Page 88 of Shameless Vows

Twenty thousand the next.

A brand new book in less than a week’s time.

A dark book; a modern retelling of Beauty and Beast in which the Beast returns to his human form and realizes, with horror, that his maltreatment of his Beauty has broken and hollowed her to the point that she disintegrates from the inside out. On his stone balcony, in gale force winds and sheets of rain, he clasps the dust of her remains in his fists as she slips through his fingers like sand in an hourglass, and is swept by the gusts through the air and sprinkled to the four corners of the Earth, covering everything in between.

Where she lands, crimson roses break through stony cracks in dead soil, stretching and reaching high to the heavens, proclaiming her ultimate freedom from him in a world painted red. The grief-stricken Beast leaves his cold, hard fortress to comb the land, near and far, pulling the roses up by their roots, ignoring the shred of his hands by the razor-sharp, steel thorns that adorn each emerald green stem.

He gathers them into his arms, the dirt soiling his robes of finery, and with every rose he plucks from the ground, ten more sprout in its place. He cannot kill her with his selfishness now. She is immortal, and he is wilting. The weight of his grief and regret is heavy in his arms in the form of millions of roses that are not his to possess.

His legs ultimately fail. His knees buckle. The armful of crimson and emerald and steel fall at his sides, a bed of eternal roses his final resting place, and it’s only then that he realizes true love is not pulling up a flower by its roots and placing it in a vase to admire until it wilts. True love is leaving it and letting it grow, and live, and thrive.

With his last ounce of strength, he attempts to indulge his broken heart and reaches to touch one velvety petal, but draws back his hand at the last second.

“World without end,”he whispers to the red rose that stands tall, and strong, and formidable, looming over him in harrowing victory,“and beyond my last breath, I will love you.”

And as he draws that last breath, he lays his hand against the soil, palm open, and the rose sheds one crimson petal. It lands on his cold flesh, and his heart silences and stills.

I wipe my spilling eyes with my sleeve, typingThe Endwith one hand, and someone twists the knob of my locked bedroom door. I roll my eyes at the interruption, and then a loud series of knocks pounds against the thick, heavy wood.

I huff quietly and call to who Iknowis Papá, “Espera un segundo. Ya vo—”

An explosion of splitting, splintering wood causes me to yelp as I recoil and cover my head, my knees flying to my chest as I shield myself from the door flying off its hinges. It slams down on the marble floor, and my arms remain wrapped around my head until a large palm wraps around my bicep and jerks me up out of my seat, dragging me away from the desk.

“You,” a deep, surly voice growls, and I swear to God it registers as familiar, but it’s not Papá. “Come.”

In the half second before he whips around to drag me out of the room, I see his face, and it also registers. I don’t know who he is, but I know I’ve seen him before. I can’t place where, but it’s inconsequential because I’m once again being dragged across cold marble and scraping, burning carpet, down the hall and down the stairs. Just like Papá did. Just like Malachi did.

But unlike them, this man is carrying a black rifle; a weapon of war; secured to his back with a thick, battered leather strap.

Mamá is screaming and crying somewhere in the belly of the house, her howls of terror ricocheting in Spanish against the hard floor and walls. Papá is shouting at someone and then barking orders at Malachi’s security team that was supposed to be guarding the grounds of the estate. But there’s no response from them, and only a sinister, chilling laugh and a flippant declaration.

“Ellos estan muertos.” Another icy chuckle. “Nadie te salvará.”

No one will save you.

The man I recognize but cannot place drags my faltering feet through the grand entryway and into the great room, and then throws me against the rug, and I land in a heap of scraped limbs. With wild, darting eyes, I look up to see my parents at one end of the room, one gun-wielding stranger on either side of them, barrels pointed at their faces. Mamá’s hands are lifted, her eyes spilling with terror, lips parted and gasping in horror. Papá’s bulldog jowls pulse as he clenches and releases his jaw, fire flashing in the russet brown eyes he gave to me and my siblings.

“I will never comply with what you ask,” he rumbles in Spanish. “You will have to kill me first.”

“We are not here to kill you,” another man says from behind me, and I snap my head around to look at him. I don’t know who he is other than quickly deducing that he’s one of Papá’s relatives involved in the cartel, but the two men at his sides are familiar in that same inarticulable way as the one who dragged me down the stairs and is now pointing a pistol at my head. “First, we will kill your first born, just like we promised. And then we will give you time to consider our proposal. If you refuse, we will go after your other two daughters, and finally your son. If you still refuse, we will kill your wife. And then…” He offers a casual hitch of one shoulder. “I would venture to guess you may not care about your empire of stolen family money as much as you do now.”

He nods at the man pointing the pistol at me, and the man grabs my arm again, yanking me up to my knees.

Since childhood, I have been well-acquainted with the sound of someone chambering a bullet in a gun; the sharp, scraping slide of metal against metal.

And now, at twenty-nine years old, it will be the last thing I hear.

Every other sound in the room fades to a static hum, and my sight zeroes in on the men in the room who are familiar in that way I can’t put my finger on. I refuse to let their faces be the last thing I see, so I close my eyes.

In my mind, a Beast lying on a bed of roses, tears of remorse spilling from his eyes, down his temples and into his midnight black hair. Slowly, his adult face morphs into that of a boy with eyes the color of steel, but that hold the same warmth of his voice that was always my refuge from a world riddled with fear.

In my mind, the voice speaks. “I vowed to keep you safe. I failed. I’m sorry.”

I’m not even in this room anymore, and I wordlessly respond from the depths of my heart and soul.

“I forgive you, Malachi.”

TWENTY

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