Rome drops the knife and newspaper at his feet. He throws himself at the door, pounding his fists against it. He pounds and pounds, until blood blooms fresh along his knuckles.
Too bad it’s not his blood we need.
“Rome,” I croak, my voice weak from the shock-collar’s relentless assault. He turns slowly, letting his fists drop to his sides. When he looks at me, he flinches. There’s something dark in his eyes. Longing. Loss. A mournfulness, as if we’re already dead.
Maybe it would be easier that way. Today, though, I’m still surviving on threads of hope. Maybe we’ll get out. Maybe this will all be a terrible nightmare one day, and we’ll finally be free of this room and its horrors.
Physically, anyway. Instinctively, I know that, even if our bodies make it out of this place, a part of us is always going to be down here together in the dark.
I struggle to sit up, my body complaining loudly as I manage to raise myself onto my elbows, my legs stretched out in front of me. I feel lucky that the electric shock didn’t make me pee all over myself. It seems, even down here, even after everything, I still have a tiny shred of dignity buried somewhere inside me.
I hold one arm up, shaking at the exertion. “Let’s get this over with.”
Rome’s face, normally so composed, crumbles. Perhaps my casual acceptance of the violence he must inflict upon me is terrifying. He doesn’t see the frantic dread working its way through me like poison. He kneels beside me, checking me over for injuries. I brush his hands away, on the verge of a panic attack. If he doesn’t get my blood onto the newspaper quickly enough, I know our captor will deliver on his promise, sending enough electricity through my shock collar that I’ll wet myself. Or worse. How much voltage does it take to stop a heart so that it never beats again? I don’t know. I don’t want to know.
“I can’t hurt you,” Rome mumbles, “there has to be another way.”
I find my way to a sitting position, tucking my legs underneath me, as I take hold of Rome’s hand, guiding the knife toward my wrist. “We don’t have time,” I mutter, pressing the knife he’s holding into my flesh.
“Jesus!” I jump as the blade sinks into my skin, ruby red blood springing up immediately.
“Shit,” Rome mutters, as he tries to pull the knife away. “I’ll cut myself. Not you. Not you.”
I still have my hand over his, and I guide the knife back down to my wrist forcefully. “Didn’t you hear what he said? Proof of life. As in, my life. My blood. My DNA. The engagement ring must not have been enough.”
“Engagement ring?” Rome asks suddenly. It’s a good distraction, me talking about my impending nuptials. Well, now the only thing impending on my schedule is my eventual escape or death - but before we landed in this hellhole, I was very much a taken woman. Never mind the fact that the man I was to marry was nothing to me. An arrangement I inherited from my dearly departed older sister, a future husband I could never love.
“Yes, engagement ring,” I echo, moaning through clenched teeth, as I cut deep enough to get a steady flow of blood - but, hopefully, not deep enough to kill myself. There’s a fine line between self-mutilation and death, and I pray I’ve stayed on the right side of it for now.
Who knows, if we have to stay here much longer, my proof of life wrist-slashing mission might become my proof of death suicide mission.
“Jesus, Avery,” Rome protests, using his considerable strength to wrench the knife away. “Stop.” He places the knife on the ground beside him, just out of my reach, and drops the newspaper beside it.
“No,” I cry, reaching for the rolled-up newspaper. “I have to get enough blood on the newspaper.”
I watch as scarlet liquid courses from the wound along my inner wrist, pooling at the spot where Rome’s heavily tattooed fingers are wrapped tightly around my hand. It looks surreal, the black ink on his tanned knuckles and fingers against my milky skin and my bright red blood. “You’re wasting it!” I struggle with him.
“Avery, look at me,” Rome demands. I meet his gaze, his normally indifferent blue eyes suddenly burning with emotion. “I’m going to get us out of here, okay? Do you hear me?”
I shake my head, grabbing again for the newspaper with my good arm, the one that isn’t currently bleeding. This time, I succeed in snatching it up. I shake it open, wrenching my arm out of Rome’s grasp, laying my arm flat across the newspaper to ensure I get the rest of my blood soaked in.
I stay there as the minutes drag past, squeezing my arm, trying to get more blood to rise to the surface. But it’s no use. In my weakened state, my blood pressure is probably too low to pump out enough blood to get more than a few drops on the paper. I know that might not be enough for the police to test for DNA, because I’ve watched a true crime series or two in my life, and I know what proof of fucking life means.
“Avery,” Rome tries again. I push him in the chest, hard, avoiding the side where he was shot. “Shut up,” I whisper, getting up on my hands and knees, snatching the knife from beside him. “It’s not enough,” I explain, gesturing to the drops of blood on the newspaper. “It’s not enough!”
“Okay,” he says helplessly. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
I want you to save me. I want you to get us out of here. I want you to forgive me for the way I betrayed you all those years ago.
“Cut me again.” I press the knife handle into his hands, guiding it toward the slash already decorating my wrist. “Make it deep. My pulse is barely registering enough to pump my blood out as it is.”
He hesitates over the cut. “You’ve lost too much blood already,” he says weakly.
I want to scream at him. We don’t have a choice! But I don’t have the energy to make words. I just look at him, and something in my eyes must tell him how important this is, how much I don’t want to be shocked again by the collar.
It kills him to do it, I can tell. His eyes film over with trepidation, with guilt, as he presses the blade down into my already broken flesh. It fucking hurts, it fucking huuuuurts, but I bite down on the inside of my cheek and will my blood to flow faster, because it’s better than the alternative.
A whimper escapes my lips, but I don’t fight him. I just watch, dead inside, as my blood drips steadily onto the front page of the newspaper sitting on the floor between us.
Proof of life, the masked man had said. Today’s copy of The Verona Times, its headlines too hard to make out in this dim light.
I swallow thickly, watching as Rome twists my arm this way and that, as gently as he can. He’s trying to get as much blood out of the cut along the inside of my wrist as he can. He picks the newspaper up and presses it to my arm, getting every last drop he can onto the inked paper. I know he doesn’t want to have to cut me again. His hands are covered in my blood, his fingers making sticky oval-shaped marks every time he shifts his grip.
“Your fingerprints,” I say, swaying where I sit. I should really lay down, but if I lay down, I’ll pass out, and if I pass out, I might die.
Rome nods, still focused on the task at hand. “I know.”
Whoever gets this - my father, Enzo, Nathan, the FBI … the evidence will be clear: Rome Montague’s fingerprints. Avery Capulet’s blood.