He caught the wall, jaw locked against the agony I knew was radiating up his hip, into his spine, through every nerve ending that hadn't healed right after the explosion. I'd watched him fight this pain for a year and a half. I knew exactly how bad it had to be for him to show it.
"Go." He tried to wave me forward. "Complete the mission."
I slid my arm around his waist instead.
The contact sent fire through my cracked ribs, but I'd spent thirty-two years putting his needs before my own comfort. This was no different.
"Together," I said. "Always."
His eyes found mine in the emergency lighting. Something passed between us that was not forgiveness or absolution, just acknowledgment that we were both too broken to survive alone and too stubborn to stop trying.
We took the remaining floors slowly. My arm supported his weight while he leaned on his cane, and I memorized the feel of him against my side, the warmth of his body and the rhythm of his labored breathing.
The service exit opened onto an alley behind the casino. Reid's team waited in black SUVs, engines running.
"Move!" Reid called, laying suppressing fire as Shaw's remaining security poured from the building.
We reached the convoy as the pursuit cars rounded the far corner. Algerone collapsed into the passenger seat. I slid in beside him, and tires screamed against asphalt as we accelerated into Macau's maze of traffic and neon.
The ride to the harbor took twenty minutes. No one spoke. Algerone's breathing was labored, his face pale with pain and exhaustion. I wanted to touch him. I kept my hands in my lap instead, uncertain of my welcome.
The extraction boat waited at a private marina. Only when we were safely in the cabin, Macau's lights shrinking behind us, did he finally reach for me.
His hands framed my face like I might disappear, like I was something precious instead of something broken.
"When you fell." His voice cracked. "When you didn't move. I thought I'd lost you forever."
"I know." I covered his hands with mine. "I'm here."
He kissed me, tasting of copper and victory and the whiskey that had soaked into his ruined suit. When we broke apart, his forehead pressed to mine.
"Never again," he breathed. "I can't lose you."
"You won't."
It was another lie, another promise I couldn't guarantee. But he needed to hear it, and I needed to say it, and maybe that was enough. Maybe love was just two people telling each other the lies they needed to survive.
The boat cut through the dark water. His hand found mine in the shadows, fingers interlacing like they belonged there.
"I'm still angry with you," he said quietly.
"I know." I squeezed his hand. "You can stay angry as long as you need to."
His thumb traced across my knuckles in a touch that was gentle and forgiving in a way his words weren't ready to be.
"But I'm glad you're alive to be angry at."
I pressed my lips to his shoulder, breathing him in. "I'm glad too," I whispered. "More than you know."
The cabin of myprivate jet felt like a mausoleum. We were thirty-seven thousand feet above the Pacific, and every muscle in my body was demanding payment for the violence I'd dealt out in Macau. I'd built boardrooms where men bled money instead of blood, but tonight my body wanted both.
I stretched my damaged leg out, wincing as the movement pulled at rebuilt ligaments. My hand found the worst spot on my hip where the old explosion injury throbbed, aggravated by our fight with Shaw and the chaotic escape. The muscle was knotted tight as steel cable.
Shaw had gotten a few hits in. The damaged hip and thigh that had never healed properly after the mill explosion now screamed with every shift in pressure. My ribs ached like I'd gone ten rounds with a prizefighter and lost. Each breath was a negotiation with agony.
Up here, wrapped in engineered silence, I could finally relax. There were no witnesses except the man kneeling beside my chair, sleeves rolled back like he was preparing for surgery.
"Strip," Maxime commanded.
