Gage didn’t answer. His entire body was still, courtesy of the chemicals she’d injected into his system. But he wasn’t still. No, his eyes showed the battle he was waging as his gaze zeroed in on Jen. It was in his utter stillness that I saw the ferocity of his fight.
He was powerless.
And that was one of the worst things she could’ve done.
That’s why she was more dangerous than a man with a gun and a temper. Because women like that were smart. When they wanted to hurt someone, it wasn’t with a bullet. It was with everything and anything they could.
She stopped, her eyes darting from me to Gage and then rushing to get into his face. “Why couldn’t I be that?” she screamed, spittle flying from her mouth. She stayed there a moment longer, gun clutched in her manicured hand. Fear that she was going to use it sent lances of pain through every single one of my already screaming nerve endings.
But she didn’t.
She jerked, as if she was being woken up abruptly by a deep slumber, her body snapping back straight. Her eyes fluttered rapidly as she blinked, as if trying to focus on reality. Her exaggerated inhales and exhales echoed through the silent room.
“What I was saying,” she said, voice terse, as if one us of had interrupted her, “was that women are better villains because we hurt. We hurt more than you. And we feel pain deeper.” She strode over to me. Cold steel kissed my temple, and Gage’s eyes widened in a silent roar. “That means a special number of us can inflict pain deeper.”
She was going to shoot me.
I was going to die.
My eyes hungrily took in every single inch of Gage. Trying to isolate him from the horror around me, hold on to him, imprint a goodbye on him.
Tears streamed down his face.
The pressure of the gun at my temple was nothing compared to that agony-filled stare, those tears on Gage’s face.
I barely noticed the release of that pressure, my mind too focused on what would happen to Gage when I was gone. The fear for his life with my death dwarfed everything around me, even the reality of the absence of my death.
A shooting and white-hot agony in my thigh was enough to plunge me back into that reality.
Into the absence of death.
Pain was the ultimate absence of death. It was the only way we knew we were alive.
“See, you ripped out my heart and laid it bloody at my feet. And you didn’t even care!” she screamed, yanking Gage’s knife out of my thigh, the steel soaked with my blood.
I glanced down at the steady stream of crimson. It didn’t hit an artery. It hurt—a lot—but it wasn’t going to kill me.
Jade would.
Eventually.
If I didn’t fight.
If I didn’t battle.
She paced the room.
I fiddled with my binds.
“Now I’m going to do the same to you,” she said, her voice suddenly low. “Just not metaphorically.” She glanced at me, and I immediately stopped struggling. “And not your heart. Because I know the way to hurt you, really hurt you like you did me, is to take away the one person in your world who makes sense. And then you’ll be thrust into chaos, into insanity like me. And then I’ll make you live with it.”
She ripped my gag off.
“Kill me,” I said immediately. “That’s what you want, right? Revenge for stealing your man? Well that’s what I did. I stole him. He did everything to me that I’m sure he never did to you. He loved me,” I taunted her, my death wish born from desperation.
I wasn’t thinking logically at that point. No, there was no shape or form to my thoughts, a kind of crazy similar to Jade’s. But mine was about saving the one I loved rather than punishing them for happiness.
I didn’t look at Gage because I knew I’d see the accusation in his eyes. The fury. The pain. He didn’t want this. I was being cruel, making him watch someone else he loved die in front of him.
Logically, it would’ve been kinder to take that pain on myself, go through the unfathomable horror of watching him die if only to spare him more pain.
But I was working on love. And it wasn’t about being kind. No, it was being cruel, even if that cruelty was him drawing breath when I couldn’t.
Jade paused, smiling at me. “Oh, so nice. So gallant that you’re willing to die for him,” she said sweetly.
“I’ll do anything for him,” I said, working at my binds that were finally loosening.
She smiled again. “I know,” she whispered. “Why do you think we’re all here?” She waved the gun around. “I’ll do anything for him too.” She moved away from me and a sick bitterness erupted on my tongue. “Including putting him out of his misery.” She pointed the gun at Gage’s chest.