Cherry
There's a moment right before you pull the trigger—
when the world slows down,
when your heartbeat sounds louder than the gun,
and you realize everything ends in a breath.
Mine came in a dirty alley behind Rafael's club.
The man was sent for him.
But I was the one standing in his way.
He lunged.
I didn't think.
I raised the gun.
And shot him in the chest.
He fell like a puppet with its strings cut.
I stood there, shaking, staring at my hands.
Blood on my fingers. Smoke in the air.
I'd killed for him.
He ran toward me.
His eyes didn't go to the body.
They went to me.
"Are you hurt?"
"No," I whispered.
But something inside me was.
Because I wasn't Cherry anymore.
I was his.
And now, I was part of the darkness too.
Rafael
I should've been proud.
I should've told her she did what she had to do.
But all I felt was guilt.
Because she wasn't built for this.
I was.
She was meant to be art, softness, light.
Now she was shaking in my arms with blood on her soul.
"You shouldn't have had to do that," I whispered, holding her too tightly.
"You told me to be your storm," she said, her voice cracking.
"Then don't hate me when I thunder."
And I didn't. God help me, I loved her more for it.
That night, I took her hand and brought her to the garden behind my house. A place no one but my dead mother had ever seen.
I cut my palm open with a blade.
She hesitated… then did the same.
We pressed our hands together. Blood mingled. Promises sealed in pain.
"If you die… I die," I said.
She looked at me with tears in her eyes and whispered,
"Then we'll never leave each other. Not in this life. Not in the next."
That was the night I truly became hers.
Not as her boss.
Not as her lover.
But as a man ready to destroy heaven and hell just to keep her breathing.
Cherry (later that night)
I woke from a dream of fire.
Rafael beside me, asleep with his hand still clutching mine, as if even in dreams, he couldn't let go.
I touched his face.
"You'd die for me," I whispered, voice trembling.
"But I think you already are."
And I think I was too.