Veil of Deception: The Replacement wife

Blood

Scarlet POV:
I killed him. I really killed someone.
The gun bucked in my hands like a living thing making me stagger back slightly, the recoil slamming up my arms and into my shoulders so hard I nearly dropped it instantly.

The smell of burnt powder filled the dusty air, sharp and metallic. Vincent's eyes those cold, mocking eyes went wide, then empty. He folded forward, knees first, like someone had cut every string holding him upright.

The sound his body made when it hit the stone floor was heavier than I expected. Final.

I looked at the man I had killed but nothing but hated for myself that I could be so cold what I had become for the one I loved.

For one heartbeat the church was silent.

Then everything exploded at once: shouts, boots pounding, guns swinging toward me. I was still holding the pistol, arms trembling, finger frozen on the trigger. Alex's voice cut through the chaos, calling my name, and I let the weapon fall. It clattered away across the broken tiles like it was glad to be free of me but maybe it was me.

He reached me in three strides quick before I even really registered it.

His arms came around me so hard my ribs creaked but I loved the feeling, and I buried my face in his neck, breathing him in the familiar scent of gun oil, sweat, the faint cedar of his cologne that somehow always survived even things like this.

I felt myself shaking so violently my teeth chattered. I had just killed a man. I had just shot my husband's brother through the heart and I couldn't feel my hands.

"It's over," Alex whispered into my hair, over and over, like a spell. "You did it. You're safe. Shh."

I wanted to answer, but my throat was raw from screaming and kicked up dust and terror I felt courting through my veins. All I could do was cling to him, fingers twisted in the back of his shirt, letting the warmth of him slowly burn away my fears.

I felt he lift me as though I weighed nothing.

The world tilted, stone floor falling away, and then we were moving, out through the splintered doors double door into the cold night. Moonlight spilled across the courtyard, silvering the broken statues and the puddles of old rain.

The air tasted clean for the first time in hours. I pressed my face harder against Alex's throat
breathing him like oxygen, feeling the frantic thud of his pulse under my lips.

I managed one shaky sentence, barely a breath. "I got him for you."

Alex's arms tightened until I could feel every ridge of every rib. "Yes you did.., shh, baby let's go home.."
We were almost to the cars. Floodlights snapped on, blinding white, turning the world stark and shadowless.

I heard shouting orders off in the distance, doors slamming, the low growl of engines left on.

Then the world ended.
There was no warning. One moment I was weightless in Alex's arms, the next something punched through me from behind, a white-hot hammer just above my left hip straight into my gut.

The impact snapped my spine straight; my head rocked back so hard I saw stars. A spray of my blood spattered across Alex's jaw. I heard him roar my name, felt us falling, knees hitting the earth.

Pain came a half-second later, a blooming, ripping fire that stole every ounce of air from my lungs. I couldn't scream. I couldn't breathe.

All I could do was gasp against his neck, a wet, animal sound.

Blood. So much blood. It poured hot over my skin, soaking the silk of my ruined dress, running down my thigh in thick pulses.

It tore me open.
a white-hot spike. For one impossible heartbeat there was only pressure, a brutal, crushing weight that slammed the air from my lungs. Then the pain detonated like a bomb had exploded.