Page 90 of Bells
“How? How was what you did to me even close to anything I did to you? I never held you down. I never forced you?—”
He cut me off by grabbing my lips between two fingers and pinching them closed. “Penetration is penetration, sweetheart. You shot me.Stabbed me. But I can’t fuck you in the ass?” He paused but he didn’t let go of my mouth. He didn’t really want an answer. “No matter how you try to justify it to yourself, what you did to me ain’t any different from what I did to you. We’re the same.”
He lowered his hand, and I spit blood at his feet. I had been so pissed off I’d chewed a hole in my own cheek. “I’m nothing like you.”
“You’re worse,” he countered at the same time I finished with, “I’m better.”
Then I reached through the slit in my pantsuit, grabbing the pouch I had attached to my thigh, and drew out the taser Gabby and I had spent the last few days modifying. I didn’t give Casper a chance to react before I was sending enough electricity into his chest to take down an elephant, or in this instance, stop a human heart from beating.
“Zero,” I whispered into the night air.
His eyes widened and he was able to get out one word as he collapsed to his knees and then curled up on his side. “Alice.”
“What about her?” I was quick to ask, but he didn’t look like he was breathing anymore. I tossed the taser aside and jumped on top of him, straddling his waist as I gripped up the lapels of his tux jacket. “What about Alice?”
He didn’t move.
“Fuck.” I positioned my hands over his chest and started doing compressions. My arms nearly giving out and my interest giving up when he finally fluttered his lashes open. “Nowit’s an even trade,” I grunted.
He took in a shuttering breath. And then he took three more.
“What about Alice?” I repeated.
“She’s alive,” he huffed.
“No, she’s not.”
“Yes, she is.”
“I saw her myself,” I reminded him.
“Did ya see her pull… the trigger…?” A wheeze and a cough.
I didn’t reply because we both knew the answer. I hadn’t seen my sister blow her own brains out. Just the aftermath. The blood on the walls and ceiling. The dress and necklace she’d been wearing. What was left of her hair sticking to bits of her skull and her feet positioned out in front of her, like a porcelain doll someone had dropped on its head and shattered into a million pieces…
My hand slipped into my pocket to rub my keychain. It came up empty. I didn’t have my keys on me. They were back at the house, locked in a safe I didn’t have a code to and wasn’t so dumb as to try to pry open.
“Don’t believe me…? Ask Vee,” Casper grunted. Then he threw his head back on the concrete and closed his eyes. He was still breathing, though. He just looked like he wasn’t.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
CASPER
“You okay?”
I peeked one of my eyes open to find the bossman crouched at my side.
“I think I love her.” I smirked, closed my eye, and blinked them both open again. Except no one was there this time. Didn’t know if I’d imagined him or if he’d been creeping around like he usually was. Could have gone either way and I couldn’t be fucked enough to find out.
I pushed up on my elbows and saw Bellatrix’s silhouette disappearing down the long driveway, her shoes swinging in her hands and her hair blowing behind her. She was walking like she was pissed. But thankfully, I didn’t think it was aimed at me anymore. Or at least not all of it was aimed at me.
I rolled onto my knees, cracked my neck from side to side, pushed off the ground, and sprinted after her. “Wait up!”
“Why?” she grumbled out of the side of her mouth.
I slowed my pace to walk beside her. Which wasn’t easy. I could tell her feet were bothering her on the gravel and two of her steps were already one of mine. “You gonna ask her?”
“Why do you care?”
