Allowing the blast of anger to shoot through her veins, Morana took a step forward, her fear mingling with the rage inside her.
“You hate me, loathe me, for something I never did. While I can understand that – I completely understand it – I cannot live with it. Not knowing that I was innocent,” she sucked in another breath. “But you did save me, and my conscience won’t allow me to move on without giving you a chance for closure.”
The scent of incoming rain permeated the air, along with the scent of night blooms that grew wildly in the area. Morana drew in the scent, taking strength from the memory of another rainy night that had triggered the change in her.
Wetting her lips, she spoke, keeping her voice as firm as it could be while her insides shook.
“So here’s the thing, Mr. Caine.” She won’t call him by his name again, not until he gave her the right. “I have made my decision – for good or bad. Now, it’s time for you. I’m giving you the chance to kill me, right here, right now.”
A beat passed.
With that aforementioned strength, she threw the gun she had in her hand, the gun that had been her savior for so long, very deliberately to the side.
His own stayed right in his hand, his eyes burning on her.
Morana pushed forward, gathering courage as the words came to her. “My father already tried to off me and if I die tonight, none would be the wiser. They’ll all think I perished when the bomb went off and all the responsibility would lay at my father’s feet – not you or the Outfit. Nobody would ever need to know you even came here or that you were involved. No blame would ever go to Tenebrae. No mess. No foul. Nothing.”
The wind whipped her hair around her face, touching her all over before it reached him, caressed him, making his jacket flap against his torso.
Thunder roared through the sky again.
Morana waited for it to quieten before continuing.
“As for the codes,” she spoke, unable to stop now, wondering if anyone had ever made arguments for their own death like she was, “we both know you can get other computer experts, so that’s not the main issue. You’d never
get a better opportunity to kill me. You know it, I know it. This would stay only between us and the dead that are buried here. So, point that gun at me one more time and aim for my heart. Shoot me. Find your closure. Find what you’ve been looking for, for twenty years.”
His hand didn’t move, even as his fingers twitched. The silence, though her ally as she delivered her words, was undoing her, bit by bit.
She took a step closer to him, still keeping many feet between them, to cover for her shaking body.
“But understand this,” she kept speaking, in the same firm tone, thankful it didn’t quiver. “This is the only chance I’m giving you to kill me. After this, should you choose not to, this will never come up again. After this, you’ll need to let go of the idea that you’re killing me. After this, you never, ever threaten me with my life again.”
The hand in his pocket came out, his fist clenching and unclenching.
That small outward movement gave her fortitude.
“You deliver my death or you let it go. Either way, you need to make a choice, as I’ve made mine and come to peace with it. Because if your choices affect my life so deeply, if a choice you made two decades ago is defining my life right now, then I’ll make you choose again. This time, not as a boy but as a grown man.”
And then the tremor in her voice came out, her jaw clenching as her voice broke. “Because I sure as fuck will never, ever let you think you’ll kill me again. This is the only chance you’ll ever have.”
Her instincts were raging inside her. “So, choose.”
Her palms started sweating.
She saw his grip on the gun tighten, his arm starting to move, and she closed her eyes.
The noises around her seemed louder in the utter darkness behind her lids. The sounds of creatures doing their nightly rituals, the sound of wind rustling through the leaves, the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.
The scents were more acute as well. The scent of the heavy clouds in the air, the scent of her own fear permeating her skin, the scent of the wildflowers in the night. The storm brewing outside, the tempest breaking inside, combining, colliding, capturing.
Was he pointing his gun at her?
Her chest grew heavy.
Was he thinking it over?
Lead settled in her stomach.