Chapter 4
873words
Damon's voice was ice, carrying a dangerous edge.
He stalked toward me, one deliberate step at a time.
"I... I..."
I frantically tried yanking my hand free while blocking the wall crevice with my body.
But the recorder's lanyard caught on something inside, jamming tight.
Damn it!
"What are you hiding?"
Damon was already upon me.
He seized my wrist and wrenched me away from the wall.
"Ah!"
I cried out, stumbling backward into his chest.
The wall crack lay exposed.
Even in this dim light, if he just glanced down...
"Don't look!"
In pure desperation, I threw my arms around his waist, burying my face against his chest.
Damon went rigid.
Then a sneer rumbled through his chest.
"What's this? Afraid I'll catch you looting?"
He'd misunderstood.
He thought I was scavenging for jewelry in the ruins.
"Damon..." I trembled, playing along with his assumption, "I was just looking for something valuable... I have nothing..."
"Nothing?"
Damon seized my chin, forcing my face upward.
In the pale morning light, I saw rage and something darker—a morbid excitement—flaring in his eyes.
"For money, you'd desecrate the dead?"
He shoved me roughly against the broken wall.
My back slammed against jagged bricks.
This was the very wall where I'd nearly burned to death three years ago.
Now it dug painfully into my scars.
"Don't you want to know more about Elena?"
Damon pressed closer, trapping me between his body and the wall.
His warm breath washed over my face, bitter with tobacco and sharp with mint.
"This is where she died. It's also where we shared our first kiss."
His fingers traced my filthy cheek, his eyes distant yet fevered.
"Vera, that greedy look in your eyes makes me sick."
"But your face... even caked with dirt, even while doing something so vile... why does it still haunt me with her likeness?"
My heart skipped a beat.
I remembered years ago.
Right here. Back then, this wall had been covered with oil paintings.
That boy, innocent as fresh snow, had blushed crimson as he'd pinned me against this wall, shyly asking permission for a kiss.
Back then, he'd trembled just from holding my hand.
But now.
This man was a predator, forcing his knee between my legs, radiating aggression.
"Since you're so desperate for money..."
Damon's hand slid under my tattered skirt, fingers tracing the burn scars there.
"Why not sell yourself to me?"
"Right here."
"Right where she died."
He was completely unhinged.
He wanted to violate a stand-in at the very spot where his fiancée had died.
Revulsion rose like bile in my throat.
But this was also my chance to escape this desperate situation.
The voice recorder was still in the wall crack behind me.
If I could just reach back a little...
His lips drew closer.
Madness blazed in his eyes, threatening to consume everything.
I made my choice.
Just as Damon was about to claim my lips.
I didn't pull away.
Instead, I rose on my toes and crashed my mouth against his.
"Mmph!"
Damon's eyes flew wide open.
I kissed him with savage intensity.
Using this intimate act as cover to sink my teeth into him.
I bit through his lip, blood flooding between us.
I clung to his neck, pressing my body against his, burning away the last of his reason through this act of self-destruction.
"You're insane..."
Damon mumbled against my lips.
But he didn't push me away.
Instead, his fingers dug into my scalp, deepening the kiss.
He was unleashing everything.
Purging three years of agony, his longing for the "dead woman," his hatred for the "substitute" in his arms.
I was unleashing too.
I closed my eyes, tears streaming into our kiss, bitter and salt-laden.
Damon, you bastard.
As he lost himself in passion, hands roaming desperately over my body.
My left hand silently slipped from his neck.
Reaching behind me toward the wall gap.
My fingertips found the dangling cord.
I yanked hard.
"Click."
The voice recorder broke free and slid into my palm.
I quickly tucked it into the hidden pocket inside my skirt, the device cold and hard against my thigh.
Got it.
I shoved Damon away with all my strength.
"Crack!"
My palm connected with his cheek in a resounding slap.
Damon's head snapped sideways from the impact.
The air went deadly still.
He stood there panting, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, his eyes clearing from dazed to lucid, finally hardening to ice.
He looked at me, then at the ruins surrounding us.
As if only now realizing the madness of what he'd attempted.
"Get out."
He wiped blood from his lip, voice sharp as broken glass.
"Get back to the car."
I clutched my torn collar, fleeing from the ruins like a wounded animal.
Behind me, the demolition countdown alarm began to wail.
"Five, four, three..."
In the car, I pressed my hand against the recorder hidden against my thigh.
Through the window, I watched Damon still standing before that broken wall.
"BOOM——!"
A massive explosion rocked the ground.
Flames erupted skyward.
That wall—and the safe—instantly disintegrated into ash.
Damon stood motionless in the billowing dust.
Like a solitary gravestone.
