In Too Deep

Forty

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It was morning. He had been awake, and she had been awake with him. Bright orange light shined through the gaps in the curtains, but it couldn't chase away the gloom and the dark shadows on Vicious's face.

"I'm hungry. I didn't eat when I came running to you. That was how anxious I was to see you."

"Shut the fuck up," he replied for the hundredth time, rubbing his temple with the barrel of the gun. He squeezed his face as if he was in pain before he heard her movements and looked up. His face flamed. "And get the fuck off my bed!"

"No," Nova stated firmly, staring back at him. "I've been on this bed enough that it smells more of me than you." She smiled gently. "Is that the reason why you can't get on the bed? Because it smells like me and you can't allow yourself to breathe into it?"

Vicious' jaw clenched. He didn't answer. Instead, his gun made a clicking sound and she saw the metal pointed to her forehead. She must have hit some nerve there. It told her he still cared. He still loved her, and he wouldn't be able to kill her if he wanted to. It made a smile slip onto her face.

"You can't kill me, Vic," she muttered, wrapping her arms around herself as if she was envisioning his arms around her. "You can point it at me all you want, but you can't pull the trigger. That's why you set your men out there—to do your dirty job, and guess what? I'm not going out there. If you can't kill me yourself, no one can. No one gets to kill me. No one has the right to."

His fingers twitched on the trigger as if to prove her words wrong, but she knew she was right. He could hate her all he wanted. He could point the gun and threaten her, but he wouldn't be able to pull the trigger. He loved her too much to kill her. They both knew it would haunt him. They both knew it would ruin him.

"Do you remember the first time we met?" she randomly asked. "The first time I saved your life, I didn't know it was you. I admit that I didn't allow myself to look at the pictures of the man who hurt my brother because I thought I would flip and run to kill you at that moment. Meeting you for the first time..." She laughed huskily, staring at him, but she was looking right through him. "Oh, Vicious, it's fate, isn't it? How cruel. The only reason we got to meet is that you hurt my brother and I planned to hurt you back. Why couldn't it have been different?" she asked, her face pale with sadness and grief. "Why didn't we meet like everyone else?"

"Because fate is a bitch and it doesn't pick who to be nice to," he finally answered.

Nova nodded, taking a deep breath. Tears welled up in her eyes because she couldn't believe this was happening to them. That fate had decided to be cruel to them both. "I still hate you," she told him, her voice cracking each word. "I hate what you did to us, and if I manage to get out of here alive, I'm still coming for you." A single tear trickled down her cheek. "What would all of this have been for if I let you go freely? You have to pay up, Vic. Isn't that what you gang leaders do? People pay their debts to you in any way possible."

"As long as you can get me," he countered immediately. "You either have to kill me or get killed by me. That's the only way it can work, doll. You won't let this go and I won't. If being dead is the only way to pay the debt..." he trailed off, leaving it off like that.

Nova tightened her arms around her waist and kept her gaze locked on him. "Or you can surrender to me. End this before anyone gets hurt. It's the only way to fix this."

"You want me dead."

"Death is a gift that you don't deserve. What you did to my brother, the payment can't be repaid in blood. I want you to suffer the way I did." Her voice was croaky and broken. "Do you know what I had to do to get here? Make this easier for us. Pay me back, Vic."