Page 47 of Black Hearts
She wasn’t a stupid girl.
The knife was still in my hand, and my fingers curled around it tighter. Before I knew what I was doing, I whirled on my father, lifting the knife. Like a beautiful, macabre still-life, the knife plunged into my father’s neck with nothing but a pop of the skin.
We stood there for a few seconds, neither one of us moving. My father’s eyes widened, and the first one to move was him. He tried to breathe in, then exhale, but all he managed to do was cough out blood. The knife had pierced something in his throat.
I yanked the knife out, a spray of red coating my face.
Thick maroon liquid flowed from the wound on his neck, and after another second, my father fell to the floor, deader than dead.
It was too late to be poetic justice, though. Far too late.
I dropped the knife on the floor, turning back toward Juliet. The image of her body, of all that blood, imprinted itself on my brain, and never before did I feel such an agonizing pain deep within my chest.
I whispered to myself the only thing I could: “What have I done?”
I woke with a start, and I sat up in bed, letting the sheets fall off my body on their own. My skin felt cold and clammy, and yet sweaty at the same time—and it wasn’t due to anything that had happened before going to bed.
Dreams had never bothered me before. Not that I had them often, but when I did, they never affected me like this.
Of course, most dreams were illogical and nonsensical; they oftentimes didn’t make a lick of sense. But this one had hit close to home, and I knew there would be no falling asleep after that particular dream. I hesitated to call it a nightmare, but frankly, I didn’t know what else to call it.
Killing Juliet, letting my father force me to do something like that… it might’ve been a lesson he would’ve taught a younger me, if I’d made the mistake of falling for a girl in high school, but now? There’d never been a girl quite like Juliet in my life, so it bothered me to know that I’d let my father, even in that dream, force me to get rid of her like that.
I rolled out of bed. I was alone in the room; Juliet was with… Jaxon, was it? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure.
I wore nothing but loose pajama bottoms, and I didn’t go to find a shirt. That dream had made me both cold and clammy, but I’d take the cool air as a way to calm my body down. I slipped out of my room, going to the kitchen and grabbing myself some water.
I left all the lights off, made not a sound. When I had the water, I moved to stand before the windows in the living area, gazing out at the night sky and the city around us. I leaned one arm against the window, taking a long sip before sighing.
It was just a dream. Just a stupid fucking dream, and yet… I couldn’t seem to shake it off, snap myself out of it. If there was one person that gave me pause, it was my father. I’d never say I was frightened of the man, but he was a no-nonsense kind of guy. His punishments were brutal. They always had been. If he told you to do something and you didn’t do it, well, you were in for a world of hurt. I supposed that’s where I got my own ideas of punishment from.
He didn’t have to hand Juliet back to Fred. He could’ve tied her up in the basement, sedated me, made me watch as he ended her life. He could’ve done worse. He had assumed losing her to Fred, knowing he would kill her while out of my realm of control, would bother me more.
Honestly, I didn’t know which one was worse. Both were terrible.
The hand on the window curled into a tight fist as I remembered letting it happen. If there was one thing I hated myself for, it was letting my father take her and hand her over to Fred without so much as putting up a fight. I’d suspected he’d been on his way, but I didn’t really think he’d come. I didn’t think he’d interfere.
But he had, and now I had to face the consequences. No matter how this ended, things weren’t going to be the same.
I took another sip out of the water bottle, frowning to myself. My ears picked up on the soft padding of feet coming down the hallway, and I turned my head over my shoulder to watch Juliet step out of the hall. Shadows clung to her, but I could see her thanks to the natural light from the moon. Her ungodly pink pajamas helped with that.
She saw me, and she came straight for me. Once she stood beside me, I asked, “Why aren’t you sleeping?” Everyone here knew Juliet was a hard sleeper; it’s why a certain someone had gotten on my shit list. A part of me still raged that Will had taken advantage of her in such a vulnerable state.
Her thin shoulders shrugged. Juliet didn’t look out at the city; she gazed up at me instead. “I don’t know. I heard you get up, so I decided to come out here with you.” She swallowed, glancing down at her bare feet. “I haven’t really been sleeping that well, ever since…” She stopped, unable to continue.
It was fine. I knew what she meant.
Then she asked, “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
I didn’t want to tell her I wasn’t asleep because I’d woken myself with a nightmare. I was Markus fucking Scott. I didn’t have nightmares. I was the nightmare that filled other minds. I was the darkness, the pain, the monster in the shadows. Nothing in this world should frighten me.
But the thought of losing Juliet did, and now we found ourselves here.
“I had a dream.” I would not tell her it was a nightmare; I didn’t want to seem pathetic. With everything I’d done, to her, to the others, to strangers on this planet, you’d think nothing in the world could make me uneasy, but with Juliet in the picture, the impossible was very much possible now.
“You never talk about your dreams,” she whispered, setting a hand on my arm, the one holding onto the water bottle. The other still rested on the glass. Her soft touch was meant to be comforting, and yet it ignited a fire deep within me.
“Because I never have them. Or if I do, I don’t remember them when I wake up.” The fingers holding onto the bottle tightened, squeezing the thin plastic.
