OBSIDIAN

Consumption

She tastes like cigarettes and lies.

I have her pinned against the brick wall of my apartment, and I can't remember how we got here. There was the drive. Silence so thick I could barely breathe. And then we were through my door, and she was already reaching for me, pulling my shirt open like she owned me.

Maybe she does.

"Look at me," she commands, and I do. Her eyes are dark, endless, the kind of eyes that could swallow a man whole. "Don't look away."

I can't. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. She's got her hands in my hair, pulling hard enough that it hurts, hard enough that I feel alive for the first time in days. Weeks. How long have I been numb?

"Tell me you want this," she breathes against my neck.

"I want this."

"Tell me you'd do anything for me."

"I'd do anything for you."

The words don't feel like mine. They feel like they're coming from someone else, someone deeper inside me who's been clawing to get out. I push her against the wall harder, and she gasps. Her nails rake down my back, drawing blood, and I don't care. Pain is just another language, and I'm fluent.

She's wearing a dress that costs more than most people's monthly rent. I tear it open. The sound of fabric ripping is obscene. She laughs, that same laugh from the warehouse, and it occurs to me that maybe I'm still in the warehouse. Maybe I never left. Maybe this is all happening inside my head.

"You're mine," I tell her.

"I know," she says, but she's smiling, and the smile doesn't match the words.

I lift her up, and her legs wrap around me instinctively. We move to the couch, and I'm inside her before either of us can think about whether this is a good idea. It's not a good idea. Everything about her is a bad idea. But I can't stop. I won't stop. She's pulling me deeper, her hands on my shoulders, her teeth on my shoulder, and I'm drowning in her.

"Harder," she whispers.

I comply. I'm always compliant when it comes to her, and the realization should scare me, but fear is just another sensation, and I'm collecting them all.

She comes with a cry that sounds like my name, or sounds like a curse, or sounds like she's breaking something inside herself. I follow her over the edge, and for a moment, everything goes white and empty and perfect.

Afterward, we're tangled on the couch, and she's tracing patterns on my chest. Circles. Spirals. Designs that might mean something or might mean nothing.

"Your brother called again," she says softly.

"I don't care about my brother."

"He knows about the Marseille shipment. He knows you took it."

I stiffen. "What?"

She doesn't look at me. She keeps tracing patterns. "He's coming here. Tonight. He's going to kill you, or you're going to have to kill him. Either way, everything changes in the next few hours."

"How do you know this?"

She finally looks up, and her eyes are ice. "Because I told him."

The world fractures. Reconstructs itself into a shape I don't recognize.

"You what?"

"I called him three hours ago. I told him everything. The shipment, the deal, the fact that you've been planning to take over his operation." She sits up, and she's not bothered by her nakedness, not bothered by the dress torn to shreds on the floor, not bothered by the fact that she just destroyed everything. "I told him you were vulnerable. That you'd be here. Alone."

I grab her wrist. Hard enough that she should flinch, but she doesn't. "Why would you do that?"

"Because," she says, and there's tenderness in her voice that makes it so much worse, "he's not actually your brother."

My mind goes blank. Completely blank. Like someone reached in and erased the wiring.

"What are you talking about?"

"Your brother died two years ago. In Monaco. You were there. You watched it happen, and you've been having someone else pretend to be him ever since. Building an empire on a corpse and a lie."

"That's insane."

"Is it?" She pulls her wrist free and stands, utterly composed despite being naked. "Or is it the only thing that makes sense? Why can't you remember yesterday? Why do you forget entire conversations? Why does time feel fractured?"

I want to tell her she's wrong. But I'm trying to remember my brother's face, and I can't. I can remember the sound of a gunshot. I can remember blood on my hands. But I can't remember his face.

"There's someone at your door," she says.

I don't hear anything. The apartment is silent.

"There will be in thirty seconds," she continues, walking toward my bedroom like she owns it. Like she's already won. "You can run. You can fight. Or you can try to remember what actually happened."

There's a knock.

Soft. Deliberate. The knock of someone who knows they're about to destroy a life.

"I'd choose quickly if I were you," she says from the doorway to my bedroom, and she's pulling on a fresh dress from my closet, a dress I've never seen before, a dress that was always meant to be there.

The knock comes again.

Harder.

And I realize, in the space between heartbeats, that I don't know if I should open that door or if I should run. I don't know if she's telling the truth or if she's been lying the entire time. I don't know who I am or what I've done or if any of this is real.

The only thing I know with absolute certainty is that I'm about to find out.

The knock comes a third time.

And I reach for the handle.