Chapter 181: The Breaking Point
"I am going to blow her brains across this floor," April hissed, her voice vibrating with a dark, primal rage that rattled through the silent foyer. "The zombies won’t get her before I do. I will end her right here and now—"
Her finger tightened around the silver trigger, her knuckles turning bone-white as the steel barrel locked onto Eleanor’s tear-streaked forehead. Eleanor shrieked, thrashing blindly against her restraints, while Victor and Clara screamed in sheer, paralyzed horror, demanding her to stop.
But before April could pull the trigger, the heavy oak doors of the grand entrance groaned under immense pressure.
BOOM!
The deadbolts shattered with a deafening, metallic snap, the double doors throwing themselves inward as a surge of cold midnight wind swept into the foyer.
Nat’s men instantly raised their weapons, taking tactical positions, but Nat held up a single hand to stop them. He recognized the silhouette stepping across the threshold.
Xavier stepped into the foyer.
His long, dark tailored coat brushed against the doorframes, his broad frame cutting an imposing, terrifying silhouette against the storm outside.
Beside him was Samuel, looking slightly disheveled with his jacket thrown hastily over his shoulders, but he still looked ever as dependable.
Xavier had been trying April’s phone for the past hour. But because April had tossed her device into her spatial dimension, she hadn’t heard it ring.
Coupled with her unusual, fragile behavior from the previous night, Xavier’s instincts had flared into full alarm the moment midnight passed without her return. He had yanked Samuel out of bed, commandeered the tracking grid to trace Nat’s personal convoy, and driven straight to a Gabriel estate that he didn’t even know existed until now.
Gabriel Estate. Hearing that already made him think of what April had told him.
I met a woman today... We looked very alike... Her name was Emily Gabriel. And then Nat and April happened to be at this Gabriel Estate past midnight.
He had every reason to be worried.
Xavier’s sharp, dark eyes swept over the chaotic room in a single second:
The bound, bleeding family tied to dining chairs.
The shattered ceiling tiles.
The cold, lifeless body of Beatrice resting near the foot of the stairs.
The heavy stench of blood and gunpowder.
And then his gaze landed on April.
She was standing in the center of the room, her body shaking with an unnatural, violent tremor.
She was gripping Nat’s coat with one hand while holding a silver handgun to Eleanor’s forehead with the other. Her dark brown eyes—usually so detached when not excited, and calculating when planning her future—were wide, wild, and drowning in a suffocating inferno of raw, unadulterated hatred.
Xavier went completely still. In all the time he had spent beside her—through their first meeting, their usual readings, the tactical planning, and the calculations for the end of the world—he had never seen her look like this.
She wasn’t acting like a seer. She was acting like a wounded, cornered beast breaking out of a decade of invisible chains.
Samuel gasped quietly beside him, his eyes darting between April and the tied-up family. "What in the world...?" He watched April’s trembling frame and something tightened in his chest. Just what did they do for April to be in a state like this?
Xavier didn’t spare a look at Victor, he didn’t look at Eleanor, and he didn’t ask Nat for an explanation.
He simply walked straight across the splattered marble floor, his footsteps echoing with absolute, unshakeable purpose until he stopped right beside April.
Nat didn’t move away, but he loosened his grip on April’s wrist slightly, his eyes flicking toward Xavier with a silent, grim understanding.
"April," Xavier called out gently.
April didn’t lower the gun. Her eyes remained locked on Eleanor’s trembling face, her breath coming in ragged, furious gasps.
"I’m going to kill her, Xavier," April whispered, her voice cracking with a terrifying, raw agony. "She stole everything from me. She is the reason I had to suffer. I asked myself everyday what crime I had committed. Asked myself why I was working in a hellish place like the Morgans to begin with. Was it my choice or what exactly? But this... this trash... this monster!" Her grip on the gun tightened and her hands shook. "She had planned it all. I remember everything now," her eyes teared up in rage. "I remember all of it."
Xavier’s chest tightened violently, watching her as she folded even more than she had the previous night, vulnerability and fragility turning into something lethal, something painful and irreversible.
A cold, lethal rage surged through his own veins as her words settled into his mind.
"So, you’re saying your missing memories... She is behind it?" He asked and she gave a tight nod.
"Yes, Xavier. She wiped my memory and threw me into a hellish place like the Morgans just because she saw me as a threat."
"So," Xavier whispered under his breath, as the pieces of it all came together. "Mystery solved," The deep, unhealing scars of her past—they were all tied to the weeping, bloody woman tied to the chair before them.
Without a word, Xavier reached out. He didn’t grab the gun from her trembling hand, nor did he pull her away by force. Instead, his warm hand gently wrapped over April’s ice-cold fingers, his palm covering her trembling hand on the grip of the weapon.
"I hear you," Xavier murmured softly, his deep voice carrying a grounding, absolute warmth that cut straight through the deafening noise in her head. "I hear you, April. But do not let this filth ruin the hands that will survive the end of this world."
April’s chest heaved as she felt the heavy, unyielding warmth of Xavier’s hand enveloping hers. The suffocating inferno in her mind flickered, her fingers twitching slightly against the cold steel.
She looked up, her wild, dark eyes finally shifting away from Eleanor to meet Xavier’s calm, unwavering dark gaze.
"She doesn’t deserve to breathe," April choked out, her entire body still trembling violently against his side.
"Then she won’t," Xavier promised, his voice dropping into a dark, absolute vow that sent a chill through the room.
He gently guided her arm downward, easing the silver handgun away from Eleanor’s head until April’s grip finally loosened, letting the weapon rest at her side. "She will pay for every single second she stole from you. But you do not need to stain your soul for it tonight."