“Back then, we didn’t spar with guns,” I point out.
“You’re right.” He raises his weapon and pops out the cartridge. Bullets go tumbling from it and clatter on the ground at his feet. “I’m game if you are.”
It’s a stupid gamble to make. He’s goading me into dropping my weapon. If I do it and he’s bluffing, I won’t have time to react. I’ll be pumped full of lead in seconds.
But something tells me he isn’t bluffing. All along, Desya has wanted one thing, and one thing only: to go back. To resurrect those “old times.”
I follow my hunch and pocket my gun. Roll up my sleeves, get into stance. “Come at me, then.”
His face splits into a grin. For a second, he almost looks like that boy I knew, filled with joy at the prospect of trading punches with his best friend.
Then he’s charging at me.
He goes for a sucker punch right off the bat. Somehow, my body seems to remember this, because I twist out of the way before I even know what I’m doing.
“See?” He smirks. “Two peas in a pod, you and I.”
“No.” I charge at him head-on with a jab, aiming for his jaw. I miss by a hair—looks like his body remembers me, too. “There were always three of us.”
His smirk twists into a snarl. “She was in the way,” he says, lunging for me with a left hook. “She tore us apart. It’s her fault, all of it!”
I dodge and return a hook of my own. This time, it lands. Desya’s lip splits clean in half. “She was innocent!” I roar.
“No, brother.” He wipes the blood from his face with the back of his hand. When he grins again, his teeth are red and dripping. “None of us were innocent.”
I was.I don’t say it, but the little boy inside me is screaming it.I may have been born into this world, but I wasn’t tainted by it yet. Not until you decided to take everything from me.
That’swhen I lost my innocence.
We start circling each other again. Both Prizrak and my men are giving us a wide berth. Right now, Maksim could easily snipe Desya off the board if I hadn’t told him to stay put from the start. To focus on Mia, leave thismudakto me.
But Mia is only half the reason.
He comes at me again. I protect my face, but his fist immediately changes trajectory. A feint. It lands straight on my injured shoulder.
I recoil and grit my teeth against the explosion of pain. Mia’s painkillers have fully worn off now—but her sedative, not so much. I can feel everything, but my movements aren’t as fast as they should be.
Desya seems to notice. “You’re slow,” he remarks, displeased. “What’s up? You getting old on me?”
He howls with laughter, then lands another punch.
When I stagger back, his face lights up with realization. “Oh, I see. That bitch slipped you something, didn’t she?”
“Don’t. You. Dare.” I punctuate each word with a punch. Soon, I’m full-on pummeling him. “Don’t you dareevercall her that.”
“You always were soft on girls.” He’s struggling to keep up his defense, I can tell, but he’s still wasting energy on talk. “A pity. It was your only mistake.”
I land another punch, this time from his blind side. As my knuckles connect with his septum, a sickeningcrunchechoes between us. “My first mistake was trusting you. I’ve made many more since, but none as bad as that.”
Desya’s back hits the wall. He’s cornered now. “You’ve changed,” he says, making it sound like an accusation. “You’re weaker now. Because of her.”
“I’m stronger because of her.” I prove it right away by landing another punch—and another, and another. Thanks to the bullets Mia put in him earlier, he’s not as fast as he should be, either. “But you? You’re alone. A miserable, lonely excuse for a ghost.”
“I used to have someone,” he pants. “I used to have you.”
“Yeah,” I grit. “You did.”
Then I land my last punch.
