Page 1 of The Casualty of Us (Philosophies of the Heart Duet #1)
“Oliver! Ollie!” I gasp, jerking my head to the side to escape the fingers trying to close over my mouth. “Ollie! Ollie!”
“Shut her up!”
“I’m trying!”
The arm around my middle tightens and lifts me into the air even as I kick out at nothing.
Trying with everything in me to break free and thrashing just as wildly as my heart is in my chest. Eyes glued to where the single most important person in my world is lying on the ground and screaming for him.
“Olli—“
Those stranger’s fingers finally close over my mouth, tightening painfully around my jaw and cutting off my plea until it’s only in my head.
Get up, Ollie. Wake up. Please, wake up.
Please, please, please, you can’t leave me, please—
“Leave him! We only need one!”
The rough shout reverberates through the alley, echoing over the pounding of my pulse, and I redouble my efforts. Lifting my hands to scratch blindly at the masked face behind me as the attacker beside my twin abandons him.
No, no, no—
I bite down viciously on the hand covering my mouth, grinding down on the flesh until I taste blood and needing to—
“Fuck!”
“Ollie!”
My scream is something feral and foreign, shocking my body with a sudden burst of adrenaline. Something I’ve never needed or experienced before. A keening of desperation and last resort as the blood leaking from my brother’s head grows around him.
“She fucking bit me!”
“Dammit.” That rough voice curses. “Get her in the van!”
“No!” I shout, kicking at the attacker who abandoned my brother and trying to keep him from grabbing my legs.
Knowing that I can’t let them take me from here.
That it’s better to end up on the ground beside my twin, spilling blood we’ve shared from the womb together, rather than abandon him here. “Ollie! Ollie! Please get up! Ollie!”
That I don’t know what will happen if they take me from here.
“Fuck this.”
I see more than hear the words spoken through the mask of the man in front of me as he stops trying to secure my legs.
“Oliver!”
His lips curl into a smile through the slit in the mask as he takes that first step to the side and closes the distance between us purposefully.
“Ollie! Wake up!”
He lifts a white rag to my mouth, and I jerk my head back onto the shoulder of the body holding mine against my will.
Gasping for one last breath.
“Ollie! Ol—”
My mouth and nose are covered with the rag in the next instant, a hand pressing the wet fabric down that has a burn settling into my skin.
Chemicals working their way into my nose with painful little tingles even though I refuse to breathe and something sticky dripping down my cheek that immediately makes me feel dirty.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he whispers into my ear. “Just take a breath.”
No fucking way, asshole.
And I try—I try so damn hard.
Counting my heartbeats in time with the blinks that are barely keeping my tears at bay.
Watching the blood continue to grow around Ollie’s head through increasingly blurry eyes.
Refusing to look away from the spot where he’s lying beside the dumpster even as black spots erupt over my vision and my pulse turns sluggish as that voice whispers once more. “Just breathe, Ophelia.”
Not even the screaming of my lungs can force me to submit to his will, though.
It’s only when I see my twin’s fingers twitch that I do, that slim sliver of hope making me gasp before the repercussions of the act hit me.
Darkening my spinning with something sweet and acidic burning down my throat and strangers arms locked around me.
Pulling me back into something that has cold metal sliding against my skin.
Not knowing that when I finally see the light of day again, I’ll soon be a household name for all the wrong reasons.
For none of the things I ever would have chosen and instead because of a hundred little dominoes that started falling before I ever even knew any of their names.
Setting the course for a continuance of casualties we could have never imagined at the start.
A household name.
Ophelia Sage Fitzroy.
America’s thirty-million-dollar girl.