ILLICIT DESIRES | 18 +

09: Drunk, But Not Dead

ROMAN

Gaia.

I stare at my target — the woman I am meant to kill, trapped between the wall and me. She doesn't fight for her life. She stands like a Gorgon carved from stone, eyes closed as if waiting for me to deliver closure with one clean shot.

My finger tightens on the trigger, pulled halfway. Just a fraction more, and it's over.

Mission complete.

But I can't.

A single word escapes her lips, delicate yet resolute—and something human in me stirs. The sound freezes me where I stand. It confirms who she is.

My instincts scream.

It's her.

The woman in the green dress. The one who embodied Gaia a year ago. The lips that killed for me, whose taste I've hidden away like contraband — sweet, forbidden and unforgettable.

Capo wants her dead — a message for her father, the traitor who sold himself to the Russians. But notoriety, vengeance and even loyalty dissolve the moment I look at her.

She has haunted me ever since she let me devour her. I dreamed of tasting her again—alive and intoxicating.

And now here she is.

Broken. Trembling. Wasted.

Her fragile figure drags me back to the night I saved my sister from traffickers. My sister—once innocent, until predators shattered her world. If I kill this woman now, if I turn her into a Corpse Bride, how am I any different from the rotten hands that destroyed my sister?

I should follow orders. I should feel nothing beyond apathy.

That's why I plied her with alcohol—to leave her dazed, disoriented, easier to kill. But the name she whispered shattered that plan. It stripped the veil from my eyes.

The room itself feels uncanny, adorned like the heart of the Amazons. Nightshade woven through her hair. Her words drifting like Mother Nature's breath.

And beneath it all, I recognize the venomous lips that betrayed her identity with a single word.

Gaia.

I owe her a life.

I exhale. If I let her live, she's mine to bear. My predicament. My burden. And though I groan at the thought, the decision is already made.

She will live. She must. And if she complies, maybe I'll find a way to settle this debt.

But I know this won't be simple. She is peculiar. An implicit killer. Drunk, wild, unpredictable. Now she's my responsibility — a mess I've chosen.

Illicit.

Dangerous.

So I drag her from this massacre, praying she won't catch a stray bullet.

If fate is kind, she won't get shot.

*****POV SWITCH*****

RITA

Flashbacks.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die, but here I am — no spiral of memories and no final reliving of my misery.

I only see black. Just blank darkness.

Where are my flashbacks? Shouldn't I be reliving the nights when Father's rage crashed over me, leaving bruises on my skin? Yet there's nothing. Just a hollow void stretching endlessly behind my closed eyes.