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Beast(36)

By:A. Zavarelli






CHAPTER FORTY-ONE





COLD METAL TAPS the base of my skull, stirring me from my delirious slumber.

It is familiar, this feeling. The heaviness in my body. The barrel of a  gun rapping against my head. But it is the smell of earth that I  remember most.

The urge to wretch is strong, and I am still hungover from whatever it  is I ingested. When my eyes finally open, everything is blurred.

The room is dark and small. Cold. Underground. I'm trying to piece it all together. Trying to make sense of it.                       
       
           



       

I see Bella's face in my mind. Her screams. Her fear. A surge of  adrenaline has me attempting to launch myself upright, but I am swiftly  rejected by the confines of my restraints.

"Easy there, tiger."

The voice is muffled, but familiar. The build of the man is too when he comes into view. And then I remember.

Bella's father. His house. The whiskey. This man is the one. The one who  took me from my Bella. I try to lunge at him. To kill him. But my  movements are still sluggish. My body is still weak. And I am still  chained.

"There's no need for dramatics."

It's his shoes that I notice first. The same shoes I have seen a hundred  times before. Shoes that have graced my own home. Shoes that belong to  the man I trusted with my life.

With Bella's life.

When he sees the stark conclusion on my face, he removes the mask and retrieves an apple from his pocket.

"Sorry old pal," River says. "Just the way these things go sometimes, isn't it?"

I look up at him. My oldest friend. My only friend. I thought I had  known betrayal before. I thought that nothing could be worse than what  Ray Rossi did to me.

But I was wrong.

I still can't accept it. I want to be logical.

River has taken issue with Isabella. He thinks me weak. Perhaps this is  his way of trying to make me remember. To continue down the course of  revenge that he helped me plan so meticulously.

This is what I tell myself.

"Release me," I demand.

He looks at me, apologetic, but does not move to help me.

"I think you already know, Javi, that I can't do that."

His words cement the doubts in my mind. Years of memories, skewed as I  try to make sense of them. I don't know when it happened. I don't know  how. River gives me time to process. He has always been good about that.  He knows me so well.

"How long?" I ask.

He paces around the room. Looks at me twice while he chews his apple. And then paces some more.

"Since the sanitarium."

The sanitarium.

He was only ten then. It doesn't seem possible. But I know better. I  know with the agency, anything is possible. But still, I reason that  there must be another explanation. River could never betray me. It never  even crossed my mind.

Except for once …  when I quickly dismissed it.

Now I know better.

"Luke," I say. "It was you. You were the one who told him I was coming that day. You were the only one who knew."

He looks away again.

"It wasn't me," he mumbles. "But I know who did. And the leak did come from me."

Fucker.

Lying, filthy, scum.

It is the only thing I can think, and River knows it. He won't even meet my eyes.

"You were never unstable," I accuse.

He stops. And now he looks offended.

"I'm as unstable as they come," he assures me. "The back story was true. I wouldn't lie about that, Javi."

"No?" I question. "So only everything else then?"

"I know it might seem that way," he says. "But you should know better than anyone that things are not always how they appear."

"So then tell me how they really are," I demand. "Tell me the truth for once. If you can even bring yourself to do that much."

River appears hurt by my words. His eyes flash before he turns away again.

"I need you to do something for me," he says. "And it isn't sanctioned by the agency."

This much, I believe. If the agency were involved in this, it would not  be only River and me in this room. He is desperate. And I have never  seen River desperate.

"There is a girl," he begins.

"A girl," I scoff. "You are lying."

This has to be the agency's doing. There must be more to this than what I can see.

River turns to me. Discards the apple core onto the ground. His eyes narrow and sharp.

"It's the truth."

"The truth is that you are a coward and a liar."

River is unfazed by my accusations now, and determination has strengthened his resolve as he continues.

"The program. I was a part of it too."

And now he has my attention. I look up at him. I still don't want to  believe him. He is a traitor. A liar. He is no friend of mine.

But then he recites his thirteen-digit code number. The same numbers we  all had. The numbers we were assigned upon entrance into the program.

It can't be true.

"I would have known," I tell him. "You were the same age."

"Yes, but I was in a different sector. And they started me earlier."

"How early?" I press.

"Nine."

I shake my head.

River ignores my doubt and goes on to explain.

"I graduated from the program with top marks. Killed three men before the age of ten. I was quite proud of myself."                       
       
           



       

"Until they sent you to the asylum because you had imagined it all."

He ignores my jab and continues on to his point.

"My first assignment was easy," he says. "Just a man. I do not even  remember his face, to be honest. They all blend together after a while.  Even the second and the third. I didn't care to know them, or what they  had done to earn their deaths. I believed what the agency told me. I  followed my orders. I earned my stripes."

He paces again. Looks at me again.

"But then there was the girl."

And now it is me who has tired of his dramatics.

"What girl?"

"She was just a girl," he makes a point to say, as though he hasn't told me three times already.

"There was nothing special about her, really. She was nice to look at as  most girls are. She had a pretty face. I thought she would look very  pretty when she was dead, and I told her I wouldn't ruin her face  because I intended to take her heart."

I think of my Bella. My beautiful Bella. So many times, I had imagined  her dead myself. I had imagined how good I thought it would feel to see  her that way. Until I tasted her. And she poisoned me. I could not have  it any other way.

Before River even admits it, I can tell that he has been poisoned too.

"Those were my instructions," he says. "Cut out her heart. It should have been quite easy. None of the others were difficult."

He struggles with acknowledging his defeat. River has always been too proud. Too arrogant.

"There was something about her face though," he declares. "I thought she  was lovely alive. It seemed a shame to watch the life drain from such a  pretty face."

He downplays the words, but he cannot hide his true emotion. Not this  time. It is clear that River disobeyed his orders long before he ever  knew me.

He was a traitor before I ever trusted him. And not only to me.

"You let her live?" I question.

"I let her live," he confesses. "I thought I could fool them. I have always been smarter than most of them."

That much, he does believe.

"It worked, for a while," he says. "I kept her hidden for four years.  And I got careless. I thought I could not be touched. That I could do no  wrong. They believed I was doing so well. I had made progress with you  after all."

I glare at him again. Recalling those initial conversations we used to  have. And it is abundantly clear to me now why they paired me with  River.

He was sly. He was cunning. And he was so easily able to convince me he  was nothing more than a boy. Just like me. A boy who I related to. One  who I trusted.

"Before you get angry," River interrupts my thoughts, "Just know this,  Javi. My friendship with you was real and sincere. That was not a lie."

"Everything you have told me is a lie," I sneer.

"Not that," he insists. "You were the only friend I had. They made me kill all my others."

I do not feel bad for him. Even when he goes on. Because it doesn't  matter. Nothing he says matters anymore. I do not care about this girl  or his plight. I only care about his reasons for bringing me here. For  keeping me here.

"This story is boring me," I tell him. "If you have a point, River, get to it."

He nods. Retrieves another apple from his pocket and tosses it between his hands.

"They were watching me," he says. "Surreal, I know. It's the agency. But  you get comfortable. You get it in your head that you are not the one  they don't trust. That you are one of them. You do everything they ask  of you. Why would they need to watch you?"