Nerium oleander

Mea Culpa

The wind whistled on the ceiling, the pungent smell of paint mixing with the sweet tones of blood, the plastic sheet covering the floor was dusty from the construction work, scarlet stains making it slippery. Avoiding stepping on the sticky liquid was the hard part, footprints and trails were the kind of evidence the police would be ecstatic to find, and though he was in a way facilitating their work, he wouldn't be as kind as to help them catch himself.

Beside him, Lars fidgeted with a cross necklace in his hands, his gaze fixed on the floor as if the mosaic could give him the answer he was looking for.

Lars Abelsson was a man of few words, his sharp sense for business allowed him to open up a few shops and a bar in Adelfa. His hardened exterior was balanced out with a weakness for delicate things, and an almost compulsive sense of harmony within the spaces he owned.

For Lars, the world was simple and neat, everything had a price and he'd made sure to hoard enough money to afford it; there was no space for casualties. The first property he acquired was the family heirloom, a small ornamented house in the southern neighborhood that became a flower shop at his sister's suggestion, though she didn't get to actually see it.

The second property, more flashy and strategically located in the center, was his main income (or at least that's what he'd wanted others to believe) a usually crowded bar with a wild west thematic that diverted the attention from his other property, unlabeled, hidden in a sketchy alleyway in the southern neighborhood lay his actual business, contraband secured the inflow of money and assured a handful of contacts to get information from.

In a different reality, a more cohesive one, he would have been the perfect workmate for officer Braginsky, but the Abbelson family was known for holding grudges and Adelfa's police department had dismissed Emma's search. Unlike his parents, Lars was able to play the informant for the right price, and he had been, until Katya went missing. Lars' agreement with Ivan had crumbled down when the officer began to favor drinking instead of fulfilling his job.

"I don't understand you," Yao sent him a glare as the other squirmed under his gaze. "You butcher him, yet you are not merciful enough to end his suffering?"

"It was an accident, he wasn't meant to be here," Lars retorted, holding the cross tightly.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you're praying." Yao said, frowning as a heavy hand grasped his wrist, a wet cough coming from the man laying on the ground, four stabs and Herakles was still stubbornly clinging to life.

He pried the hand away easily, guiding it so that he could press his wound, the speck of hope in Herakles eyes made him chuckle but his smile vanished as soon as he saw the stain on the edge of his cuff. How troublesome.

"Can't you just... do it?" Lars said, pressing a kerchief on his hand as he sat on the dusty floor, his bloodstained clothes revealing what he'd done.

Herakles whined or at least he tried to, when Yao pushed him back to lay on his back, placing a foot on the hand that had grasped him, the coughs came in quick waves, as Herakles tried not to choke on his own blood. Each sound echoed raucously in the chapel; a decent choir could give a nice performance here.

The more the other resisted, the more force he would add into the squishing hand under his foot. Herakles' auto preservation instinct, choosing his struggling lungs before his hand, urging him to move away. Soon, the struggle became weaker, blood loss finally taking its toll as the coughs subdued, Yao retrieved his foot, a ragged breath akin to a sob escaped Herakles.

"Four stabs don't seem accidental, I'm sure our detectives will count it as a murder," Yao hummed, unbuttoning Herakles shirt, the soaked fabric making the task harder than it should. A distressed victim would have its nerves racing up to escape, to attack, to do something, and that meant rigid and unsavory meat. "This is such a waste, you punctured a lung, it won't take him long to die,"