Chapter Two
Camila heard a loud thump, but she was too busy trying to keep herself breathing on the floor. Her lungs hurt, and so did her neck. She blinked a couple of times trying to remember what happened. And then it hit her. Adrien had pretended to be Samuel and forced his way into her apartment. She reached for her neck and winced at the soreness. Turning her head, she noticed her neighbor standing in the open doorway.
“What happened?”
“Don’t know, exactly.” He looked at her. “Two guys who look alike are fighting. Looks like one of ‘em tried to hurt you and the other went after him.”
Taking a breath, Camila sat up. Cautiously she pushed herself to her feet. Once she had herself steady, she scrambled for the door to look down the stairwell, and saw the twins fighting. They had equal looks of anger on their faces, and if Samuel wasn’t wearing something different from what Adrien was, in that moment, she might have had trouble telling who was who.
“Why the hell did you come here to interfere!” Adrien yelled, shoving Samuel to the wall. Blood was pouring from Adrien’s nose and had coated his chin. He looked like a cannibal and it freaked her out.
“That’s what I should be asking you!” Samuel gritted back, ducking the punch aimed at him and circling around Adrien, catching him underneath his arms to try and restrain him.
“I called the ambulance and cops, like the one in the trench coat asked,” her neighbor commented as they watched the brothers fight.
Her eyes on Samuel, it was clear Samuel was better than Adrien. His movements were all smooth, aimed at getting Adrien to stop, while Adrien’s were more rough, like he was at a bar brawl. He went for an attack when he thought there was an opening, but more often than not he got stopped by Samuel. They looked equally matched in strength, though, and both looked like they had experience with fighting. Otherwise, it would have been a very one-sided match.
Adrien threw a punch at Samuel that threw him against the wall and Camila gasped. He must have hit the back of his head, because he was suddenly stunned and didn’t immediately move to attack again.
“No!” Camila gasped, her hand jumping to her throat.
She was worried about Samuel, and she was about to run over to him to check if he was okay. But she stopped, because right then, she saw Adrien reach behind his back to pull something. She caught the move in her peripheral and turned to look at it, only for her eyes to widen as she saw a gun.
Adrien was armed.
“Samuel! Watch out!”
It was redundant, Adrian was right in front of Samuel, and he must have been used to being in dangerous situations in his time in the army. She didn’t doubt he was aware of what was happening, but there wasn’t much else that she could do, practically a cheerleader at the sides of their fight. She wanted to jump forward anyway, knocking into Adrien and at least knock him off balance. She didn’t think, with her small size, she would actually be enough to trip him.
In the next moment, though, she realized she wasn’t needed.
In a matter of milliseconds, Samuel had already stabilized himself and lunged at Adrien. Even though her breath had frozen in her throat, she watched Samuel, grapple with Adrien whose arm had yet to properly come around to aim the gun. The two of them were about the same size, and probably close to the same mass. Samuel also ducked down so his shoulder knocked into Adrien’s stomach, and Camila could see the wide-eyed look on Adrien as he was knocked back, all the way into the other wall in the hall, just a couple feet away from her door.
More importantly, his gun hand was affected by the knockback, sending the gun out of his grip and spun to the floor. No shots had been fired. Camila’s eyes followed the gun, momentarily ignoring the brothers as they continued hitting at each other.
It’s right there…
Camila remembered all the shit she’d had to put up with from him, ever since he’d met Adrian. His nice acting wasn’t nearly enough to make her forgive and forget all the bad things that came with it. She remembered being afraid to leave her apartment, and when she did, looking around the streets as she walked around like some paranoid idiot, only to run off and hide behind higher authority when she actually caught sight of him. And Adrien practically baiting her, trying to wait her out until she was alone again.
She wondered what he would have done to her, if she hadn't seen any sort of cop or security guard around when he stalked her. what he would have done, if she hadn't met so many sympathetic people that were willing to let her be their shadow for a moment so she would feel save.
Camila wondered when the last time she truly felt safe was, and suddenly, she was angry.
All these thoughts swarmed through her mind in seconds, and in the next moment, she was down the stairs and diving for the gun. She grabbed the gun from the floor, and rose back up, ignoring the ache in her side from slamming to the ground. She raised the gun.
The object felt heavy and foreign in her hands. It was a large gun, enough to be comfortable in Adrien’s hands, but not in hers. She only knew how to hold a gun from a bunch of movies she’d watched over the years, her palm and four fingers wrapped around the butt of the gun, pointer finger poised next to the trigger. With her other hand, she tried to steady the hand holding the gun, but still, her fingers trembled. Because it was heavy for her hands, but mostly because her mind was a confusing whirl of emotions.
She pointed the gun toward the two men, who had stopped when they heard her thump to the floor. Samuel had backed away from Adrien, who had slumped against the wall, both of them staring at her with wide eyes as she pointed the unsteady gun right at Adrien. She wasn’t sure of her marksmanship at all, but she was only a few feet away and his body was wide, she didn’t think she could miss this shot. She could hear sirens in the distance and her hands shook more.
“Camila.”
It was Samuel calling her, his voice a forced calm. All three of them had come to a standstill, and there was sudden quiet in the hall. Camila heard him, but didn’t shift her eyes from Adrien.
“Camila, can you please put down the gun?” he tried again, his voice even gentler.
She just stood there trembling and not moving. She was very, very tempted to just shoot Adrien. Even if it was just in the leg so she could watch him be in pain, then maybe she might feel better in the end.
After a short stand-off, Samuel moved. Camila noted it in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t let it distract her.