He’ll call off Brandon tonight, sure. I believe he’ll honor the letter of our deal. Then, in a week or a month or a year, when I’m too far away to do anything about it, he’ll decide that maybe promises sworn on the grave of a woman who never bothered to love us don’t matter too much. They are not binding.
There is only one way to keep them safe:Burn it all to the fucking ground.
I take inventory.
My right hand is a ruin. Three of my fingers are bent at strange, grotesque angles, and they won’t move beyond a slight wiggle no matter how hard I try. But my left hand still works, more or less. Swollen, yes. Aching, yes. But functional. Mostly.
Most of my ribs are cracked, many of them broken. Every breath is a knife between the bones. But air goes in my lungs and air goes out, and if it hurts, well, fuck it. Pain is no longer a deterrent.
I flex my legs experimentally. Again, the nerves and muscles cry out, but they obey eventually.
As for my mind… my mind is the sharpest it’s been in hours. Because there’s nothing left to cloud it. Neither hope nor fear.
Just purpose.
My gaze goes to the table where the masked men laid out their instruments. They left it all behind, unbelievably. Scalpels, pliers, knives, saws, a still-warm blowtorch, All still there, glinting under the lights.
Most ridiculously of all, they left me unchained.
Careless.They truly thought they’d finished me.
They’re about to find out how fucking wrong they are.
I drag myself to my feet.
The world swims dangerously, then stabilizes. My vision swims with black spots that pulse in time with my heartbeat. But I’m vertical. That’s a start.
The scalpel goes into my left palm, hidden against my wrist. It’s small and unassuming, but deadly if you know where to put it.
Iknow where to fucking put it.
The door isn’t locked. Why would it be? I’m a dead man walking to his own funeral. No threat to anyone anymore.
I limp through the basement, past the drain and the hooks, past the ghosts of my own screams still reverberating off the walls. The stairs are torture. I grip the railing with my ruined hand and bite through my lip to keep from crying out.
The car idles outside, just like Aleksei promised. The driver’s side door opens as I approach. A man in a dark suit steps out, face impassive, hand already reaching for my elbow to push me into the back seat.
He expects a broken prisoner. A man eager for escape.
He gets a scalpel through the soft tissue beneath his jaw.
The driver’s body hasn’t hit the ground before the second guard comes running from the passenger side, hand reaching for his holster.
He’s fast. I’m faster.
I wrench the dying man’s pistol from his waistband and fire twice through his own chest—using him as a meat shield, feeling the bullets punch through his back and into his ribcage. The second guard catches one round in the shoulder. He staggers, fires wild, the shot going wide into the night sky.
I drop the corpse and close the distance.
My broken fingers scream as I grip his gun arm and twist. A gruesomesnapas his wrist gives. He opens his mouth to scream and I shove the scalpel through his throat, sawing sideways until the sound dies in a gurgle.
He drops.
I drag the bodies into the shadows behind a rusting dumpster. It’s not my neatest work, but it’ll buy me time. Not much—an hour, maybe two, before Aleksei’s men at the airport start wondering why their ride never showed. When they connect the dots, they’ll call it in, and the whole rotten machine will lurch into motion. I have to make my move before then.
I take the car keys from the second guard’s pocket. They’re slick with blood in my palm. I slide behind the wheel and drive, my eyes barely able to track the road.
I know where I need to go.
