Me: 86
Me: It’s Tessa.
That number is a casino term to denote foul play. They must all use it to signal trouble because the responses are immediate.
Axel: On our way.
Ryker: Do whatever he told you to do.
Me: I can’t leave him. Please hurry.
Cash: Status of security team?
I scan the area, peering through overgrown branches and searching for any sign of the other three guards. Nothing.
Me: I think they’re dead.
Axel: What about the Escalade?
Me: Totaled.
Jax: How many against Maddox?
Me: Looks to be a dozen.
Ryker: Fucking run, Tessa.
I don’t respond. They already know I’m not capable of fleeing.
Love is an action.
MADDOX
Strutting amid the writhing flames, I’m suddenly hit with the notion that I’m meant to be one with a blaze. Much like the kingdom that offers keys to the underworld, it’s part of my family’s history, an inferno of pain.
Cinders and soot.
It always comes back to melted vinyl and a singing knife.
Except now there’s my beautiful Nightmare. She’s managed to mold the ashes of the past into the hope of tomorrow.
My melodic blade.
Smoke billows into the twilight sky, bullets ping, and headlights illuminate an area of wreckage and an open space the size of a basketball court.
The mean motherfuckers glaring at me are salivating for a chunk of Noire meat.
But men like them, like me, like the treacherous crew Axel had train me as a teen don’t thrive on a simple takedown. We’re not military. We aren’t snipers. We’re not built to kill as a means to an end. To do it quickly so the job is done. Our kills are astatement. We’re taught to earn it, to reap the bragging rights, to stare into the face of wickedness and out-evil them.
The artistry of knife work, of taunting, of pulling a fast one on this group of assassins seeps into my bones and fuels me.
The scary-ass thugs who schooled me back then on how to defeat the most deranged bastards in the world left me with some valuable rules to live and fight by.
The first is that most opponents in our world will match your energy. If you show up as aggressive, they’ll go into attack mode. Scared? They’ll prey on you. Unruffled? They’ll wonder what you know that they don’t. Arrogant? They’ll fear you.
That, combined with my education from some top-notch stunt men, left me with the perspective that everything is a performance. And, sure, it could be a final curtain call if you misread the act, but I’ve always lived for those standing-ovation moments.
I recognize a couple of these guys. Makarov’s cronies. I had a feeling he’d struggle leaving it up to Lund. He craves avenging his son too much to let someone else reap that reward. Their hunger is amplified with every step I take, but unlike the security guards they gunned down, they won’t kill me. They have orders to make it hurt. To deliver me to him, alive, so he can send a message to anyone who crosses them that even those who seem unconquerable will suffer at his hand.
