Chapter 47: Codename: Blackheart Chapter Forty-Seven

I jolt awake as I feel something touch my lips. Instinctively I flinch away, thinking it’s Hadleigh back for another round of torture.

“It’s just water,” I hear Elijah’s gentle voice say. I force my good eye open, as my other is now swollen shut. Even in this dim light I am able to make out the guilt that is all over his handsome face. I glance at the water bottle and gladly let him help me sip from it. It hurts, but I can feel how dehydrated my body is, so I’m grateful for the water. I can feel the blood drying on my skin, making my flesh itch. I have so many wounds and injuries at this point that my entire body is just raw with pain.

“Keeping me alive so she can torture me more?” I ask in a croaky voice. Each movement of my mouth makes the cuts and contusions to my face ache and sting painfully.

“I never wanted this, Heart. I didn’t have a choice,” he says, as if pleading for me to forgive him.

“There’s always… a choice. I told you that night… all you had to do… was ask for my help,” I say, each word harder to say than the last.

“I couldn’t take that risk, they–”

“Threatened to kill your mother,” I say, finishing his sentence for him.

He stares at me stunned, “How did you know?”

“I recovered a deleted…” My words are interrupted by a coughing spasm, but I continue once I catch my breath, “Text chain from your phone when I had you unconscious. I read where they said they had your mother and would kill her if you didn’t comply. I also downloaded spyware onto your phone and the phone you thought I didn’t know about so I could listen to your calls.”

“That's what you were doing whenever you were on your laptop?” he asks. I nod in reply, causing him to frown. After a moment he helps me to sip some more water, “I guess you really thought of everything,” he says bitterly as he stands up. He goes to leave the room and pauses, turning back around to face me, “Was any of it real? Did you feel anything for me or was it just all part of this game I was stuck in the middle of?”

“You really are a piece of work,” I croak, “Your sister tried to kill me twice, and in case you didn’t notice, now has me tied up where she’s been torturing me. This is also while I’m still suffering from my injuries during The Tournament. I’m going to die, and you’re standing there wanting me to feel sorry for you? You want an apology because I tried to preserve my own life? You have the nerve to stand there, throwing yourself a pity party, when the worst that you had endured so far is a bullet graze to the shoulder. Get the fuck over yourself. You lied to me, deceived me, and still helped your sister at every turn. I offered you an out several times and you refused to take it. So don’t you fucking dare try to play the victim,” I say in a rush and groan in pain at the amount of effort that little speech took out of me.

Elijah looks down in shame, but then squares his shoulders and glares at me, “You tried to kill her first. You got yourself into this mess,” he says in a lame attempt at justification. I roll my good eye. “Why did you try to kill my sister anyway?” he asks, folding his arms over his chest.

“Because she’s a psychotic bitch. A fact you’re already well aware of,” I croak with a smirk on my face.

“Bullshit. You don’t kill for the fun of it,” he points out. Man learned a thing or two I guess.

“I was hired by her fifth husband. Your sister is a notorious gold digger. Marries men, drains them dry, then moves on to the next. Only husband number five was much smarter. He made her sign a prenup, which left her with only one option, but she’s not very smart when she doesn’t have daddy’s help. Her husband found out about her past and that she was planning to kill him, so he decided to kill her first and he contacted me. I then put a bullet in her head. Unsuccessfully, it seems. He mysteriously died in a car accident a year later,” I tell him, wishing this conversation would end so I can rest.

Elijah just stares at me, looking paler than usual before making a quick dash out of the room. He already has hate and disdain for his sister, how could he even think for a second that she’s the victim in all this? Everything that’s happening right now is a result of her actions, not mine. If she didn’t go around ripping men off and hadn’t planned to kill her husband, I wouldn’t have been dragged into this family’s crazy fucking mess. I wouldn’t be in this dark, dank room as my body wastes away. I don’t know how much longer my heart can take this, or if Hadleigh will kill me first, but I know either way I’ll be dead…

But I don’t have to be.

I can’t believe I was so ready to give up! I’m not trapped in The Tournament anymore, I’m in some underground holding cell that looks like it hasn’t seen a refurbishment in over a century. I’m not helpless. I actually have a chance to get out of here and get myself to a hospital before it’s too late.

I look around as adrenaline and determination race through my system. I squint my good eye and can make out some kind of screw embedded in the stone wall at the far end of the cell. I take a deep breath and with all my remaining strength, force the chair to waddle back towards the wall. Every jostle of the chair and every strain from my body is further torture, but it means freedom, so it’s fucking worth it.

I manage to make it to the wall, and I have to catch my breath. I can feel the pain in my chest returning, my heart pounding at an unnatural rhythm as it continues to suffer the effects of the aconite. I just need my heart to hang on a little while longer. I reach out behind me until I feel the duct tape around my wrists brush against the screw and I begin rubbing against it with more force. Soon, I can feel the screw cutting through the tape. Eventually, the tape breaks and I am able to free my hands, feeling a horrible ache through my shoulders as blood flow is properly restored. I reach down and tear the tape from around my ankles and get to my feet, using the wall for support. Fire shoots through my feet, but I just keep telling myself this pain is worth it.

This pain will keep me alive. I can handle this.

I limp to the other side of the room one agonising step at a time, pick up one of the scalpels Hadleigh used on me, and stand to the side of the door. I take a deep lungful of air and begin screaming with everything I have. It’s not long before Hadleigh rushes into the room with two goons behind her. I quickly step forward and puncture the scalpel into the carotid arteries of the goons, one after the other, as Hadleigh turns around with a look of terror on her face.

Oh, I’ve missed this.

For the last few days, I have been a victim. At the mercy of a sick game where I was not in control over what happened to me. People laughing and cheering and jeering at my suffering. Not an ounce of fear shown for me or what I’m capable of. But here in this moment, as her two bodyguards drop to the ground clutching their necks in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding, I finally see the fear in her eyes. I’ve missed that. That look that tells me they understand I’m the predator and they’re the prey. She thought she was at the top of the food chain. The Great White ready to rip me apart, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. She may have proven to be the Great White in this scenario, but I’m a fucking Orca, and there’s nothing a Great White fears more. There’s no greater apex predator, and that predator is me. Not Alina Istrati but fucking Blackheart.

Hadleigh pulls out a gun from behind her and aims it at me. I make a quick swipe at her hand with the scalpel causing her to immediately drop the gun. I lunge at her, pressing her against the stone wall as terror coats her deformed features and I savour every fucking second of it.

“Please, don’t kill me,” she whimpers as I press the scalpel to her throat.

“You came pretty close to smacking me down, I’ll give you that. But you just had to have the final say. You had to be the one to kill me face to face. Once again your ego is going to get you killed, and this time, there’s no coming back. Lesson learned; don’t fuck with a professional,” I say as I slice the blade across her throat.

I feel as the blood spurts out against me, and her eyes widen in fear as her miserable life flashes before her eyes – or some poetic shit like that. She clutches her throat, trying to stop the bleeding. I watch her body slide down against the wall until she hits the floor with gargled sounds coming out of her mouth and throat. She reaches out to grab me, silently begging me to help her and I take a slow, unsteady step back. I quietly watch as the blood gushes from her throat and soon enough, her hands drop to her sides, and she stares at me with a vacant expression in her eyes as she takes her final breath. This time, I’m positive she’s dead.

I pick up her gun and limp out of the room, making my way down a cold, wet, stone corridor, using the walls for support as I come to a partially open room. I walk in and see two men standing to the side talking, while Elijah is standing off to the other side minding his own business. As I enter, the two men go to draw their guns, but I raise mine, factoring in my impaired vision as I fire two shots, one into each of their skulls and watch as they drop to the floor. I then turn and point my gun at Elijah, who freezes in fear with his hands raised in surrender.

Elijah doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t beg for his life or plead his case. He doesn’t give me some final speech about coming to terms with his death. Nothing. There are no words as we stare at each other.

Slowly Elijah lowers his arms and I see his posture relax a little as if he has accepted his fate. “Do it. We both know I deserve it,” he says remorsefully.

I stare right into his ocean-blue eyes and aim my gun. “How pathetic,” I say as I pull the trigger and watch him drop to the ground with a thud. Without another look at him, I make my way out of this shit hole in search of the nearest hospital.