by N. K. Love
I give him the address along with concise instructions to ensure they do whatever they have to in order to get Beth and Carmel to safety. I also tell him not to try to contact Carmel as it could jeopardise her position.
Beth
During the walk back to my new prison cell, I convinced Carmel to let me write Jax a final note. She only agreed on the grounds that it could help plant the seed about the Unit and he’ll just think that the bad guys would’ve thought it’d leave a poignant message on their behalf. Even though I doubt that Jax will ever see it, I kept it short and wrote from the heart anyway. But that wasn’t the only reason for my request. In the event of my death, I thought of one last ditch attempt to send a message.
“Awww! Lo and behold, you haven’t stabbed yourself to death with that pen. That’s a bloody shame. All that bleeding out would’ve made for quite the theatrical murder scene.” She saunters down the stairs back into the basement, placing a lantern on the last step and another on the table. “You know, the neck would’ve worked just fine provided you were forceful enough. Then again, you don’t strike me as the kind of woman that can handle pain… Never mind though.”
She walks right up to me, until our knees are almost touching, but I’m pretty much immobile now. Earlier, she’d tied my ankles and one wrist to a sturdier chair that she’d brought down from another room, leaving one hand free for me to write with.
“If you want me dead, Carmel, I’m not going to make it easy for you.”
She simply laughs and shrugs out of her black tracksuit jacket, tossing it on the floor beside her. Interlinking her fingers, she cracks her knuckles and then shakes her hands out to either side.
“Okay.” Taking the pen from me, she throws it across the room. “I’m going to need you to hit me now.”
“Say what?”
“You heard me. Aim low, around here…” Carmel points to the side of her mouth and jaw. “I think a bloodied lip will be quite effective—if you can manage that?!”
Carmel kneels down in front of me, resting her hands on my knees, ensuring I notice the gun that she’s now casually holding. She’s actually serious. Morally speaking, the whole ‘helping-my-murderer-cover-her-tracks’ scenario, is fucking weird… But, am I really going to pass up the opportunity to smack Cruella the devil in her evil face? I place the note on my lap…
The fuck I am!
“Fuck It!”
I drop my fist and swing up wide, punching her as hard as my restricted position will allow and god-fucking-dammit it feels good. Carmel falls back onto one hand as she clutches the side of her face with the other. Rolling over onto her knees, she flicks her hair back off her face and her expression tells me she wasn’t expecting that.
Miss Alter Ego isn’t anywhere to be seen. That was me. That was all me. There’s no need to hand over the baton or hide behind the different elements of me anymore. They seem to have all merged into one now and it’s me, confident and strong.
I shamelessly take pleasure in seeing her wince as blood seeps out of the cut at the corner of her mouth.
“I should have bloody known Jaxson would have taught you how to protect yourself. After all, he’s taught me so well.” Her bitchy remarks are wasted on me. If they’re meant to rile me, it isn’t working so I continue to smile sweetly at her as she stretches out her jaw. “Sit on your hand.”
Her gun tells me that she’s not in the mood for entertaining any defiance. So I lift my numb backside up and squeeze my untied hand underneath. Taking a knife from her pocket I instantly think she’s going to maim me as punishment. Instead, she casually tugs up her white tee, holding it up by tucking it under her chin. Looking down, she presses the tip of the blade slowly into her stomach until she pierces through the skin.
“Jesus, Carmel!”
I gulp hard to swallow the vomit trying to force its way up my throat. Without moving her head, she drags her eyes up to meet mine. The cold, distant stare tells me that Carmel is way beyond any form of reason. She is a law unto herself.
“The chest would be a more typical place to mark but, as I recall, Jaxson was very fond of my breasts.”
Pulling my stare away from the intensity of the hypnotic, black hole in her gaze, I glance back down at the blade. I watch in perverse amazement as she grits her teeth, whilst snaking the blade to carve a letter ‘S’ into the centre of her stomach, about the size of her hand. Once again, the wound doesn’t bleed much and, although she’s clearly in pain, it must not be unbearable.
With a grunt of discomfort, the knife is thrown across the table, unfortunately way out of reach for me. She drops her tee, which immediately sticks to the blood.
Here I am, getting kicks from a cut lip, when this sick bitch is happy to shred herself in front of me. Rendering me dumbstruck, I slide my free hand out from beneath me and roughly scrub at my face, trying to stay alert and in the moment. I can almost feel her abnormal mindset trying to grab hold of me and pull me under with it.
She goes out of view, but I can hear that she’s popping pills again. She walks back over to me, seemingly composed now and glances down at the neatly folded scrap piece of paper with ‘Jax’ written on it. As I wrote it, I used it to summon strength through this struggle. With Jax as the paper and the ink as my voice, this is another way to symbolise my connection with him.
“Let’s see.” Snatching it from me, she callously unfolds it. Standing with her weight on one foot, popping out her hip, she screws up her face as she reads. Those are my words meant for Jax’s eyes and as I watch her read, the cogs of my hatred keep on turning. With an unimpressed roll of her eyes, she refolds the note and slides it into her pocket. “Hmm. I suppose it’ll do.”
Okay. So she’s made her call to Jax, to ensure he steers clear until the morning, she has evidence of an apparent beating from our kidnappers and a nasty wound to prove it and she now has a handwritten note from me, which corroborates her story. She has no other use for me now.
“What happens after you kill me?”
“Ahhh. I am glad you’ve asked. That’s actualy my favourite part. Okay… I walk to that spot where we picked up a signal and call Jaxson. I give him a damsel-in-distress rendition of the terrible circumstances we’ve faced. I’ll sob down the phone about how I begged them to spare you and kill me, but they were adamant that it had to be you… I’ll tell him how they marked me, but decided to spare my life so that I could tell him how they made poor Bethany suffer and how you screamed his name right up until they fired the first bullet into your head. He’ll come here, cradle your lifeless body and his hatred will fuel his revenge. Voila! The Unit is reborn. My father’s legacy will live on, in the hands of the two people that deserve it most. With you out of the picture, he’ll thrive where he belongs once more…” At this point in the overly enthusiastic relay of her plans, she studies me curiously, as though she’s trying to read my mind. “The best of it is, he’ll never know that it was him who delivered you into the lion’s den and then flew off on some bogus mission.”
Carmel’s shrill laugh echoes around the room. She really does have it all planned. When her cackle subsides, she points the gun at my head.
“So, so—is this it then?”
“Shhh. What’s the rush, sweetie?” She strokes the side of the gun down my face. “Are you in a hurry to meet your maker?” I gulp hard, squaring my shoulders and shake my head. “First, Bethany, we need to talk.”
Up until now, my self-discipline has pulled me through minute by minute. I’ve avoided imagining how this is actually going to end. I haven’t dwelled on the consequences of her actions because there’s nothing I can do about them. But hearing her say ‘the first bullet to your head’, is like having a reality check via a sucker punch to the gut.
I can’t deny this reality of mine anymore. So, I vow to myself that by breaking down and quivering in fear, all I’ll achieve is filling my final moments with misery.
There’s only one person that’s consistently kept me strong throughout
this whole ordeal. When Jax is so imprinted within, it makes it impossible for him to ever leave me. My heart may thump harder as I break into a cold sweat, but no matter the danger, provided I take refuge inside the safety of Jax’s love, I am invincible.
Carmel cannot compete with that. She can’t and it makes me strong. I’m in the most vulnerable place I’ve ever been in my life, but I will be strong, I swear it.
“You won’t get away with this, Carmel.” My voice trembles, contradicting the way that I’m trying to confidently hold my chin up. “Even if you convince Jax and the police, you can’t convince karma—not when your soul bears all of your dark, sordid secrets. You will pay.”
“You are probably right, Bethany. Unfortunately for you though, I couldn’t care less about karma.”
There’s no physical way out of this situation, which is why I keep trying to mess with her head to throw her off guard and tap into a better angle to play this. No matter how unshakeable she appears, there’s something I’m missing.
You are only as strong as your weakest link. Is her weakness the same as mine? Is Jax her weakest link?
“Why though? Why don’t you care?”
“I gave up believing in karma a long time ago. But, I do believe in destiny. I have been through enough shite in my lifetime to know in my heart that Jaxson was sent for me as a way to right the wrongs from my childhood. Other than my father, he is the only person I’ve ever trusted.”
“What about Dean?” I blurt out unintentionally, too intrigued by this rare glimpse into her unhinged mind.
“Dean?” She scoffs. “I may have stupidly given him my love, but never my trust. He didn’t know about my ‘past’. When he betrayed me, that’s when I realised that the person who deserves my love and trust, needs to know everything. Jaxson would never betray me…” Just like before, she stops to assess my reaction to her words, but I remain silently impassive. A second later she drifts back into her own mind. “The way he made love to me… The unprecedented emotions he brought to life inside of me, for the first time… I knew, I just knew that he was the chosen one.” Carmel’s vacant stare demonstrates how she can so effortlessly slip into a trance. She’s in her own sinister world where all the shit she’s spewing and doing makes complete and utter sense. It seems that she’s spent her life with her questionable sanity teetering on a knife-edge. “You know, I asked him to go hard on me. Told him I like to be crudely dominated. Told him I liked it rough. It’s all I’d ever known—”
“Carmel, I—”
“He did nothing of the sort. It’s like he knew I was broken because he was too. He gently poured so much emotion into me, I couldn’t help but come to life… I’d never had that sort of sensation before, until him… After spending the night with him, I knew that together we could fix each other. Jaxson is a complicated man, but I’m a determined woman. I knew it was never going to be easy… My father saw what I saw. Daddy lived far from a sheltered life, but he didn’t let people get close to him, or to me. Except Jaxson…”
Carmel sees me focusing on the blood that has soaked through her tee. She crouches down carefully to retrieve her jacket and puts it back on, zipping it up.
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
Again, she continues as if I’d not spoken.
“When my father fell ill, I was certain he’d pass his title onto Jaxson. He was the perfect choice. But after my father’s death, when the boss announced themselves, it wasn’t him. Jaxson said that he was respectful of my father’s decision. Yet, it always confused me and a few of the others that we used to collaborate with. The Unit was such an integral part of my upbringing. It represented something great that was born from… from… something so bad. It absolutely meant the world to me and whomever my father wrongfully entrusted, betrayed him and me by throwing it back in our faces. They flippantly shut down the whole operation in a blink of an eye. Years of work, gone!” She snaps her fingers. “Just like that!”
“Maybe the operation was compromised. Maybe they had no choice.”
“And what do you know?”
“Nothing.”
“No, really. What do you know? This is what I want to talk to you about. I needed you to listen to that so you can understand how crucial this all is to me. Now, I’ve tried to continue on and follow through with my plans today, but I’ve been distracted and, unfortunately, I cannot seem to shake it. I have tried to let it go… But, I can’t. I simply can’t.” Becoming irritable with each word, she starts fidgeting. “Something you said yesterday has been playing over and over in my darn mind and, and, and I just need you to clear it up for me…”
“Okay.”
“When you were saying that you could persuade Jaxson that the Unit was the way forward… You said, I quote ‘You’re right…He’d never change his mind.’ Bethany, what did you mean by that, exactly? Change his mind about what?”
“Oh… I don’t remember. Did I say that?”
“Yes. Yes, you did.” Striding forward she grips my jaw hard, forcing me to look up at her. “Know this, I am extremely good at detecting lies…” She lets go of my face and I keep eye contact. “Tell me what you meant. Now!”
“Perhaps just that we didn’t want to be part of the Unit.”
“But he did. He loved it. The Unit was his saviour, just like it was mine. He wouldn’t turn his back on it. Not ever.”
“No. I mean, once the plug was pulled—”
“You’re lying, Bethany. Why are you lying?”
“I’m not, Carmel. I’m not lying.”
“Okay. How about this… you either tell me the whole truth or I will make a call and have your best buddy, Willow, brought over here to join our little party!”
Hearing Wills name leave her lips has me in a panic.
“This has nothing to do with Willow… Why is this so important?”
“You stupid idiot. Weren’t you listening to a word I was saying? It’s highly important. Trust me. Jaxson had no decisions to make in that whole fiasco. The Unit was shut down—end of… So, when I asked myself what you could’ve been talking about, there was only one logical answer… Now, like I said earlier, Jaxson was the best fit for the boss, but my father didn’t choose him—or did he?” I look down in my lap, shaking my head, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation to satisfy her irrational state. “Bethany,” she warns. “Was Jaxson running the Unit all this time? Did he stab my father in the back?”
“It wasn’t like that, Carmel. He respected your father and all the Unit achieved. He just felt that it’d… run its course.”
“Run its course! Run its course!” Immediately, the telltale signs of Carmel’s severe agitations resurface as she starts pacing the room, scraping her fingernails through her hair and tugging at it. “How could he, how could he lie to me all this time?”
“Wasn’t that part of the deal? Doesn’t the boss have to have anonymity—?”
“Not from me! Not Jaxson! The Unit meant everything to me. I cherished it and Jaxson knew it.”
Falling to her knees, she clutches her stomach and starts rocking back and forth. I don’t know whether she wants to scream or cry. I don’t know what to say to try and calm the situation down. This is already way out of control, but now I’m fearing for the life of Willow… and even Jax.
“Your father asked him not to tell you.”
“No he didn’t! He wouldn’t! He would’ve made Jaxson the Boss, knowing it’d bring us closer together. Daddy knew Jaxson would make me happy.”
Fumbling around in her pockets, she finds her pills and shakes some into her palm, then throws them down her dry throat. She like a demented deer caught in the headlights. The shrewd, composed psychopath from a moment ago has transformed into a fearful child. She looks as though her world has come crashing down around her and I was oblivious. I had no idea of the impact this would make.
“Carmel, he would’ve never meant to hurt you.”
I don’t know why I’m consoling her. I think it�
��s because she may just slit her wrists and bleed out in front of me, leaving me to die of starvation, tied to this chair in the middle of nowhere… Yeah, I think I’d prefer a quick ending.
Carmel doesn’t reply. Instead, she breaks down and her amplified wails bounce off the brick walls. It’s disturbing to watch and to hear her somewhat mourning the loss of something she obviously held sacred. Gradually her wails dwindle into cries and then the occasional whimper.
We sit for a while in a confusing silence. I’d do anything to know what’s going through her mind. Then all of a sudden she bolts upright like a woman possessed. Standing up, she stares at me with her tearstained face.
“Everything has been based on a lie… My father told me that to love somebody, you put them in a position where they could destroy you because you wholeheartedly trust that they would never do that. Not. Ever!”
Holding her palm up to silence my open mouth and without another word, she breezes past me and heads back upstairs, slamming the rickety door behind her.
