Chapter 4 – Zane
“Why do you have to be so complicated? I wish I would have known this about you back then.”
“I wish I would have known that you were a little psycho, but you know what they say about hindsight.”
“If you don’t eat, Camilla, I’m going to force feed you.”
Her eyes widened and I smiled at her. It was obvious that she hadn’t thought about that route. Although the fact was that I wouldn’t even know how to go about it, I couldn’t let her win. I’d almost given up on her ever loving me, and now it was something else. Now it was a battle of wills that I refused to lose. I couldn’t let this woman get the best of me, and getting her to eat would be a small victory that I needed desperately.
“Fine, do what you must, Zane.”
I was ready to explode. I’d never been so frustrated in all of my life. What had been a good idea to begin with was blowing up in my face. Dr. Camilla wasn’t going to be what I wanted, so now I was starting to think of what I was going to do with her. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I knew what I had to do. I should just let her starve. If she didn’t want to eat, I shouldn’t make her. I should just let her go.
“I didn’t want it to come to this, Camilla. I do love you, but you’re just going to resist me. If you haven’t broken down by now, I don’t see it happening.”
“I told you that I wasn’t ever going to love you. This is not how you get someone to love you. You can’t make them.”
I shook my head and felt the sadness flood over me. She was right, and I wished that she wasn’t. I wished that I could make her love me. It would have been so different if Tyler hadn’t gotten into the middle of it. Now I was going to have to get rid of her like I did Janice. No one knew about us, so at least this time I wouldn’t have to move away and change everything when I got there. This time I was going to be able to continue to live the life that I’d built here.
Walking out of the small office area where she was set up, I went to the duffel bag that I’d brought for when I was staying here. I’d put a lot of time and effort into Camilla, and the results were underwhelming at best.
She called to me and asked what I was doing. I could hear the nerves in her voice, and I wondered if she was starting to realize that she was worthless to me like this. Maybe the doctor wasn’t as stupid as she was pretending. Maybe I just needed to give her some incentive, although I was almost sure that it wouldn’t work. It didn’t seem that the good doctor was afraid of anything happening to her.
“I’ll be out in a minute. I didn’t realize that you were going to be so chatty today.”
When I came out, her eyes were darker than they usually were and she had a smile on her face. It was the first time that I’d seen it in weeks, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Something was off about her. I wondered if maybe she’d just lost her last marble. That would make sense, because the look on her face was downright creepy.
“I’ve been hard to deal with, Zane, I know that. I don’t know why I’m being this way. You’ve taken good care of me, and I know that it’s because you love me.”
“Do you love me though, Camilla? Are you ever going to love me?”
“I can try.”
Now I knew that something was off. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach had intensified, and then I heard a noise behind us. Looking at her, I had a feeling that she knew what the sound was coming from.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t go anywhere, and I didn’t see anything.”
She was lying like always. Instead of listening to her lies, I covered her mouth with a gag that had already come in handy on more than one occasion.
“I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not stupid. I’m not going to let you ruin this for me.”
Walking towards where I heard the sound, I looked back once and saw that Camilla was looking in the same direction. She was mumbling something, but I couldn’t understand her because of the rag stuffed in her mouth.
“Just shut up, Camilla. I’ll get to you soon.”
Looking back towards the dark corner in the warehouse, I saw a flash of something right before I felt a pain in my head. My eyes almost shut with the pain of it, but the voice I heard had me getting up and facing him with blood threatening to blur my vision.
“Tyler? I knew that I should have taken care of you myself.”
“Yeah, you shouldn’t have sent a lackey, Zane, and now you’re going to lose Camilla too.”
I didn’t care. The pain in the side of my head was too much to even think through. I wasn’t going to let him win, and when he moved towards me, my hand reached into my waistband and pulled out the gun that I’d just gotten. I’d been planning to use it on Camilla, but I was more than willing to kill Tyler before her. He was the one who’d ruined everything, and he was back again to finish the job. It was because of him that Camilla didn’t want me. Maybe if she saw that he was dead, she would rethink her stance on loving me. If she saw what the alternative was, maybe all of this starvation nonsense would become a thing of the past.
The billionaire did not have the qualms that I would have thought about facing a loaded gun. Before I could draw a bead on him he was coming towards me with intent in his eyes. He wasn’t going to go down without a fight. But then, neither was I.
“You can’t have her, Tyler. She’s mine!”
The man rushed me and we both fell to the floor, Tyler on top of me. For a rich businessman he was a lot stronger than he looked. I remember thinking how much I’d underestimated him because of his money. I’d thought him soft, but there was nothing soft about the man who was now wrestling the gun from me.
My finger was on the trigger, but I couldn’t get enough pressure to squeeze it. I just had to get him off of me for a moment and then I would be able to end this. My eyes went to Camilla as my finger found the space to pull the trigger. I wanted to see her eyes when I killed him.
A sudden burn moved through my chest, and it occurred to me that I wasn’t supposed to feel any pain. I looked between our bodies, Tyler moving back and standing up as I looked at the growing red spot on my front. All I felt was shock. This was not how it was supposed to end.