slips, her muscles giving way to the fatigue, and falls.

I’m beneath her before she touches the ground, grunting when she lands smack dab on top of me.

I prepare for her to be upset at herself, yell an obscenity into the sky like she’s done every other time she’s fallen. But she surprises me when her whole body vibrates with her laughter. She rolls over, half her body on the grass, the other half still on my chest and laughs harder, tears springing to her eyes as she releases the fabric.

A confused smile spreads over my lips, but I let her have her moment, just happy she isn’t upset. When the fit of giggles finally subsides, she looks at me, her eyes matching the sky above her, and sighs.

“Why did you let me convince you to try silks at a park?”

I laugh, scanning the empty park behind her. It’s a school day, so no one is here, plus, the bar is high and wide enough. At least, that was her reasoning when we showed up. In retrospect, I can see how I was blinded behind my rose-tinted glasses. “Because you can convince a bee to buy honey.”

She smiles, staring over my features for a moment before leaning in to kiss me.

We lay there for what feels like eternity while also feeling like a second. It isn’t until her stomach rolls from her hunger that we finally decide to get up.

If were up to me though, I would have laid there for the rest of time.

When I open my eyes, the bright blue sky fades into an inky gray, the clouds forming rooted cracks. The soft grass beneath my back is hard concrete, while the warm summer breeze shifts to colder-than-comfortable air conditioning.

I peel my eyes open to the cell I’ve spent who knows how long looking at. With no windows, and the only door staying shut, I have no way to gauge how much time has passed. Only that my body sleeps and wakes in cycles I can only hope represents days. If so, it’s been about five since I was taken.

One hundred and twenty hours since I last saw her face.

I hope she is alright. I hope that the pain I caused her is short-lived, and she forgets about me so she can find what she so rightfully deserves.

Happiness.

Hope.

Love .

I only hope that I can survive this, and perhaps see her smile again, even though it won’t be for me.

The television screen shatters into a thousand glittering pieces, the glass spraying out with a force that threatens to rip through my protective clothing. But it doesn’t stop me; it doesn’t even slow me down.

Instead, it fuels the adrenaline already coursing through my veins, the rage that’s been brewing inside of me igniting to life.

I twirl the bat in my hand and walk to the car so heavily coated in spray paint, I can’t tell what the original color of it was. My eyes center on the hood, where someone painted a cloud.

Stupid fucking clouds.

Lifting the bat above my head, I use every ounce of strength I have to slam it down, caving the metal in so deep, a pleasure seeps into my bones.

I find my next object within seconds, smashing it to smithereens before moving on. Again and again, I break one thing, then another. Rage, pity, frustration, hurt, betrayal, and confusion flood my system. One emotion after the next, they make their appearance, allowing me to feel the full force of them controlling my every movement before morphing into the next.

My body shakes with the tears I hide from the world. It aches from the pain I try to pretend I don’t feel.

I shout obscenities into the void, asking what I did to deserve nothing but round after round in a fight against an opponent I clearly can’t beat. But when my questions are met with the echo of my own voice, I simply crumble, fragments of my heart—a muscle that’s barely being held together anymore—chip away. It won’t be long until there’s nothing left.

Still. I wonder.

How was she able to fake it so well? I hit a glass that careens across the rage room, smashing into the wall.

Why didn’t she kill me? She has so many opportunities . A bust of Michelangelo explodes into shards of nothing.

Where is she? Why hasn’t she reached out? A row of chess pieces blasts away like little bullets.

Why do I still fucking care? I slam the bat against a small nightstand until its wood splinters in my hand, breaking in half when I slam it down again.

My chest heaves as I try to catch my breath, to calm my racing heart. But it doesn’t work. It only makes everything worse.

The one emotion I’ve been trying my hardest to evade appears, now free from being muddled behind all the others, now purged from my system.

Grief reaches up from the bowels of hell and swallows me whole.

“Honey, I need you to wake up.”

A voice I haven’t heard for over two decades fills my mind, waking me from my dreamless sleep.

My eyes peel open, and as though not a day has passed since the last time I saw her, my mother kneels in front of the dirty cot, her red hair laying in long waves that cradle her delicate heart-shaped face. Her smooth skin is free from the bruises my father consistently gave her, void of any scars. The daisy print dress she has on is intact, not a rip or thread out of place.

“Mother.” I fail in my attempt to sit up, the pain radiating over my body too much to overcome. I’m weak, and I hate that she has to see me like this. So frail and broken.

A burn similar to the one I felt when Jessica left returns, spreading over my tired eyes. “I’ve missed you…so much.”

My voice breaks at the end, the confession another tell of how far I’ve fallen. How feeble I’ve become.

Her smile is soft. Knowing. She lifts a tender hand to tuck a straw hair behind my head. “I have missed you.”

My eyes close against her touch, warm tears spilling faster than I can possibly wipe them away. “Is that why you’re here? To take me with you?”

The human body can only survive on a cup of water and three crackers for so long. I could tell long ago that death was waiting patiently in the wings. I’m familiar with the smell of her.

But my mother shakes her head, her grassy eyes glimmering with a sheen I’ve missed terribly. It’s one that can only come from a mother. One who’s staring at her future. At her hopes and dreams in a bodily form. The type of look that made me believe I would be okay without her.

That was a lie. I wasn’t, and clearly still aren’t.

“You will survive, my love.” She garners my attention through the haze of my tears. “Promise me you will hold on. That you will make me wait many years before I come to you again.”

“What’s the point, Mother? Why even bother when I lost the one thing that brought me any semblance of joy?” I swallow, though my throat is so dry from the dehydration that it burns. “That gave me a reason.”

Her gaze falls for a moment, but when she meets my line of sight again, she grins. “Because she needs you, my love, just as badly as you need her. You both have been through devastating odds and somehow found your way to each other.”

“I hurt her.” An ache so deep in my chest blooms that I can’t even bother fighting the new rounds of tears. I’m so tired. So hungry. Yet, all I want is to see her . Tell her how sorry I am and that if she were to give me the chance, I would spend each second of my existence making it up to her. Then, I’d follow her to the afterlife and continue to show her how much she means to me.

“You are human, Elena. You are flawed, as we all are.” She strokes my hair, her eyes turning in the corners with the sadness she never allowed herself when she was alive. “Promise me you will live, and you will find her.”

I shake my head, knowing it would be futile, but then my mother brushes away a tear and whispers something that etches into my fractured heart.

“You are worthy of forgiveness. You are worthy of understanding. And you are worthy of love.”

The sound of a heavy door dragging open steals my attention, and when I look back to where my mother was kneeling beside me, she’s gone.

A heaviness I’m becoming accustomed to weighs on my chest as I use all the energy I can muster to sit up and turn to greet my visitor head-on.

In the last however many days I’ve been locked in the cell, I haven’t encountered anyone. Every so often, I wake to find a bottle of water and a small bag of crackers, but never see who drops it off. They must purposely wait until I’m passed out to deliver. Which means they’re hiding their identity for reasons I suspect I’m about to figure out.

A steady clunk of steps echoes in the space as a man approaches my cell. He’s dressed in a navy suit that’s been tailored, a gold clip fastened to his cream tie. His sandy brown hair is tousled to the side in a professional style, while his clean-shaven face hints at a high level position. His cologne is too strong, and when he crouches down, the fumes cause a garbled cough to erupt from my lungs.

His face screws up in disgust. “Tell me, Miss Baudelaire. Why would someone as keen and talented as yourself work for someone like Alexi Babin?”

My jaw clenches. This is it. Him. The man nobody seems to know, but everyone is terrified of. The leader of the cartel. If he’s here, it means one of two things.

“Will you kill me?”

He smirks. “Everyone wants you dead, senorita . The woman who has killed so many of my men. But see, I can envision something greater for you. Something that Babin fool could not even begin to offer.”

I clear my throat, though the act feels as though claws rack down my esophagus. “What’s that?”

The leader shakes his head. “Before I offer anything, I need to know there is a chance you’ll accept it.”

“The facts you’re even considering making a deal means you have no idea how deranged Alexi is.”

His thick brows hitch up. “I don’t follow. What does my offer have to do with him?”

A hoarse laugh echoes from me. “Alexi doesn’t like his toys to be played with. It’s only a matter of time before he comes for me.”

The leader’s head tips back, a hopeful expression lighting up his face. “I hope he does. Until then, I’m afraid your stay is going to get a lot less comfortable.”