The Price ࿊f Peace

☮️: 017

Somewhere in Oakland

The bathroom.

The bathroom.

Syara had tried the best she could to just make it to the bathroom.

Well, the bathroom floor.

The floor she was currently lying on, cold tile pressed against her swollen face. She still had the dried blood from yesterday painted on her face.

It was only her nose and her eye that were hurting. Her eye was pressed against the floor, she couldn't feel her hands, and her nose was still throbbing from the pressure of the floor.

Her phone was...somewhere.

She honestly didn't know where she'd put it last and she didn't really care, to be honest.

She'd been lying there for hours without a single thought in her brain. She started in the kitchen when she'd stumbled through the door.

Immediately, she staggered toward her room with her bathroom in mind, falling short of her door and getting to her kitchen floor where she sat slumped against her cabinets, immobile and bleeding from her face for the first few hours.

Long after her nose had finished gushing, she stood from where she was sitting, swaying on her feet, falling into her walls for support before tripping over her feet onto the bathroom floor.

She couldn't tell whether she'd gone to sleep or not. She didn't even realize she was awake at that moment.

For the second time in less than 24 hours, Syara didn't know what to feel. So, she chose to feel nothing for a little bit.

A little bit turned into a while, however, which was why she was still lying on this bathroom tile.

Closing her eyes, she subconsciously decided to just go somewhere else.

She didn't even register it when the door to her apartment started to sound.

She didn't even remember whether or not she'd locked the door. She heard it creak open.

She'd go with no.

Syara sighed in annoyance, reaching to open her bathroom cabinet to grab her stashed Kimber micro 9. mm that she kept under her sink in case of emergencies. She didn't even sit up from her position on the floor.

She heard the footsteps approaching her room, more specifically, the door to her bathroom, pointing her gun at the open door.

Rounding the corner was the one and only Elijah Amaral.

Yay. Syara thought unenthusiastically, still pointing her gun at him.

He was holding his, but it was down at his side now. He looked down to her small gun, unimpressed, then up to her face.

"Stop pointing that shit at me." Money ordered her.

She kept her gun leveled at his head.

Money sucked his teeth, finally displaying his gun to her, pointing it toward the ceiling, then crouching to place it on the floor in front of her, and sliding it over to where she was with the barrel in his direction.

A show of harmlessness.

She kept her gun leveled.

Money could see it in her eyes, she wouldn't shoot him. He knew she wouldn't.

So he stepped forward, slowly, step by step, he got closer until he was right in front of her raised gun.

Maintaining eye contact, he called her bluff, sitting back on his haunches in front of her to put his head directly in line with the barrel of her gun.