Page 92 of Poisoned Promise
“I want to hear you say it,” Felix snaps and the vein down the length of his neck bulges. “Say it.”
I remain silent.
“Say it!” Felix yells! “Tell me you killed him! Tell me you murdered my best friend, mybrother,for no fucking reason! Tell me why? He was the only family I had left, hell he was your friend too! We hung out together so often that it was almost weird when he wasn’t there. He knew our secret and he protected us, he protected me! How could you do that to him? To me?!”
Flashes of that fateful night ignite in my mind and I close my eyes, focusing on blocking them. I don’t want to remember. I don’t need to.
“How could you look me in the eye now, knowing you did that? How could youfuckme knowing that?”
I open my eyes and our gazes meet. “It was easy.”
“Easy?” he almost chokes on the word and takes a half-step back as if restraining himself from something. “It was easy?!”
I nod slowly, biting back a wince. “For a long time… I thought you killed my family. I thought you were there that night Caterina slaughtered everyone. So I hated you. It was easy to hate you because I thought you were the reason my entire family was dead.”
“Deserved,” he snarls. “For what you did.” A deep breath inflates his chest, and he tears his gaze away, his jaw working overtime as he chews over his words. “I wasn’t there.”
“I know. I didn’t know that then but… at dinner, you let slip about when you heard what happened to my family. That’s when I knew you weren’t there but part of me thought you still knew about Nico and you were just playing a game. A game I played along with to keep myself and Alex safe.”
His head lowers and our eyes meet. “So it’s true. You murdered him.”
Exhaustion makes my shoulders sag and I nod weakly. “I did.”
“Why?” Felix blinks quickly. “How much did they pay you, huh? What was the life of your friend worth? Would you have killed me next if they asked you to? Would you have sliced my throat open for the right fucking paycheck? All this time, I was sleeping with the Nightingale; was it just for show? Did you use me to get close to him?!”
So many questions yelled at me in increasing volume that they’re hard to track.
Felix has questions and part of me wants to answer them all but if I tell him the truth, I’ll only hurt him more.
Despite being in this sorrowful state, I don’t want to do that.
I’ve hurt him enough and the thought of adding to that, even now, sickens me. Hurting him won’t save me.
Telling him the truth won’t save me. I just need him to stay away.
“You don’t know anything,” I whisper, painfully drawing my bare knees up to my bare chest. “I h-have nothing more to say.”
“No!” Felix yells. Ssuddenly he’s in front of me, dragging me onto unstable feet with his hands gripping my upper arms, then he shakes me back and forth. “Tell me the damn truth, Dove! Tell me how could you do it? Tell me what his life was worth!”
I shakily meet his gaze and swallow hard. “Nothing.”
“What?” Felix’s eyes widen.
“I s-said, nothing.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I wasn’t paid. His life had no worth.”
Felix’s grip tightens painfully on my arms, and pain flashes through his eyes. “So he was worthless to you?”
I nod.
“You’re fucking twisted, you know that? What, did you just kill him for free? For the fun of it?”
“No, it wasn’t?—.”
“And then you fucking ran away! Left your dead family in the dust, left me without an explanation! How fucking cold can you be?”
