Rosie's Thorns 🥀|18+|🥀

31 | A Twist

(⚠️ Multiple POVs, mention of suicide, and SH.⚠️)

Carry You ~ Ruelle ft. Fleurie

《¤Dominic¤》

Her cheeks were still red and puffy, and her lashes damp and glistening as I looked up at her. Her fingers had loosened from my hair many minutes before, but I couldn't bring myself to move and disturb her until now. She looked so peaceful, her features lax from the pain and self-inflicted hatred she came home with.

So strong... yet so fragile.

I slowly lifted my head, gingerly taking her hands in mine and removing them from my hair. She sighed in her sleep, her chest rising sharply and falling slowly.

I knew depression, even anxiety, can make people tired. Was Rosie depressed? I brushed my thumbs over her fingers, tracing her knuckles to the back of her hands.

How long has she contemplated taking her own life? Were the scars on her thighs attempts? Or did she just want the pain?

My throat tightened as I once more glanced up into her peaceful features. I couldn't accept it. I couldn't accept that such a beautiful soul would want to disappear from a world that needed her in it. I needed her in it.

There was a time when those dark thoughts had clouded me. I didn't want to recall those dark moments. It's been years since I'd wondered if it would just be easier to end it all than to keep surviving another day. Since I was a child I was shaped and molded into a killing machine for Armando Costa. At the time I had something tethering my to my sanity, holding me to the ground so I wouldn't lose myself. I did his bidding to save my mother until he finally killed her before my eyes when I was fourteen. I'd lost my only anchor. I'd lost the only thing keeping me going.

For ten years after that I was on autopilot. I followed Armando's demands. I didn't have any other calling. I was trained into a killer. I was trained to fulfill orders. I was the shell of an adventurous carefree boy that came to America with his mother for a better life. That boy died away at the age of five. The same year I took my mothers hand and crossed the asphalt of the runway, heading straight for the man that said he'd help us to escape my abusive father.

That man was Armando's father. For three years we lived in cages and I was thrown around by a man to toughen me up. When Armando killed his father, he'd vowed to do better when he took us in.

He was a liar.

The moment I couldn't follow orders, it was back to the cages. My mother was a pawn to him, increasing the danger I was put in. Increasing the amount of kills I had to get a day.

I swallow as I bring Rosie's hand to my lips. Ten years after my mother died, I had become what Armando wanted. A mindless killing machine he could control. I've suppressed that part of me, all but denied what I was.

A monster.

A weapon.

Then I met her.

I slowly sit up and stare up at her in silent awe. How could one person change so much? I'd met her when I was twenty-four. Her father instructed I was to train his most prized child... his only daughter.