To Slow a Treacherous Heart ✓

24| An Unsatisfactory End

Date Published: 30th April 2019

Twenty Four: An Unsatisfactory End

May watched the not-so-ex-love of her life drop listlessly to the floor.

"Ryan!" she shouted, getting up and lunging for him.

Thorne pulled May off of him and tightened his hands on her neck. He lifted her up. "Finally," he whispered reverently, his eyes gleaming at her inability to move. "It's a pity you have to die. I did love you. But it's hard to live in Violet's shadow,"

He smiled a wicked, asinine smile. He didn't care what happened after this. He got his revenge.

Then he was no longer needed in this world.

He could almost feel the pill he would use to end it in his pocket.

Maybe one of the clever detectives would put a bullet through him and save him all the trouble.

As for now, he would just concentrate on crushing this girls windpipe. She wasn't making it easy.

May felt his cold, bony fingers coil themselves around her throat. The grip cut off even the slightest notch of air to pass through her windpipe. She felt as though all the blood was rushing from her head and the rest of her body began feeling cold. Cold and numbing. The blood seemed to crush themselves into a tight space, like air pressure in a balloon.

Her hands automatically went to the source of the problem. But all the scratching, scraping and prying would not bring her any comfort, and her strength was ebbing, like the wind after raging a thoroughly trying tempest.

And then he lifted her off the ground.

Her grip tightened and her legs flailed about her. She tried to kick him, but somehow-even in his old age he managed to keep her far enough; suspended.

Thorne had been trained by the violent, punishing life as a circus man. He'd had to do everything by himself. Lifting an almost underweight girl would be like switching on a light. Adding to that his perverse pleasure at seeing her squirm. Her inescapability was pretty much guaranteed.

With the air way to her lungs shut, she began to feel lightheaded. Her panic began to annihilate every muscle in her system-and just as suddenly it left her. A sense of calm enveloped her. Lulling her into its dark, slumberous embrace. She felt herself falling, falling, falling.

A shot burst forth.

But she'd already fallen.

***

Her eyes burst open, and panic overwhelmed her.

The menagerie of colour that had been awaiting her arrival attacked her with painful realism.

She got up, disoriented.

Her neck and everything contained within the rim of her purple-singed skin felt like it was on fire.

Her hands flew to her throat as her mind processed the scene around her.

The room was drenched in blood. But it matched the rest of the colour scheme. A crazy thought.

Bodies scattered the room, the men within them groaning. They'd been de-weaponized, with their hands tied; left to bleed out. She wondered why Ryan's men hadn't just killed them.

Then she heard the chilling ring of the ambulance and the police cars that had plagued her youth and understood.

Thorne lay just a few feet from her, immobilized.

She didn't know what to feel.

She definitely felt anger. Anger and relief.

Relief that he was either dead or on the way there.