Pink Walls

Sunday Morning [Part I]✓

“I can't believe that she was right.”

For the first time since the gunfire stopped, I was realizing just now how cold the air was. It blanketed me in a soothing way and with each breath I took, helped reinforce the fact that I had made it this far without having to take a life personally.

Till now, I hadn't been forced to make that choice—mostly because Saffron had no problems making it for me. She knew how to handle herself and as a bodyguard, that made me sort of irrelevant.

I was the perfect example of a bad investment but she still kept me around. I should have been happy.

I wasn't.

I knew that one day, my luck would run out. With three months left till I could put this all behind me, I was worried that it wouldn't hold out for long enough, and I was more afraid of what killing someone would do to me than of the act itself.

It was a thought that made me sick because it meant that deep down I was actually okay with taking a life and the only thing that was stopping me from doing so was guilt.

"You know, you don't have to stay here, Kay."

My gaze snapped away from the horizon to Ron, and the moment I did I was trapped under her inquisitive stare. I stared back because I didn't know what to say.

I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, she would see right through me, and if she asked me what was wrong I wouldn't be able to lie to her.

Since the fighting stopped, I hadn't moved from this spot.

From here I could see all the people who were milling about. I had my eyes on all the vehicles parked in the compound. If anyone wanted to hurt Ron, I'd see them before they saw me. I'd handle the situation before they got a chest full of bullets just because of a brief moment of stupidity.

I let out a breath and tugged on my gloves. They offered little in the way of warmth but I was thankful to have them on. Wearing them made me feel clean—knowing that there was no blood on my hands.

"I know, Ron," I answered as softly as I could. Any louder and she would have been able to tell that I was hiding something.

She nodded and turned around to continue conversing with whoever was on the phone with her. She talked in harsh whispers while drumming her fingers on her thigh.

She wasn't happy.

It had taken half-hour for Saffron's men to finish sweeping the compound and capturing the rest of Antonia's people, and all the while, I stayed silently by her side despite her telling me five minutes in that she was no longer in any need for protection.

I just couldn't bring myself to leave the mansion until I was done watching the 'meeting room' get wiped down and bleached by her family's professional cleaning crew. She had called them in to fix the mess we made after all the shooters in the mansion had been handled, but they didn't start with the room Antonia attacked us in so I had to wait and watch them carry bodies out to the vans parked out front.

I had counted twenty-four dead before I couldn't anymore, and it made my stomach turn. I didn't know which of the men had been killed when I had tossed all those grenades and I had no one to talk to about the itch in my lungs that just wouldn't go away.

I wanted to scream.

I had been doing this for nearly three years now and I still felt like my body was eating itself out from the inside when I thought about what I had done today.

I was pathetic.

I knew—without anyone having to tell me—that my prints were probably all over the room.