He wants us to … shoot a dead body. So that we look guilty. So that we can’t tell the authorities.
“Don’t mind him. He was a rapist who couldn’t control his urges. Less than a dog. If you think about it, he wasn’t even really human anyway.” I mean, Mr. Volli has a point. Rapists aren’t human; they’re trash. But still … that doesn’t mean I want to hold a gun or shoot a corpse or be involved in any of this.
I look Mr. Volli straight in the face, into brown eyes that are too pale to be reminiscent of mine. But then, I know where I got my eye color from. My eyes are Tess’ eyes. But are there parts of me that came from this man?
“Are you Justin?” I ask, but Mr. Volli just continues to stare at me, the gun held in his outstretched hand.
“Take it.” He waits until I finally reach out, curling my fingers around the weapon.
“Dakota,” Chasm warns, but we’ve already been through so much, done so much to save Parrish. The guy is already dead, and now here I am, with a weapon in hand.
“If I shoot you, maybe I go tell the cops everything from start to finish. Maybe we find Parrish safe and sound and this is all over?” I grip the weapon, placing my finger on the trigger and then pointing it at Mr. Volli.
Still, he doesn’t seem concerned.
And I have no idea if I could actually do it, kill a person like that.
It’s unfathomable.
“Maybe,” Mr. Volli replies, giving me a small, polite smile in response. “Or maybe I’m not Justin, and you disobey the Slayer’s orders, and then we’re all dead. What do you think about that?”
I glance back at the dead guy. The dead rapist, I tell myself, because that makes it a little bit easier.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I raise the weapon, close my eyes and fire.
Chasm takes me back to his place since we can’t exactly drive through a horde of reporters with blood on our clothes. I’m so distracted by what I’ve just seen that I barely register the grandiosity of his home. It’s a palace compared to the Vanguard’s place.
“Over seven-thousand square feet of misery and loneliness,” is how Chasm introduces it as we drive through the front gate and into a brick courtyard with a fountain. He parks the car beside the front steps and we both climb out, heading into an impressive foyer and up an even more impressive set of marble steps.
It occurs to me that this isn’t the same house that I saw before, the one with the lake beside it.
“This is your house?” I query, blinking in surprise as Chasm pushes open a door to a hallway and then leads me down to the end. He pauses beside another door to glance back at me, a wry expression on his face. There are spatters of blood all over his shirt and neck. I wonder if he knows that?
“Oh. Yeah. The other place you saw is the house we lived in when I first came to the United States. My dad’s seen some success since then.” He snorts and pushes open the door, leading me into a massive bedroom with an attached bath. This doesn’t look like his room anymore than the other one did, more like a hotel suite or something. “Normally, it’s a vacation rental. I’ve been begging for years to live there by myself, but he won’t have it.” Chasm kicks open the door to the bathroom and starts the shower, turning around to face me. “He’s got friends staying there now or else I would’ve taken you there.”
He hooks his thumb in the direction of the shower.
“Go ahead and rinse off. I’ll go next.” He starts to leave when I reach out and grab onto his arm, pressing my forehead to his bicep.
“Please don’t go,” I whisper, pushing back the assault of images in my brain. The dead maid, the disturbing coldness on that monster’s face, Mr. Volli’s awful smile. Is he really my dad? Has he been watching me in class for three months and plotting?
The thought makes me sick.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I add, waiting with bated breath for Chas to respond.
Finally, as if he’s given it some thought, Chasm steps back from me and takes off his own shirt. Together, we strip down and climb into the shower together. It’s a huge fucking shower, bigger even than the one I have back at Tess’ place. There’s more than enough room for us to share without touching.
We stare at each other, the blood draining off our naked skin and swirling down the drain. If I were in a different state of mind, I might find something wrong with this. But there’s nothing sexual between me and Chas, not right now, not after what we’ve seen, what we did.
