Lucas, ever the quick thinker, stops long enough to ask her for a key to the room. She doesn’t ask questions. She knows we need to get into that room.
With a master keycard in hand, we stand at the threshold of room 1515. Lucas gives me a nod, telling me he’s ready, and I swipe the card through.
The light turns green… and we burst through the door to a scene I wouldn’t want to see in my worst nightmare.
I have milliseconds to process that Caldwell is nearly naked standing over my Petal, who is handcuffed with her arms outstretched over her head in the most vulnerable of positions. It’s clear that if we were seconds later, she would have been violated in a way she might never recover from.
Lucas and I rush him at the same time and knock him to the floor. I punch him once, twice, three times with all that I have then holler at Lucas, “Finish the fucker off.”
“With pleasure.”
I move the moment Lucas steps beside me, and I hardly hear the brawl they get into when I set my sights on my Petal.
“Jesus, baby.” I go to her, frantically trying to scoot her up, to alleviate the pressure that her arms must be feeling. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“My arms, Tristan,” she cries, “they hurt. They hurt so much.” She nods toward the nightstand. “The key. It’s right there.”
I turn and yank the silver key from the table, unlocking first her right hand and then her left, then she scrambles to sit up and throws herself into my arms… but then her shrill scream rings in my ears.
“Don’t move!” Evan yells from behind me and I turn to see what made her scream.
He’s standing behind Lucas with his arm around his neck, in a chokehold of sorts… gun pressed into his cheek. “Lookie here. Batman and his Boy Wonder. Is this really all you’ve got to protect you, Nor? My God. If I’d only known it would be this easy,” Caldwell rants.
“Nora, stay behind me. No matter what happens, stay behind me.”
“Oh how Dark Knight of you. Always trying to protect a woman and always failing.”
Red rage fills my head and I reach around my back so Nora can take my hand. “You’re finished this time, Caldwell. Look what you’ve done. The cops are on their way and you’re going to prison for the rest of your miserable life.”
“You think it’ll be that easy, huh?” I watch him close. His hands are shaking and the gun is rattling against Lucas, who is barely on his feet, only being held up by the arm around his neck. “Don’t forget who has all the power.” Caldwell raises his hand quickly and sharply brings the butt of the revolver down just behind Lucas’s right ear. He drops like a stone to a pile on the floor. Nora’s terror releases in horrible sobs. I’ve never heard a sound like it before and I hope to never again. What was left of my control has now obliterated into the stratosphere.
I quickly turn my head to Nora so she can see my eyes. “I love you, Petal,” I whisper. “To the corner now!” I yell just as I charge forward at the smirking motherfucker in front of me.
“Tristan!” I hear her yell behind me, but not before I send Evan flying back into the TV that is hanging on the wall and we both fall to a heap on the ground. The screen shatters and glass falls on top of us, but I pay it no mind, climbing up and over him to have the upper hand, laying punch after painful punch to his face. I can hear and feel the bones in his face shattering under my assault.
He reaches up with one hand and presses my face back so far that I have no choice but to fall onto my back, but I move quickly to my feet and charge him once again, this time toward the balcony door that crashes into a million pieces.
I grab him by the hair on top of his head and pull his face up so he can see my eyes and hear every word that I say.
“You’re getting everything you did to her,” I tell him.
With a sickening, evil grin he growls, “Which her?”
I slam his head back down into the concrete floor and take immense pleasure from the slight cracking sound I hear.
I move to my feet and take a step back from him, looking over for just a moment, to make sure Nora is okay, but as soon as my eyes leave the heap of a man and find hers, they widen in fear and I am tackled to the ground, all of the air leaving my lungs in a sharp huff.
Caldwell forces my chest to the ground as he scrambles with his other hand for something silver I only catch a glimmer of in my peripheral vision. Fuck. I try with everything I have to move him. His hand slides to my throat and squeezes. I feel the air leaving and not returning to my lungs. The gun comes up and over my head. I’m fighting to breathe. I’m fighting to live. I’m fighting to give this son of a bitch what he deserves.
The scream coming from the woman I love is like an adrenaline shot to my heart and I reach up with both hands, shoving him back with all of my might and he topples backward to the floor. I follow and we end up in a messy tussle of hands, feet, kicks, punches until the one sound I never wanted to hear roars through the room.
Bang.
Nora
My ears are still ringing from the gunshot.
It makes it hard to focus and even harder to think.
All I can see from my vantage point is Lucas, still out cold on the floor with blood caking in his hair, and a once violent fight between two men now motionless in a heap on the floor… Evan on top of Tristan.
They’re dead.
They’re all dead because of me.
My mind is racing in a thousand different directions, but they all land back with the fact that the two men I love most in the world are gone because they came to save me. I shrink back into the corner and hope I’m next. I don’t want to live in a world without Lucas or Tristan. I close my eyes and beg to hear the shot one last time.
But instead, I hear chaos in the hallway. People screaming, police announcing their presence, and knocking on doors before they begin to file into the hotel room.
“Miss?” One of them asks me, “Are you all right?”
Another shouts that they need medics.
They don’t need medics. They need the coroner and it’s my fault.
“Miss Morgan. Can you hear me?”
I can hear you. I hear everything. The most important thing I hear is nothing. I hide my face into my pulled-up legs, folding over into the wall next to me. My whole body begins to shake uncontrollably. It’s reacting to what I’ve been through. Every muscle that was tight with fear and anxiety is releasing all at once down into a pit of despair that I don’t want to come out of.
“Petal?” I hear a whisper above the chaos and drama around me. “Petal, I need you to look at me. Can you look at me, love?”
I can hear my own breathing as the other sounds around me have faded away when my eyes search the room, looking for the source of the voice that is surely my imagination, but then I see him on the floor… but no longer lying.
He’s sitting up, but there is blood all over his neck and torso.
“Tristan!” I yell out and fight my way through the officers trying to hold me back from him.
“Let her go,” he yells, “Don’t touch her.”
His hand comes outstretched, coated in red.
It’s paint. It’s paint. I keep chanting that in my head in hopes that eventually, I’ll believe it.
I keep blinking so I wake from this nightmare into another nightmare.