A Girl in Red

37 | OVERDUE MEETING

OVERDUE MEETING

Brooklyn takes my hand and squeezes it. I swallow down the pain and watch as Misha stops at the end of the hall and looks back at us. She seems to be fighting with something inside her gut. I don't care, a part of me wants to shoot her when she opens her mouth but I let her talk instead.

"I'm so sorry, but it was the only way." I shoot at her. It misses by a centimeter and I know she knows that this is her final warning.

"Leave before we kill you," Brooklyn sneers out. Misha swallows down whatever else she was going to say. Then she disappears around the stone wall and runs away like the little bitch she is. Brooklyn spits in her direction and I can feel her body shaking in anger.

It doesn't make sense — her betrayal. I don't understand why in the fuck she would betray me. She's Misha, my right hand man and one of my closest friends. None of this makes any sense or maybe it makes perfect sense and I just don't want to accept it because it's her.

I can hear a commotion of surprise as the three boys that I left up there is jolted by Misha's fleeting self. They run down the stairs and pound themselves around the stone wall with their guns drawn. When they see us, they all relax. I give them a silent nod as I try to think what to do.

This was a lot. I didn't know what to do, my plans are practically derailed at the moment. And why was there no protection down here? I don't get it. I mean, at first, I thought that it wasn't protected because we shouldn't have been aware of the secret door but this isn't normal. Only three guards to protect two people at the very least that are high profile. Most importantly though why would he keep Misha down here when she had already sided with him? She was not a prisoner.

"I don't understand." Lexi says as we take a moment to soak it in.

"Me either." Clary mumbles. "How did she betray us?"

Brooklyn sighs, "Alana was supposed to die after the wedding. I walked in on Misha and Him negotiating the deal."

"No! Misha wouldn't!" Lexi argues and I flinch at her tone. "She's Misha, maybe you should've let her explain before just threatening her."

I shoot daggers into Lexi's face, "She admitted to betraying me, I didn't need another reason other than that to kill her. Be lucky she's alive."

"Why would she do this?"

"Misha is the reason that they found us so easily at the first safe house. Apparently, she believed you are unfit as a gang leader because it suddenly became all about Alana. She thought you were going to drive the gang into the ground and she believed she could do a better job."

"A better job! I put my all into this gang, what the fuck?" My mind was going a million miles an hour.

"Apparently that's why she was so loyal, she realized that in her head, you weren't the problem. Misha made a deal that you would lose the love of your life and you know that's all he wants. For you to suffer like he did." Brooklyn mutters and I can see the fresh fire of hate in their eyes.

"She was going to get Alana murdered." I stare ahead at nothing. That was the truest form of betrayal, Misha knew what Alana meant to me, and she knew that if I lost Alana then I would lose all of me. I wouldn't be the same anymore, I would be without a soul and heart: like I used to be. I knew Misha loved this gang even more than I did. She swore long ago that she would do anything for it to succeed. I had failed to listen to her when she told me that she truly would do all that is necessary to protect the gang — even betray me. When Misha told me that all those years ago, we had been on the same side. I never believed that we wouldn't be on it now.