Rook

Cross is standing at the foot of the stairs when I come down, but he better not say anything to me. No one better talk to me right now. Maybe not fucking ever again. The rage has me so bad I'm seeing red.

I need to be outside. I need to be alone. And I need to fucking figure out how not to explode with this rage right now, because if I do, it'll be the last time I do. For everyone involved.

She's just a fucking liar. A game-playing liar down to her core. She showed me her true colors ten years ago. I should've believed her then. Instead I pined over her like a damn idiot, unable to let go of the fairytale she spun me. Blinded by my love for her. Blinded by the fact that I couldn't imagine my life without her, so I refused to live it.

Now I've sacrificed an old friend to get her back, and I was about to sacrifice all my brothers to keep her. And I've fired back up every last feeling I ever had for her. I told her I'd marry her, for fuck's sake. And I have no idea how I'll put out those flames ever again. Ten years didn't do the trick the last time. What am I looking at now? The rest of my life? I hope it's a fucking short one.

I went to my bike, vaguely thinking a ride in the cool night air is what I need to get myself back under control, which seems impossible, since I don't even remember ever being in control right now. But my bike is soiled with her now too, she's like a fixture on it, and I let myself believe—actually fucking believe—she's a permanent one.

What a fucking idiot.

But I can't ride my bike, not with the memory of her on it still so fresh.

I wander into the garden, can't see where I'm going since it's tar black out here, but who the fuck cares? I thought I was going towards a future with Ines. But she clearly had different ideas.

The cool air isn't helping, and the darkness isn't either, since it just makes it that much easier to see her face before my eyes, see her lithe, soft body, see every damn expression on her beautiful face that she ever wore.

Who the fuck am I kidding?

There's no living without her for me. I never had that option and I don't now.

It's not the sort of realization that brings any kind of peace. But at least I can breathe easier again. There's power in seeing things the way they are. Peace too. I always believed that. Not sure what I'm gonna do with this knowing though. Because she doesn't want to be mine.

"Rook, wait up!" Cross calls and I stop, turn to watch his flashlight bouncing as he walks up to me.

"What's going on? Hawk says she wants to be traded for Ice," he says.

His voice always sounds pretty much the same whatever he's saying, or thinking when saying it. But I hear the question he didn't quite ask very clearly in his tone anyway.

"Yeah, it's exactly like Hawk told you," I snap. "She wants to go back to that piece of shit, which will make our job a whole lot easier. Ice is as good as back home."

Cross is holding the flashlight away from us, but I can see him nod his head slowly. "She says she's doing it because she thinks it's the only way to save Ice and the rest of us."

"That's just her bullshit excuse," I say. "I don't think she wanted to leave that piece of shit in the first place."

Cross doesn't say anything, but nods his head slowly some more. Just as well, I don't need him to speak right now.

"So you go ahead and make the preparations for the exchange," I say. "I'll sit this one out. I already did enough damage and I might do some more before it's done."

"She told Roxie what that guy did to her, and Roxie told me," Cross says. "She thinks it's amazing that Ines is not more fucked up because of it. She mentioned some Sweden Syndrome or something that happens to kidnapping victims—"

"Yeah, she's not fucked up from it because it was all exactly what she wanted," I snap even though a huge part of my mind is fighting this kind of thinking. Her nightmares aren't a lie. The way she came back to life before my eyes after I freed her from that motherfucker wasn't a lie. The way she whispered into my ear that she wanted to be my wife wasn't a lie. But what else could it have been?

"Why else is she suggesting going back?" I ask, but I'm not expecting him to know the answer either.

Cross sighs and illuminates a different part of the garden with the flashlight as he moves it from one hand to the other. "Roxie taught me something about women. It's something I never knew before, because all the other women in my life were always more about, "Give me this, do this for me, save me, take care of me". So that's what I thought women were all about before I met her. But now I know different. When a woman is truly in love with you, she will try to protect you. She'll try to keep you out of harm’s way if she can. Most of the time it just comes out as crying and screaming to prevent you from doing dangerous shit, so it's easy to see it as annoying. But she'll be doing it because she loves you."

"Yeah, or she could just want to go back to him," I interrupt, since his words are exactly what I want to be true, and my rage can't take it.

"Ines thinks you'll get killed if she doesn't go back. I mean, she knows better than anyone what the Gentleman is like, and he runs one huge ass operation. Could be that it's too hard even for us to crack, especially since we have almost no time to plan this job. We have to move now and we're all still ready to stand behind you. Her wanting to be traded would make this a whole lot easier on us, but it's not gonna make it easier on you. Go and talk to her some more. Right now, she's so fucking upset Hawk can't get anything from her, and we need whatever information she can give us. An hour ago you were ready to send us all to hell so you could keep her, what's changed?"

I'm about to go off on him, tell him all over again what's changed. But he's right. We do need the information she can give us and we need it now. Whichever way this thing between me and Ines heads, we have to rescue Ice.

And I'm not gonna figure anything out by ranting and raving at her inside my head in the dark. I did a lot of that over the years, and it didn't solve jack shit. I have her here now. I can talk to her. There are very few things I prefer to do over that, and the rest all include her too.

"I'll go talk to her," I tell Cross then stride back towards the lights of the house.

I hope I'm wrong about her, I hope she can convince me I am. Because otherwise I might lose my mind for good tonight.

* * *

Ines

The blond guy came in after Rook left and started asking me things about Silvio, but I could barely make out that he was asking questions let alone answer him. I told him what I told Rook. That I’ll go back to Silvio to save them all, but that’s all I could say.

I pushed Rook away forever. There's no more happiness waiting for me anywhere. No hope for it.

Those and other equally horrible thoughts kept playing inside my mind, repeating over and over, growing louder, until I couldn’t hear a single word the guy was saying. He finally gave up and left, and I heard him talking to someone outside. But I just heard voices, no words.

Words have no meaning anymore. Not inside this fog of regret, of making the wrong choice again and again until there's nothing left. Because I have just made the worse wrong choice, even though it's the right thing to do.

No one but me should be harmed by my curse.

My father paid for my curse with the last ten years of his life.

He should be the only one. Rook can't pay for it. He can’t!

But he's already paying for it, a tiny voice inside my brain is telling me.

The thought of him hating me forever, the thought of him not loving me anymore, hurts worse than the prospect of going back to Silvio, hurts worse than any pain he'll inflict on me once that happens. It makes all that pale, become inconsequential, become the much lesser of the two evils I'm facing. It's the evil I know, the familiar one, the one I’ve long since accepted as my life.

It was such a good day today. I should've known it couldn't last.

We had such an amazing couple of weeks together. I should've known it couldn't last.

But I don't know it.

Not in my heart.

I know something else though, know it with all my heart. I made the wrong decision. Again.

Thudding footsteps are echoing in the hallway outside. They stop at my door, but it doesn't open. I know it's Rook. I can feel him as clearly as though he were already standing right in front of me.

Once the door opens, I'll get my last chance to make everything right. The last chance to escape the hell life had in store for me up until now. But the door's not opening and I have no energy left to open it myself, no power to face knowing without a doubt that I've wasted my last chance for a happy life, a good life, a life worth living.

The door opens suddenly, Rook's form cast in darkness before he takes a step inside and the light reveals his face. The expression on it tells me all about the anger I've roused in him without him having to say a single word.

"Tell me I'm wrong, Ines," he says and it sounds like the growl of a man about to go in for the kill. "Make me believe it."

I find the strength to get up and walk to him. I will always have that strength. On my death bed, when I'm old and infirm, I will have the strength to go to him. Nothing will ever take it away from me. But I don't know, if I have the words to make him believe it.

I look very deeply into his eyes as I stroke his cheek, feel all the angry tension coiling inside his body just through that gentle touch alone.

"I never want to be away from you," I tell him. Of all the truths I know and want him to believe, that one is the loudest.

He doesn’t speak, but his breathing slows, becomes softer, just as his eyes do. I can even feel some of the tension in him loosening. He already believes me. He just doesn't want to.

"But you keep leaving me," he says very quietly, proving me right.

"Is there another choice?" I ask, and it's not a question I already know the answer to. No. It's the question that my life depends on, and I need an answer.

He sees that too. Knows it, but doesn't want to believe that he does.

Instead of answering, he wraps his arms around me tightly, too tightly, like a drowning man clutching a life raft, making it hard to breathe. His tension is back, but it's different to the angry kind that was in him before. This is a burning, passionate kind of tension, the one brought by the memories of us that he could never let go, just as I couldn't.

"There's gotta be," he says, and hugs me tighter still. "Because I can't let you go. You'll kill me if you leave me for him again, as sure as if you stabbed me in the heart yourself."

That's what I did with my decision before. I know it now. I wouldn't save his life by going back to Silvio. I'd destroy it.

But I've been given another chance. And this one, I won't waste.

"I won't ever leave you again," I say.

He chuckles and rips himself out of my embrace, holding me at arms length. "I said, make me believe it."

He sounds stern, angry almost, but I see that softness underneath the cool, steady blue of his eyes. It's always there for me. But maybe this time there’s no pulling him back to me. Maybe he'll never trust me enough to love me again.

"I hate Silvio so much I freeze up inside just thinking about him. I want him dead. I wanted him dead from the second he first laid hands on me. But he did it so many times afterwards, beat me up so bad and used me so horribly, I forgot who I was. He convinced me I had to be good to him, so he'd stop hurting me, and I believed that for a long time." I pause only long enough to take a breath and glance at his face, which is growing dangerously dark.

"But he never stopped hurting me. He hurt me worse and worse. It was only my memory of you, of the love we shared, and imagining the life we wanted to make together that kept me sane. When I was so hurt that I didn't know my own name anymore, I saw your face clearly. Heard your voice telling me to be strong, to hang on, telling me you loved me, that you are still waiting for me. I nearly had a heart attack when I heard your voice for real in that store. I thought I'd lost my mind, that my daydreams had finally become my reality. Only it was better than any dream. Because it was reality. So there is no part of me that wants to leave you ever again. Not a single hair on my head at all. But to save you and your friends—"

"Don't say it again, Ines," he says warningly, but there's a shadow of a smile on his lips. "Me and my friends have been doing this for a very long time. There's no need for you to protect me. I'm gonna protect you. The way I would've done from the start if you told me you were running away from someone."

"I thought I escaped him," I whisper, trying not to imagine Rook bloodied and broken by Silvio's men, but I can't.

"You did escape him," he says. "It took ten years, but you escaped. Let me do the rest now. You gotta let me fight for you."

It's a request, not an order. He wants my blessing to go deal with Silvio, to protect me, the way he's always wanted to do.

"OK," I whisper and nod, keep nodding because maybe that way I'll shake away the fear choking me, shake away the image of him dead at Silvio's feet.

He grips my chin between his thumb and forefinger and forces my head to be still, makes me look into his eyes, makes me feel like I'm swimming in the vast, inviting, clean ocean they actually are.

"You doubt me, Ines," he says. "Don't doubt me."

"Silvio has hundreds of men who'll protect him to the death," I say. "They're too afraid of him not to. Everyone's afraid of him, and they have good reason to be. He's a cruel man with no conscience. And his compound in the hills near Mexico City has two rows of walls. It's built like a prison. He used to joke it's the only prison in the world that's as hard to get into as it is hard getting out of. He deals with his enemies there and that's probably where Ice is. And…and…"

He lays his thumb over my lips to stop me talking, swipes it over my lips gently once I do. "We'll need to know all this in detail, Ines. We need to know everything you know, so we can prepare. It's good that you know so much."

"I'll tell you everything I know," I whisper past his finger. "Do you believe me now? About how much I want to be with you forever? Or do you still think I'm a liar and a demon?"

He smiles that sad little smile of his that always makes me want to kiss him and make him feel better. "I spoke in anger before. Rage got the better of me. But I couldn't hear that you wanted to leave me again. I couldn't survive that. But I never want to be angry with you. I never am. Not for long anyway. Even if you were lying to me, I couldn't stay angry with you. I love you too much. And I know thinking that way makes me an idiot, but I'll be anything for you."

It's my turn to silence him by placing my fingers over his lips. I love to feel them against my fingertips, wish to have them travelling all over my body, igniting the flames that will drive that cold, clammy fog caused by years of bad memories to vanish forever. "If you're an idiot then I'm an idiot too. Because I love you too much to ever leave you, even if you think I'm a lying demon. You're stuck with me."

"Well, you're my lying demon. Sorry if that bothers you, but you're not going anywhere." He grins as he says it, his eyes sparkling like the ocean on the sunniest day. I was fishing for an apology but he was never good at those. Besides, it's already there, plain as day in his eyes.

He kisses me roughly when I open my mouth to tell him that he couldn't get rid of me if he tried. And kissing him back works just as well as those words would have. I tell him in silence, with my lips and my tongue, with my soul, which speaks the loudest when we're showing each other love in this way, and in other ways that need no speaking. That love is a scream right now, a magnificent yell, the echoes of which pierce the fabric of this world, are heard in Heaven too, I'm sure.

"Man, I wish we had time for you to show me some more about how sorry you are," he says breathlessly after awhile. "But we have a job to plan."

I'm swaying from the kiss, my awareness not quite my own anymore, but he's right.

"So, now you do know that we'll never be free and safe while Silvio is alive, right?" I ask as he leads me down the hall.

He stops and gives me a hard look, the one that makes his face look like it was carved from stone. He nods curtly. "I know."

And I know I just issued Silvio's death sentence. But I don't feel guilty about it. I just feel safe and free.