My feet felt molded to the concrete landing. “Mateo, no!”
With mustered strength, he shoved me backward. “I said, fucking go! I’ve got this.”
As I rounded the corner, more gun fire exploded. Mateo’s voice screamed curses at Brody as he unloaded his weapon at the approaching forces.
Everything inside me told me to turn around and back up my friend. Then I heard it.
Her scream.
Cereza.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Eden
There’s a fine line between love and hate.
I’d heard that cliché all my life thrown around by half-interested adults who gave few fucks about either one. The idiom du jour served to placate me enough to remove my adolescent angst from blocking Monday night football and return to my room, where I belonged.
It wasn’t until my heart blackened to a charred void that I understood the true meaning of the phrase. I found it amazing how much that fine line thickened while sweat dripped from the brow of someone I loved as I aimed a gun at his heart.
“Eden, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
His image blurred although my hand held steady. “Yours is the betrayal I never saw coming. Congratulations.” In my head the words sounded cold, despite the wetness that trailed from the corners of my eyes. Crawling to my feet, I paced the small space in front of him before I realized I’d uprooted from my spot. Keeping my breathing shallow, I focused on inhaling only when necessary. The run-down house reeked of dank mildew and death.
The number of deaths that would be added to the stench remained to be seen.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he implored, begging me to recall what we’d meant to each other. When I stared vacantly at him, he licked his lips and attempted to reach me on another level. “After all we’ve been through, it ends like this?”
“You’ve left me no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
Hatred burned my eyes, incinerating the man reflected in them. “Fuck you.”
His sigh turned into a cough, rattling his chest. A knowing smile curved his lips. “There’s my feisty girl.”
I waved the gun in the air—a stupid move on all accounts, but his play on my emotions ripped at my soul. “I’m not anything of yours. You sold me out. You made me believe we were on the same side.” Tears rolled harder, ignoring my commands to stop and pissed me off. “The whole time you had an end game, you son of a bitch!”
One step. Two steps. Three steps.
If I pulled the trigger now, it’d be point blank range. I couldn’t claim self-defense. True, it hadn’t been his hand that’d pushed me off the step and sent me careening down a flight of stairs. But, in the end, it was his actions that brought me here.
And I wasn’t the one looking down the barrel of a Colt 1911 .38 Super.
All this time I’d believed him. All this time I’d trusted him. In the end, I’d been a fool because all this time I’d been used.
“Eden,” he pleaded, searching for a shred of the affection we’d shared. “I love you.”
There’s a fine line between love and hate.
Watching him grovel for his life, I suddenly understood the meaning behind the phrase. When I loved a person, I saw them through rose-colored glasses. Everything was perfect…until it wasn’t. I walked the line until I got knocked off and opened my eyes to the person I’d been blind to. My heart became torn, desperate to recapture the first untainted moments where the line was straight and steady. Before I knew it, hate filled the space where the love vacated, and my heart battled with my head.
Like an addict who promised one more hit would be the last, I knew it was a lie but told it anyway. I knew I couldn’t stop. The cycle always repeated and I hurt myself until there was nothing left but hate for the both of us.
Unless the cycle ends.
I thought the past eighteen days had hardened me to violence, so it surprised me when my chin quivered. Vengeance took my salvation, but apparently, a conscience still resided somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind. Maybe that was one thing he hadn’t killed. Maybe that was the last shred of humanity I could hold onto as I burned in hell for the path I'd walked.
I would’ve done anything for him. He’d held me in his arms and promised to protect me.
I didn’t bother to stop the lone tear as it rolled across my nose and fell onto my bottom lip, pausing briefly before tumbling down my chin. “I love you too,” I whispered as I unloaded the gun, my mask slipping as he stumbled.
It’s funny how sometimes the people you’d give your life for are the ones who take it.
My breath came in shallow spurts as my hand shook. The last thing I remembered was kneeling, my eyes landing on my father, standing fifteen feet away from me with his shoulder turned toward the wall.
The part where I reached for the gun tucked in my thigh holster was a complete blur.
My father staggered against the wall, grabbing his chest with both hands, gritting his teeth as if in severe pain. “Edie! Oh, Jesus…why…?”
Coming down from the shock of pulling the trigger on my flesh and blood, a curtain fell over my emotions. No longer did the same heart beat between us. My own father sold me and Nash out to save his own ass. Val was right all along.
“You can stop the theatrics now, old man. I missed.”
Opening one eye, he glanced down, and realizing no blood stained his shirt, he sighed. “Thank God…oh, sweet mercies.”
“No,” I said, frowning as I shrugged one shoulder. “Not God. Thank bad aim. If you’d had a can sitting on your head, I would’ve blown your dick off.”
“Edie?” Taking a cautious step forward, he tilted his head as if seeing me for the first time. “What’s happened to you?”
“I’m an orphan, you son of a bitch.”
“No.” He patted his chest as if that made things all better. “I’m here. We still have each other.”
My arm extended, and he froze mid-step as I aimed the gun at his chest again. “You’re dead to me.” A laugh erupted, ending in a wet cough that burned my chest. “You know what’s pathetic, Dad? I’ve been held captive by a man you made me a living beacon for, then warned me to stay away from.”
Tears filled his weathered eyes. “Baby, I—”
“But you know what the most fucked up part is, Dad?” I interrupted, biting down on his name as if saying the word caused me physical pain. “Val Carrera has been the only man in my whole life besides Nash who has cared more about me than himself.”
“Oh, Edie…you didn’t…
“Sleep with him? Is that what you want to ask me, Dad? Did I follow my usual open-leg policy and lay down with the enemy?” I smiled, the thought of our last morning together outside his house in Monterrey filling my mind. “You’re damn right I did—over and over again.”
In an instant, my father’s face hardened, and his eyes frosted with an icy glaze. “Well, I guess once a whore always a whore.”
Shifting slightly to the right, I pulled the trigger again. My father let out a blood-curdling scream that had me rolling my eyes. “Will you please shut up?”