All He’ll Ever Be (Merciless World Series Book 1)

“Fuck, fuck,” Addison’s rocking back and forth on the bed, her legs tucked up under her as the guns continue to fire.

Men shout from the floor below us and farther down the streets outside.

“I’ve never heard it last for so long,” I whisper as I peek out into the black night. I watch as each of the streetlights is hit, one by one, spraying shards of white light before fading into the darkness.

Addison’s voice is strained and coated in worry as she asks, “Why would they do that?”

“So they can’t see,” I tell her.

“But then no one can see.”

“It’s a risk they decided was worth taking.” I feel the numbness flow through my blood.

“Who did it? Who shot them?” she asks me as if I’d know.

Tires squeal in the distance and metal crashes against metal. She cries harder, falling apart and then checks her phone again. She buries her face in her knees, rocking harder.

“We can hide in the closet,” she offers although her words are panicked, and I don’t know if she means it or not. “We’ll put the clothes on top of us,” she gasps for breath and rocks again, “they’ll open it but not see us. I used to do it when I was younger. They won’t see us. They won’t see us.”

She’s losing it. The way she rocks, the rapid rate with which she’s talking and the look of terror in her eyes are clear signs. She’s fucking losing it.

“We should have left,” she croaks with tears in her eyes and the numbness turns to a freezing cold along my skin.

“He told us to leave.”

“It was intuition, Addie,” I breathe an excuse even as the gunshots sound louder, closer, the violence making its way to the finish line.

“Where’s Daniel?” She covers her mouth as she cries again and struggles to breathe.

I don’t know what comes over me as I watch her wither away and dissolve into nothing but fear and sorrow, but my hand whips across Addison’s face and she stares up at me in shock before slowly moving her hand to cover the bright red mark.

My hand stings and my heart lurches with the fear of hurting her and losing a friend, but I move closer to her, gripping her shoulders and staring into her eyes to tell her, “We will not die like this.”

Her chest rises and falls with heavy breathing as she waits for me to tell her more.

“Come on,” I say and pull her wrist. “We’re leaving,” I tell her, but she pulls away.

“He told us to stay here,” she breathes and lets her gaze dart between the door and me.

“I don’t care what Eli said.” The frustration, the anger, the terror, and lack of sleep, it all makes my body feel as if it’s on fire and like I’m losing control, but I raise my voice to yell at her, “Come with me!” My dry throat screams in pain as I swallow and tell her, “We need to run.”

The gunshots get louder from outside and steal our attention. They’re getting closer. My heart pounds in my chest and the sound of the door opening behind me makes both of us scream. Addison’s is shrill and so sharp it nearly punctures my eardrum.

Cason’s out of breath as he makes his way toward us and says, “We’re going to the basement.” Addison shakes her head violently, and asks the only question she’s been praying to have an answer to, “Where’s Daniel?”

The pang in my chest strikes hard and I feel like I’m suffocating as I pray to know the same, but about Carter.

The phone is silent. My text to him unanswered.

Are you okay?

It’s all I wanted to know. And he didn’t answer.

“Basement. Now!” Cason yells just as bullets fly past us. The windows shatter, the small pieces raining over Addison, who covers her head with her arms and drops as far as she can forward onto the bed. I fall instantly, lying flat on the floor as I hold my breath, too afraid to move at all. Her shrill scream fills the room again as bullets ricochet and leave a trail of marks from left to right over the wall and bedroom door.

My eyes reach Cason as he stands up straight. He didn’t move. He never had the chance to move. The bullet holes in his chest slowly bleed out, the bright red diffusing and spreading like watercolor paints on canvas.

“No,” I breathe, tears pricking my eyes as his hand moves to one of the punctures at the same time as he falls to his knees. “Cason!” I scream out his name and reach for him, but it’s useless.

The gunshots have stopped; it was a single string of bullets that clattered across the house. But they return again within seconds. Hitting him again in his neck and head, eyes closed before he falls to the floor.

Addison doesn’t scream this time although I can hear her sobs from where I am. Reaching up for her, I pull her down and together we crawl on our stomachs under the bed.

“Daniel,” Addison cries his name over and over, her hands clasped as she prays for him to be all right.

I can’t breathe. It’s so hot and the bullets rain down with no signs of letting up for minutes. More time passes with nothing. No signs of anything and that’s when I see the gun on the floor. Cason’s gun. As I crawl out, Addison grabs me and yells for me not to leave her. My heart lurches at the sound of a door being kicked in downstairs.

“Shh,” I hush her, putting my finger over my lips and then nodding to the gun. With wide eyes, she watches me as I crawl out to get it. The cold beating in my veins picks up as the sound of a man coming up the steps gets louder and louder. The open bedroom door shows his shadow in the hall just as I reach the gun with my fingertips.

The cold metal slips in my grasp and the sound of it sliding across the floor rips my gaze up to the doorway. Without looking, I snatch the gun and Addison pulls me back under the bed.

The gun is heavy, so heavy in my hand. Addison’s hands are covering her mouth as a shadow steps into the room. The floor creaks with the man’s weight and his black boots are splattered with blood.

I grip the gun with both hands as he takes three agonizingly slow steps closer to Cason’s body, right before kicking his shoulder over with his boot to see his face.

Bending down, I get a partial glimpse of the man as he steals Cason’s phone from his pocket. The fear is paralyzing. I can’t breathe. I can’t do anything.

My gaze moves to the vanity and I can see my reflection, but I can see the man’s too as he scowls down at Cason’s dead body and lifts his gun to his head.

Bang, bang!

The gun goes off and Addison jolts each time, her eyes closed tight and her hands pressing harder against her mouth.

My heart hammers, praying he didn’t hear her, but it doesn’t matter if he did or not, because the man’s eyes reach mine in the mirror. Cold and dark, with wrinkles that show his age. He’s in the same black hoodie as the man I killed earlier, and I know this man is not one of my father’s men.

The attacks out there, I think they’re from my father. But the men who have made it to the safe house… they’re not.

He’s quicker than me, taking a large stride and grabbing me from under the bed. His grip on my left forearm is paralyzing and I nearly drop the gun. My back scratches against the underside of the wire bedframe and the pain forces a scream from me.

My finger is on the trigger and I can’t get it to go off. I pull it again and again.

“The safety.” Addison’s voice is hoarse, and the words pushed through clenched teeth.

He reaches down with his other hand, grabbing my other wrist and that’s when Addison rips the gun from me and fires. The heat from the barrel of the gun singes my skin and I scream from the pain.

Bang! Bang!

She pulls the trigger again and again as my left side falls to the floor with the man’s grip nonexistent.

I can hear Addison’s gasp and the clunk of the gun as the man’s dead white eyes stare back at me.

My hollow chest is gutted as I stare at him and then to the doorway. My heart beats too loudly to hear anything and I have to swallow and blink away the fear to grab the gun Addison dropped and point it at the door.

I lie half under the bed, half out, with a burn scorching my forearm and wait. Time passes quickly, as quickly as my blood races through my veins.

“He’s dead,” Addison whispers a painful truth. “I killed him,” she whispers.

“Shh,” I hush her, “Quiet!”

The pounding of my heart slows as I realize the man almost got me and she saved me.

“You saved me,” I whisper with tears in my eyes although I stare straight ahead.

“I killed him,” she says back in a harsh whisper.

It’s only then that I realize it’s silent once again. No gunshots. Not from outside and not a sound inside the house.

I listen closely and hear cars outside a few blocks down, but they aren’t rushed and the tires don’t squeal. Rising slowly, I nearly scream when Addison grabs my ankle.

“Fuck,” I barely get out the word over the harsh beat of fear in my chest.

“Is it safe?” Addison asks, and I tell her the truth, “I don’t know.”

It’s hard to contain terror, even when there’s no present danger. My gaze doesn’t leave the doorway as I crawl to the window. Even as I rise up slowly and pull the curtain ever so softly, I don’t dare take my eyes from the doorway for a few minutes longer.

No more gunshots and lights are on inside the houses that were black now. A car passes with its headlights and I see some men I recognize a street down.

“I think it’s over,” I whisper to her but still crawl to reach her. “Take the gun,” I put it in her hand and when she objects I tell her I’m taking the dead man’s gun.

“I’m going downstairs.” With my words, Addison’s eyes go wide and she grips my wrist with a bruising force. My breathing is still unsteady, and my heart doesn’t find a normal cadence either.

“I have to make sure it’s okay. I’m going to find Eli,” I tell her, and the mention of Eli seems to calm her down. Her cheeks are red, and tears still linger in her eyes.

“Stay here,” I whisper and put my hand over hers. I squeeze it once before leaving her, crawling past the dead man, and taking his gun with me. I don’t stand up until I’m past the door. Blood coats my pajama pants from where I crawled through it. Standing outside the door and staring at the stairwell, I breathe in deeply over and over, trying to calm myself.

Small shards of glass pierce my forearms and I pick them out, wincing as I do. The pain is nothing with all the adrenaline running through me, but still, I’m mesmerized by the bright red and the evidence of what we’ve just been through.

The moment I close my eyes, a phone rings behind me.

Ring, ring and my heart shudders in my chest. A shuddering as if being brought back to life. “Daniel,” Addison’s voice rings out clear, the moment I think Carter’s name.

My throat goes dry as I swallow and hear her tell him how worried she was.

Carter didn’t call.

It’s not Carter.

It takes everything in me to step forward. The feeling of loss runs deep in my blood and I struggle to keep it together. One heavy step after another, with the gun in my right hand and my left hand gripping the railing, I walk down the steps quietly, hearing the faint sounds of Addison from the bedroom and nothing else in the house.

I may not have felt anything for the man I killed upstairs, nothing but hate, and less than that for the other man in the same black hoodie who died earlier today, but as I stand over Eli’s dead body in the foyer, I cry.

Heavy sobs that bring me to my knees and steal the warmth from my body.

I can’t breathe as my trembling fingers touch his throat, searching for a pulse, but finding none.

My feet kick out and I crawl backward, away from his body until my back hits the wall.

Covering my face in the crook of my arm, I can’t stop crying.

His life was wasted on mine. Cason’s life wasted on mine.

How much death can I be responsible for, before I lose any love I could possibly have for myself?

The opening of the back door, the slamming of the knob into the wall forces me to go silent. I hold my breath and crawl to the other corner as the footsteps quicken.

“Fuck, no,” Daniel’s voice carries into the foyer as he reaches Eli. “Shit,” he breathes the word with true mourning before his heavy footsteps hit the stairs.

“Addison!” he cries out her name as my head hits the wall and my breath comes in staggered, sharp pulls.

The back door is still open, the wind carries through the house and the cool air calls to me like a siren.

I’m numb as I stand and make my way to the door, with trees lining the back of the yard, it’s pitch black, but I can see there’s no one here.

There’s nothing here.

Nothing but the dark and the quiet as I take a single step out. And then another as the cold flows over my skin. And another.

The thoughts of how life has spiraled downward ever since I laid eyes on Carter Cross run through my mind. Or maybe ever since he laid eyes on me. It’s hard to know which, really.

The thoughts consume me as I breathe in the cold air.

The thoughts… and then the hard chest that slams my back into it and the large hand that covers my mouth as I scream.