Chaos by Sarah Bailey

Five

Scarlett

When Francis left the room, I walked over to the bathroom door and stepped in. My fingers found the light switch. The room was fully tiled in the same neutral colours as his bedroom. He had a separate bath from his shower. There were no windows, but it was bright enough.

I walked over behind the glass wall leading to the shower and flipped it on. I didn’t care about having my own products. All I wanted was to get clean. Even though Drake had washed away most of the blood from my body, spots remained. And I felt dirty… marred by what I’d done.

Tearing the clothes they’d bought me off my body, I got under the hot stream of water. It soothed me, washing away all of the horrors of this evening.

I couldn’t believe I had to sleep in one of their rooms. Despite having proven to them I would kill a man on their behalf, they didn’t trust me to be alone in their penthouse. It had to be the reason. That, or they didn’t have anywhere else to put me. Either way, it sucked. I wanted to be alone to process everything. Yet how could I even begin to process what I’d done?

Opening my eyes, I watched the water, slightly stained red running into the shower drain. The sight of it made my stomach roil. I put my hand to my mouth, trying to push down the sickening feeling encompassing me.

I’d killed someone. I’d stabbed a man to death in the most violent manner I could think of. My mind had gone to another place and my body had taken over. My instincts. My rage. They’d sent me over the edge. Now I had to deal with the consequences of my actions. And the guilt. The fucking guilt eating me alive.

A sob erupted from my lips, my other hand reaching out to slam against the tiled wall in front of me. The floodgates opened. My knees buckled. I lowered myself to the floor, both my hands pressing to the large slab of slate covering the shower floor. Tears streamed down my face, mixing with the water from the shower. All I could hear was my horrific wails of agony and pain. I couldn’t stop them. It was all too much. All of it.

They’d asked me to kill someone and told me it was Mason. All of my anger towards him had poured out of me as I stabbed him repeatedly. I thought I’d killed my only friend. And finding out it wasn’t him was worse.

The Horsemen were fucked.

I was fucked.

The whole thing was fucked.

A solid body curled around mine and held me, strong arms caging me in as my hands slipped on the slate.

“It’s okay, Scarlett,” he murmured. “It’s okay. Let it out. Just let it out.”

My body shook with my sobs. My hands fell to his thighs, gripping the wet fabric below me as he sat back against the shower wall with me between his legs. Francis had got in the shower with me fully clothed. I knew it was him because I could smell cinnamon and apples on his skin. The scent reminded me of home and it made me cry harder.

“I killed him!” I wailed.

Francis held me tighter against his chest.

“I’m a killer. I… I can’t believe I killed someone.”

It decimated me… murdering a man I didn’t know, even though they’d told me the guy had been scum. A child molester. I didn’t believe in an eye for an eye or revenge. The only reason I’d even gone along with my parents and their stupid need for it was to gain my freedom. To get away from them and their abuse. I’d been trapped on their estate for so long, I thought I’d never get away. I’d never be free. And now I had a small sliver of it, I never wanted to let it go. I didn’t want to go back.

It’s why I’d killed a man for the Horsemen. It’s why I’d paid their price. Being here with them was infinitely preferable to being at home with my parents, as fucked up as it sounded. These four men had taught me a lot about myself in the past month. Even though I couldn’t remember solid details about the past before my accident, I was beginning to feel like the missing pieces of my personality were slotting into place. The real Scarlett was there, buried under concrete, but I’d dig her out. I’d fight to find her. I had to. There was no other choice.

I didn’t care I was naked, crying in the shower with one of the men who’d demanded I kill for them. All I could feel was Francis’ warmth. The comfort of having someone hold me whilst I cried and purged my emotions was everything. He had no idea how much this meant to me. How much I needed him to be here for me.

“Why does it hurt so much?” I choked out, my sobbing abating. “I didn’t even know him and it hurts.”

“Killing isn’t supposed to be easy,” he murmured in my ear over the noise of the shower. “It’s supposed to hurt and bruise your soul.”

“Did… did it hurt you?”

His chest deflated against my back. It was obvious to me they were killers themselves. I wasn’t sure anyone who hadn’t could stand to watch what I did without it affecting them. It was almost as if it was commonplace to the four of them.

“You’re asking the wrong person that question.”

“Why?” I sniffled, hiccupping on the word.

“You won’t like the answer.”

I shifted, wanting to look at him. Wanting to see his face. Francis released me enough to allow me to turn around. I knelt there in the shower between his legs, staring at him. His hands closed around my biceps, rubbing up and down my wet skin.

“Tell me.”

His grey eyes were cautious and his dark brown hair plastered to his head.

I had a flash of an image in my mind. A much younger and more boyish version of Francis in the rain, staring up at the sky as it beat down on his face. I don’t know why it was so vivid like it was actually real, but it couldn’t possibly be. I’d never met Francis before I’d come to work at Fortuity… or had I? My past was so jumbled up in my head, I couldn’t distinguish between true memories and the ones I merely wanted to be real.

“I don’t have any remorse for the lives I’ve taken, Scarlett. I dare say I like it… the thrill of it. If you asked the others, they would tell you the exact same thing. We don’t share the same morals society deems acceptable. We walk outside the lines of right and wrong. It’s who we are. It’s who we’ve always been.”

Something about the brutal honesty of Francis’ words had me swallowing. Coupled with the image of him as a teenager in my mind, I couldn’t help but understand what he’d said, even if it was messed up. Morality was subjective. Everything in life was, on some level. And I couldn’t honestly say his point of view surprised me given what I’d come to know about these four men.

“Does it scare you?” he asked when I didn’t immediately respond.

“It should.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I leant closer to him, tugged by an invisible cord.

“No.”

He cocked his head to the side and reached up, swiping his thumb under my eye. Our faces weren’t under the stream of water, but we were both utterly soaked.

“The world isn’t black and white,” I continued. “I’ve always known that. If it was, then I’d know who I am inside.” I pressed my hand to my chest. “I’d know the girl locked behind the wall in my mind.”

“That’s how you see it? Your amnesia?”

I nodded. For some reason, I felt safe to tell him these things. Safe to ask him the questions I had. There was no judgement here between us.

“Do you have any memories of the past at all?”

“I get these glimpses, snippets of old conversations, but like I told Prescott, I don’t know if they’re real or not.”

Bringing up his name made my heart ache. I’d told Francis I hated Prescott, but I didn’t. I was hurting because of him. Asking him to protect me hadn’t been my smartest idea, but I never expected things would go this far. I never expected to have… feelings for him. It’s as if my heart knew him inside out, but my mind struggled to keep up. My broken mind. It was split in two. The two halves needed reuniting.

His hand tangled in my wet hair and dragged me even closer until we were breathing the same air.

“You don’t trust yourself.”

“No.”

“What did they tell you, the doctors, about your condition?”

I shifted, wanting to press myself against him. He said nothing when I straddled his lap, forcing his legs closer together. He didn’t stop me when my fingers went to the bottom of his t-shirt. Tugging it over his head, it dropped on the shower floor with a splat.

I stared at his muscular body. He was beautiful to look at. A fallen god. They all were in my eyes, but not in the sense they were all-powerful. It was the way they held themselves like they knew their own worth. But they were dark and deadly too. They’d cut you down if you got in their way. And it made me wonder why they’d kept me if I was an inconvenience to them. Was I? Or did they want to fuck me that much, they didn’t care I was a problem?

“My memories may never return, but it’s not all doom and gloom. They simply don’t know. Maybe the trauma of the accident stops me from seeing them, or I need to jog my memory somehow. They told me people and things from my childhood might help, but I have neither.”

Francis’ expression turned haunted for the briefest of moments.

“It’s been ten years, so all I can do is hope.”

He stroked my arm.

“Hope is a dangerous thing.”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Guess it is.”

Having purged my emotions and feelings, I felt steadier. What I’d done still hurt, but the pain had lessened a fraction. Enough for me to push myself up off Francis and stand. I put my hand out to him. He let me pull him up to his feet. Then I noticed he’d set my products down by the edge of the shower next to the glass. He’d gone out of his way to get my toiletries and bring them to me. Something about it made my heart crack.

Before Francis could do a thing, I’d pulled him under the stream of the shower and curled my body around his, pressing my face into his bare chest.

“Thank you,” I whispered into his skin, unsure if he could hear me over the hammering of the water.

When I released him, he didn’t leave me there alone. No, Francis picked up my shampoo and turned me around to face the wall. He lathered it up in my hair, his fingers soothing across my scalp as he washed the strands. He repeated the steps for my conditioner then washed my entire body, his soft hands entirely gentle. The man rinsed away my guilt, my shame and my pain. Tonight, I’d been the wielding force of the executioner. And somehow, Francis made it better for me. Made it bearable.

When he was done, he turned the shower off and gave me a smile. My fingers went to his jeans, tugging open the button and pulling down the zip. His eyebrow shot up and he put his hands on mine when I tried to take them off him.

“Scarlett, I’m not looking for—”

“I just want to help you. Wet jeans are a pain to get off.”

It was the honest truth. I wasn’t trying to get Francis as naked as me. He’d been kind to me and it was the least I could do for him.

He didn’t stop me this time when I tugged the jeans from his hips, in fact, he helped. After we’d got them off him, he grabbed me a towel and wrapped me up in it, getting one of his own, which he slung around his hips before tugging his boxers off.

When I padded back out into his bedroom, I found he’d unpacked a pair of my pyjamas, hairbrush and hairdryer, leaving them on the bed for me. I hadn’t realised Francis could be so considerate, but maybe I’d misjudged all of these men. Well, I hadn’t misjudged West, he was crazy, plain and simple. But the others? Perhaps.

After I’d dried my hair and dressed, I curled up in Francis’ bed. His covers were warm and soft. As I buried myself in them, my energy left me. All I wanted to do was fall into a deep sleep and never resurface.

Francis walked around the bedroom, but I barely heard him. The lights went out and I could have sworn he walked over to me, leant down and pressed a kiss to my temple, but I was drawn into the dream world before it had a chance to fully register with my brain.