One of the men would kill her because they played by the rules. She couldn’t be allowed to leave alive after everything.
Yet she knew, she would. Because he’d decided she would live. Because he had shot her, and the men couldn’t argue with that.
Their eyes remained locked over the table, his hand holding the gun loosely and hers pressed down on her bleeding upper arm, her stomach in knots.
She should have felt angry. She should have felt betrayed. She should have felt hatred.
She should have felt relieved to be alive. She should have felt shaky at the close call. She should have felt uncertain about what was to come.
She should have, could have felt so many things…
But as she sat there, watching him, after she hadn’t spoken a word in this jungle of hunters to make him seem less than deadly, she was surprised at herself. Morana didn’t feel a single one of those emotions.
It almost made her want to smile.
Almost.
She should have felt a lot of things, yet what she felt was a change.
Something changed in the moment she chose to kept silent instead of speaking, forfeiting her life, and he chose to shoot her in the arm instead of her heart, sparing her life. Something between them changed, just like it had on that night in the dark, this time in the middle of a crowd of lethal men.
She felt the connection between them that she’d tried to deny so very hard, felt it roll itself round and round, deepening, thickening, choking every shadow it encountered in her mind, strangling every bit of uncertainty.
She’d chosen to not betray him to these people. He’d chosen not to let her die.
She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think of the implications. Didn’t want to acknowledge their connection that just kept folding itself over and over between them, something fundamental had shifted with her both their decisions.
Because she realized, she wasn’t the only one reckless between them.
Things, while the same, had changed. Inadvertently, tonight, they’d both decided.
She was bleeding.
A drop of blood slid down her arm.
Morana turned her head and watched in slight fascination, as the drop rolled over the curve of her elbow, leaving a fresh streak of red over her skin. Her eyes followed the lone drop as it traveled down smoothly, down the back of her hand, down her empty ring finger, right to the tip. It hung on the precarious edge, teetering, trembling in the slightly cool conditioned air, fighting gravity with all its little might to keep clinging to her skin.
It lost.
The drop lost the battle with a force that was much stronger than itself – a force it did not even understand – and fell to the clean floor of the elevator, splattering in d
efeat, marring the clean white lines with its crimson.
Another drop took its place and joined its brother on the ground.
And another.
Morana stared at the drop of blood for a moment, her arm throbbing where the gash from the graze was open, the entire evening and the consequence of it finally sinking into her mind slowly.
That she had made it out of the casino alive was a miracle in itself. That she had made it out alive with nothing but a graze was a bigger miracle.
But now, in the privacy of her own mind, when the adrenaline had left her body cold and logic had rooted itself, Morana swallowed. Because there, on that seat in the dim casino, she’d made a choice, a choice that she’d had no idea she would make until that very moment. And her choice had incited a decision in the man who’d become the bane of her existence. Had it been a private choice, known only to herself, she wouldn’t have fretted so much. It would’ve been disconcerting for sure, but knowing that the knowledge of her choice lay solely within her would’ve been much better.
But it wasn’t so. Not only had her choice been obvious to him, his had been obvious to her as well, and she couldn’t imagine he liked it any better than she did at the moment. Frankly, she had no idea what the hell that could even mean.
The elevator doors opened, jolting her from her thoughts, and Morana took a deep breath, stepping out into the living room, the skyline of the city glittering like colorful diamonds outside the huge windows. Keeping her hand elevated to staunch the flow of blood, she walked straight to the kitchen, dumping her bag and phone on the counter, and pulled out the clean dish towel from the rack. Turning the faucet on, she wet the towel, and slowly cleaned the area, hissing at the slight pain the pressure caused, before pressing the towel hard down on the arm.
Pain shot up her shoulder, down to her fingers, and she grit her teeth, breathing evenly as the pain subsided into a low throb, the flow of blood already lessening.