Page 68 of Make Me A Sinner
Surt stops just a foot away from the void, watching Dalvacio live out his last seconds before the abyss below us claims him. “Damn, I was hoping for a little skydiving.”
“Come on, Surt, I wasn’t in the mood to take you home in the trunk anyway,” I say, somehow relieved that I won’t have to find a garbage bag big enough to fit my brother.
Nothing left to do here.
I get behind the wheel. I’m the designated driver tonight anyway, and Surt’s not exactly in the right headspace to drive. His enemy died rather quickly, no chase, no fight. I know how disappointing it is to chase a guy this long, just for everything to end in a couple of minutes. I’ll admit, I had a hand in that, but it’s better that things turned out this way. Surt’ll get over it.
thirty-three
-Serena-
I’ve been staring at the entry door ever since Set left. I know he’s not coming back anytime soon. But I can’t help it—I keep watching the door. I’ve tried getting through to him three days in a row, and he still won’t answer my calls. To be honest, after the first time he didn’t answer, I knew I should’ve stopped. But I need to figure things out. Most of all, I need to figure out how the hell I managed to ignore all the signs. I guess my mind just couldn’t cope with something like that when I also needed to cope with taking two lives. But I should’ve seen it coming. Now, everything he did, everything he said, somehow makes sense. The unreal color of his eyes whenever he got mad, the shape-shifting tattoos when he took me to bed, the way his hand healed in just hours, the strength he showed when that psycho attacked us. Everything he’s done points to the fact that he wasn’t a regular person. I just refused to believe it, buried any kind of clue in a deep corner of my mind so I wouldn’t have to face the truth.
But now it’s all staring me in the face, and I have no idea how to deal with it. I don’t think Set knows how to deal with it either because he’d never abandon me otherwise.
It takes me a few days before the waiting becomes an entrapment. I feel like a prisoner in this penthouse, and everything seems just like an empty void without him. I keep trying to clear my head, but every single time I manage to do that, the silence fills with even louder chaos.
I’m sorry, I’m not perfect. Sorry, I can’t decide the whole meaning of my existence in just a day or two. But I am human, and this makes me flawed. This makes me fragile and weak. The inability to decide our own fate when the road isn’t paved with roses.
I’m tired of looking at the door, waiting for Set to walk through it. He could be gone for days. Weeks even. I need to get out of here, even just for an hour. So I head down to one of the restaurants. Room service hasn’t cut it. I haven’t really been eating, and it’s starting to catch up to me. I’m dizzy. Lightheaded enough to worry I might pass out. So tonight, I’m having dinner out—even if it’s alone.
I order some shrimp pasta, but by the time it’s ready, I can barely force myself to take a few bites. There’s a knot in my stomach that won’t let me eat. Or breathe. Or doanythingwithout him.
I need some air, even if it’s the hot, polluted Vegas Strip kind. So I head to the sidewalk Café that doubles as a bar after dark.
I order myself a Mojito. It’s refreshing enough to cut the heat, but not strong enough to get me drunk on one glass.
I take a seat at a table to watch the people move along the Strip. It reminds me of the one night I felt normal. Not that I ever felt normal around Set.
Then I remember spotting him after the first meeting. I’d been sitting right here, at this table, watching him walk to his car, surrounded by all his staff like some kind of movie star.
I grab my glass and step outside—to the exact spot where his car had been. Unwillingly, my gaze turns to the street, as if waiting for him to appear.
The past few days have driven me insane because everything feels so final now, like there’s no way back to the life I knew. I’ve felt this before with him, and I know there was no going back, but this time, it feels too irreversible.
I watch the traffic roll by for a few minutes—then just as I turn to go back inside, something grabs me from behind. A hand clamps over my mouth, and a piece of fabric slides over my head. Everything goes dark. But it doesn’t mean I go down without a fight. I’m dragged while kicking and thrashing, even clawing at whoever’s got me, fighting like hell to break free.
I hear the door of a van swing open, wheels screeching against the metal, and I kick even harder, even though my hands are bound. I know I kicked some of the men who grabbed me, because I hear a few voices cursing right before I’m shoved into the van, and my head slams into something solid. It all goes black from there on. And honestly, part of me wishes it would’ve stayed that way.
I wake up on the ground, a high-pitched ringing in my ears, and the urge to throw up, both strong enough that I might actually do it in the next second. I feel like I’m suffocating under the black cloth wrapped around my face. I twist against my restraints again, jerking my wrists, straining my shoulders until they burn. The rope bites into my skin, and I can’t tell if it’s blood or sweat dripping into my palms, yet I don’t stop. I need to get free. But just as I feel the noose starting to loosen, someone grabs me from behind and yanks me upright like I’m a damn feather.
I fight his grip, refusing to be still, cursing and screaming. No matter what this is, I won’t go down without a fight.
But the cloth is ripped off my head, light blinding me for a second. I blink, trying to focus and tell who the person in front of me is—Chen. I recognize him from the photos we had of him before the heist. The ones Set gave us. The same entitled look, like he’s king around here.
I immediately try to figure out where I am. My eyes dart around the room, looking for details and escape routes. Windows. Doors. Even weapons.
This looks like some kind of an apartment, possibly even a hotel suite. Sleek, luxurious but too tidy to be personal. Hard to tell because everything here in Vegas feels like overkill. Like luxury built to cover the rotten underneath.
And I dread, I’m the rotten part Chen’s here to bury.
Panic hits fast. I know there’s no way out of this, and even though the scene feels like déjà vu—I’ve beenin this situationwith Set before—something tells me this time things are gonna have a different outcome.
“She’s the one giving me so much trouble?” Chen asks his men, almost amused, the top name on his hit list is a tiny blonde barely pushing 120 pounds.
He finds it funny, but I guess just not funny enough to let me walk.
“Enough trouble for you to put a hit on me,” I spit back, trying to keep my focus, my vision still blurry from the blow to my head.
