He wails and I squirm free, panting as I get my bearings while my heart keeps pounding frantically in the middle of my throat.
He roars and lunges and I clip him with my heel, the gun clattering to the floor. Spitting out the blood from where I bit him, I grab the gun and swiftly turn when he kicks it away from me.
“Bitch.”
He smacks me.
The pain rips through me, then he grabs me by the throat and lifts me up in the air, and pain and the urgency for oxygen screams with every breath wheezing out of my throat. He grabs the gun and I kick in the air and raise my knee, ramming it in his nuts. “Ooof.”
He drops me.
I start running to the elevator, but when I spot the exit stairs just three steps away, I sprint over, grab the door handle, and jerk hard, trying to open it, yelling at it, “Come on, come on!” But it’s jammed, and I’m about to kick it open when I hear the elevator gate open and angry bellows behind me.
“Get over here, you fucking cunt!”
Which is when the door I’m struggling to open finally gives. It swings open, outward, and I’m so attached to the knob, I follow it, taking a giant step forward—only to find there are no stairs, only a five-story fall, my body plunging into nothingness as I hear the most blood-chilling, desperate call I’ve ever heard in my life—“NO! PRINCESS!”—and I crash into blackness.
TWENTY-FIVE
* * *
FALLEN
Greyson
My world bottoms out.
I watch Melanie disappear through the gaping hole of the open door. Something takes over me. I hear myself yelling one more time, “PRINCESS!” as I charge for the empty space. My brother lunges at me, tackling me against the wall, grabbing my arm where I’m holding my gun. I overpower him easily, slide my SIG between us and aim it right in the center of his rib cage.
BOOM!
He howls, and I drop his writhing body to the ground and drop the gun as I run to the empty doorway. My chest is tight. I can’t breathe. Five stories below, I see a pool of golden hair.
“MELANIE!”
No response.
Derek steps out of the elevator and is instantly by my side, unrolling a piece of rope as I bark, “Lower me, I don’t want to crush her.” I grab one end of the rope as he slowly lowers me one floor, and then two, until there’s no more rope, and from two stories up, I leap down, crashing to the ground with a curse. “Call an ambulance!” I yell at Derek.
“Princess.” I roll to the side and crawl over to her. “Princess.”
She’s pale and lifeless. Streaks of blood cover her cheeks, streaming from her lips and nose. She mumbles something unintelligible.
“Baby,” I say as I reach out to touch her neck for a pulse.
I feel it, fluttering faintly under my fingers. My heart hurts in my rib cage. It hurts so fucking bad. For the first time in my life, I feel impotent.
“Melanie, stay with me.” I sound like a *. Begging. But holy shit, she can’t leave me. She can’t fucking leave me.
I check the back of her neck; it’s not broken, but I’m not moving her. I don’t dare. I simply cup her head in my hands because I thought I’d never see this fucking face again and I stare at it. And stare at it. Her eyes closed, her smile gone, the blood trailing from her lips. Before I know it I duck my head and press my lips to hers, kissing her bloodied lips, my voice roughening as it starts breaking, “Baby, I told you to stay away from me.”
She’s not moving. I can’t breathe.
The room closes in on us, sucking out the oxygen. I can’t fucking breathe. “Melanie, look at what I’ve done to you.” I brush her hair back with my gloved hands. I growl in anger then pull my gloves off, shoving them into the back of my jeans, then I take her hair, silk in my hands as I tug the strands into a braid so that she won’t have to worry about her hair on her face.
I feel like I’m losing control, like I’m about to snap and nothing will ever hold me together again.
“Stay with me,” I still beg, lifting her hand to my lips and kissing it, over and over. “Don’t leave me again. Stay with me.”
I want to see her eyes. Those save-me green eyes. Holy shit. I need to see her smile at me. Laugh at me. Call me an asshole. Tell me she loves me.
When the basement elevator doors open, I’m shaking with rage as I look up to watch Derek shove my brother in my direction. My god, I’m going to fucking kill him.
I charge across the room to where Wyatt stands, arms tied behind him, stomach bleeding out. He’s hurt, but it does nothing to calm me. I want to grab all my knives and start cutting up his limbs, bit by bit. I want to hear him scream, I want to spill his blood, I want REVENGE FOR WHAT HAPPENED TO HER.
Raging in pain, I smash my fists into his face. “Why’d you take her? Why? You motherfucker, WHY HER?!”
“To fuck YOU!” he yells back, spitting out blood from his mouth.
“What did she say?” I shake him hard before I slam my knuckles into his jaw again. “Her last words before she fell, what did she say?”
He grins a bloodied grin, and I slam him with my knuckles, blood spurting from his mouth. “What did she say, asshole?” I demand, the pain so deep I feel like an animal. Soulless. Lifeless. A killing machine, nothing more. A brutal rage beats through me.
I’m a raging maniac, stewing inside, hurting inside.
I’m inadequate for her but it can’t stop me.
She’s the soul I don’t have.
I thought I was dead before.
No.
I was only dormant.
She woke me up, but now, if anything happens to her, I’m dead. A walking corpse. He groans in pain when I slam him again.
“You make her beg? You make her beg you to let her go?”
Wyatt sucks in a breath. “Yeah, asshole, I made her beg.”
“How’d she beg you? For how long?”
“Look, I was angry.”
“How long did she beg for her life? Did she say please? Did she?”
“Minutes. Only minutes!”