Chapter 21: The Anatomy of Heart break
SPENCER'S POV
I was so dumbfounded, so utterly shocked to the core, that the world seemed to have lost its sound and color. The luxurious hotel room was now a prison of harsh light, black and white and painful silence. Seeing and hearing those unbelievably cruel things scrub their way out of Wednesday's lips felt like a violation, a psychological assault that left me raw and bleeding internally. The words hung in the air between us, toxic and shimmering, each one a separate, precise injury.
"Bear in mind we are only doing business," she continued, her voice now chillingly calm, the Fury's rage receding but leaving behind something colder, more clinical. She was a CEO severing a worthless contract. "I protect you from killers, and you kill my murderers. Anything outside this deal is like garbage thrown into the sea. It is worthless. It is a distraction." She paused, her silver eyes scanning me with a disdain that made me feel smaller than an insect. "I still don't even know why I selected you. You are worth not my time. Rather, you waste it."
Each sentence was a lash. Garbage. Worthless. Distraction. Waste. The words attached themselves to my soul, branding me. She gave me one last, scathing look, and then, as if I were beneath even her continued presence, she slowly climbed down from her transformed state. The silver faded from her hair and eyes, leaving the familiar Wednesday, but the coldness remained, now housed in the form I had come to care for. It was a deeper, more personal betrayal. Without another word, she turned and phased through the wall, leaving me alone in the devastating aftermath of her verbal execution.
I was dumbstruck. Paralyzed. The confusion was a thick fog, but beneath it, a sharper, more familiar pain was beginning to bloom: humiliation. Then, devastation. I sank deeper into the cushion, as if hoping it would swallow me whole. I shut my eyes tightly, trying to block it out, but that only made the internal cinema more vivid. I felt a burning, acidic ache right in the center of my chest, a physical manifestation of a breaking heart. All her words attacked me like a volley of flying daggers, each one finding its mark, piercing through my skin, my ego, my hope, hitting the inner, fragile core of who I was. My world of fantasy, the one where we were partners against the world, where there was a connection that transcended life and death, came crashing down, shattering into a million sharp pieces that cut me from the inside out.
Her words rang deep in my ears, on a relentless, torturous loop.
"Stay away from me." I remembered the cold finality in her tone, the way she had looked at me as if I were a stranger, a nuisance.
"I'm on a strict mission not here to rub bodies with some pathetic loser, a billionaire who succumbs to anything living or dead, someone who cannot even stand for himself or defend himself." The specific, targeted insults replayed. Pathetic loser. Was that what she had always thought? Was the confidence, the banter, just a tool to manipulate her puppet? Succumbs to anything. The kiss. She was throwing the kiss back in my face, framing my vulnerability as a character flaw, a weakness of a man so desperate for connection he would seek it in a ghost.
"From now on I want us to be 5 meters apart from each other. You are a weakling trying to break my strength, trying to make me weak." The mandated distance felt like a sentence. It was a physical representation of the emotional chasm she had just blown open between us. Five meters. An uncrossable distance. And the accusation—that I was breaking her? That my presence, my growing care for her, was a corrosive force? The injustice of it was a poison.
"Each step closer to you counts my doom." This one, more than any other, touched a nerve of pure, unadulterated fear. Not fear of her, but fear for her. What did that mean? Was her mission somehow jeopardized by my proximity? Was I, by simply existing near her, putting her in some kind of cosmic danger? The thought was terrifying, but it was overshadowed by the brutal delivery. She hadn't said, "Please, it's dangerous." She had screamed that I was her doom.
I shut my eyes again, the weight of it all pressing down on me. My devastation grew, a black flower blooming in the dark soil of my soul. "What the fuck have I done to receive such ill nature?" I whispered to the empty room. The question had no answer. There was only the echoing silence and the phantom pain of a hundred verbal wounds.
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WEDNESDAY'S POV
I leaned my forehead against the cold, concrete wall of the hotel corridor outside our room, the solidity of it a stark contrast to the turmoil inside me. I clenched my hands into fists so tight I feared my spectral form might dissipate from the pressure. I shut my eyes, but I couldn't shut out the image of Spencer's face—the shock, the hurt, the utter devastation that had crumpled his features as I unleashed my carefully constructed hell upon him.
I'm sorry, Spencer, the thought was a desperate prayer, a scream into the void of my own conscience. But I have to do this. I have to do this until you no longer love me again. The alternative was unthinkable. Or my mission will be incomplete and my soul will be cast into an eternity of anguish, of screams and fire. The memory of Hades's decree was a brand on my spirit. Rule #3. I was violating it just by having these thoughts, by acknowledging his feelings. I had to kill them. I had to make him hate me.
I'm sorry Spencer, this house you are trying to build will crumble and eventually fall, even though it had a foundation. The metaphor was apt. What we were building felt real, it felt strong, but it was built on a fault line of divine law, and it was destined for a catastrophic collapse. I was just precipitating the inevitable. Am really sorry Spencer if am inflicting pains on you but that's the best and only option, to save me from eternal condemnation. The logic was cold, brutal, and left a taste of ashes in my mouth. To save myself, I had to destroy the one good thing that had happened to me in seventeen years of death.
I closed my eyes, a single, phantom tear of pure anguish trying to form. No more ice creams. No more laughter. No more quiet conversations. No more him. From now on, there was only the mission, the cold, hard business of vengeance, and a five-meter chasm that felt wider than the river Styx.
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In Spain's Ville
SPAIN'S POV
I sat in the high-backed leather chair in my study, the warm, amber glow of a fine whiskey in my glass a stark contrast to the cold fury in my heart. I took a gentle sip, the liquid burning a pleasant path down my throat, and looked at the assassin who knelt before me. He was bleeding, bruised, and stank of fear. He was telling me a cock and bull story, a fantastical tale that was an insult to my intelligence. My accomplice, the woman whose bandaged head was a constant, infuriating reminder of Spencer's resilience, stood beside my chair, her fingers gently caressing my hair in a soothing, possessive rhythm. My other men, large, silent brutes, stood around the perimeter of the room, their presence a promise of violence.
"You are trying to tell me," I said, my voice deceptively calm, "that someone like Spencer first, forced my identity from your filthy mouth?" I took another slow sip, letting the silence stretch, letting his fear ferment.
He shivered, a full-body tremor. "He... he threatened me with something... I believe that thing was what was protecting him... or he has some kind of superpower... to make a chain float..." he narrated again, his voice trembling.
I placed my glass down on the mahogany desk with a soft, definitive click. "You call yourself a high-ranked assassin," I mused, my tone conversational, "but you couldn't take one ordinary man down? A man who spends his days in boardrooms and his nights at charity galas?" I leaned forward slightly, a slow, predatory grin spreading across my face. "Nice doing business with you."
I didn't even have to gesture. One of my men, understanding the finality in my tone, took out his silenced pistol and fired three merciless, efficient rounds into the kneeling man's body. The thwip-thwip-thwip was the only sound, followed by the heavy thud of his body hitting the polished floor.
I placed my elbows on the desk, steepling my fingers, and stared into the middle distance, the corpse at my feet already irrelevant. "Now Spencer knows who is after his life," I breathed out, the thought irritating me. The element of surprise was compromised.
"Haven't you regained the tracking location?" I asked my computer expert, a pale man hunched over a laptop in the corner.
"Boss, it seems Spencer had lost his phones. The signal from the tracking device we planted indicates that it's in the bottom of the sea. It's gone."
I groaned in frustration, a rare loss of composure. "Now Spencer is loosed! Lost in the wild, out of my sight!, I was this close. This close". I made a narrow, pinching hole with my thumb and forefinger. "We need to capture Spencer. Alive. I need him to sign all the documents, the transfer of shares, the power of attorney, everything, before I kill him myself." I needed his signature more than I needed his immediate death. The fortune had to be legally, seamlessly mine. I clenched my fist, the knuckles turning white, and then slowly, deliberately, breathed out, releasing the tension and my fist.
"I'll track Spencer myself," the woman beside me said, her voice a silken promise. "I will bring him to your custody."
I looked up at her, at the bandage wrapped around her head, a badge of honor from her last encounter with my brother and his unseen guardian. I smiled, a genuine, dark smile. "I'll bring Spencer here myself. Trust me on that. Leave the rest to me," she said, her eyes gleaming with a fierce determination.
I smiled wider. "Of course. I totally trust you. Completely." I leaned back in my chair, the leather creaking. "Go get him, my love," I whispered, the endearment laced with a shared thirst for vengeance.
An eerie, triumphant laughter crept across her spectacularly beautiful face, a sound that was both alluring and terrifying. It was the sound of a predator that had just caught the scent of its prey.
I leaned back, a smirk of absolute, cold satisfaction escaping my lips. With her on the hunt, it was only a matter of time.
"And with that," I concluded, my voice dropping to a whisper meant only for myself associated with a villain's grin, "I have a contract signed specially for him. His death contract."
To be continued....