Page 148 of Downfall

I kick out, I scream harder. Someone clamps their hand around my mouth and their other arm holds me to their body. I can feel the hard material of their bulletproof vest as I’m pressed against it.

I don’t know where Mitch and Turner are. I don’t even know how injured they are.

As I try to look for them the man holding me tightens his grip, forcing my head to remain forward.

Carter struts towards me. That same arsehole smirk of his plastered across his face.

“That was fun.” He says.

“Fuck you.” I spit back, but it’s only a muffled sound under the grip of the man holding me. I should have bought a gun too. I should have bought my own weapon and put a bullet in his god damn skull.

He looks across at the wreckage. “Are they alive?” He asks.

One of his men smirks, cocking his gun. “Not for much longer.” He replies.

I scream, jerking, kicking out as I realise what he’s saying. That he’s going to kill them. He’s going to murder them.

Carter grunts before holding my gaze and watching with clear enjoyment as I flinch with each awful bullet.

They’re dead. Mitch and Turner. Murdered. Because of me.

And as if that’s a cue the man holding me releases his grip. I jerk, half trembling as I face off against Carter. I know I’ve lost, I know I don’t stand a chance now but I refuse to go without a fight. I refuse to be the cowardly, complicit girl I was before.

“It’s over princess.” Carter says stepping up to me. “Time to stop playing the rebellious teenager.”

“It’s not over.” I reply. “It will never be over.”

He lets out a laugh, yanks my head by my hair at such an angle I think he might snap my neck and then he jabs a syringe into me. “No one’s going to save you now.” He murmurs as that awful cold drug seeps into my veins.

I slump, despite myself, despite every screaming thought that’s telling me to fight this, to keep moving, to not give in.

And as my body crumbles it’s Carter who’s scooping me up, carrying me to the waiting car and I know where I’m headed.

I know exactly where he’s taking me.

And worst of all, I know there’s no escaping this. That this time I will never get free.

Roman

I’m yelling, shouting, screaming down the damned phone. But there’s nothing I can do.

I’m too late.

Too fucking late.

I hear the taunts. Hear the gunshots too.

And I know what they mean; that Mitch and Turner are dead.

That they’ve killed them.

I snarl, punching the dashboard. My men are dead. And Rose, my beautiful Rose has been taken from me again, stolen right as everything was starting to work out.

“Two more minutes.” Someone says.

But it makes no fucking difference if it’s two or two hundred. I’m too late. Too fucking late.

“Roman…” Ben murmurs.

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