"I’m ready to watch him burn," she says.
I look at her, my beautiful, corrupted wife. The girl who paints monsters is now the one leading the hunt.
"Then let’s go finish this," I say.
"Luca," I call out. "Get the C4 ready. We have a stage to set."
CHAPTER 25
THE DEVIL’S BARGAIN
POV: IVY
The Red Hook shipyard is a graveyard of industry.
It smells of brine, rusted iron, and the decaying sludge of the East River. Towering cranes loom overhead like skeletal fingers grasping at the cloud-choked moon, their shadows stretching long and distorted across the cracked concrete.
It is freezing. The wind off the water cuts through my tactical jacket, biting at the exposed skin of my neck, but I don't zip it up. I need access to the knife strapped to my chest. I need access to the Glock holstered at my hip.
I am crouching behind a stack of rotting wooden pallets, twenty feet above the ground on a rusted catwalk.
From here, I can see everything.
I look down at the "stage" Silas has set. It’s a clearing between two massive walls of shipping containers—steel canyons painted in peeling red and blue. In the center, a single floodlight hums, casting a cone of harsh, yellow light onto the asphalt.
Silas stands at the edge of that light.
He looks small from up here. A lone figure in black, hands in his pockets, waiting for the executioner. He isn't wearing his tacticalvest. He isn't holding a weapon. He is playing the part of the defeated man, the broken king coming to beg for scraps.
But I know what he’s hiding.
I look at the small, gray remote in my hand. It looks like a garage door opener, innocuous and plastic. My thumb hovers over the single red button.
Beneath the asphalt, tucked into the wheel wells of the old forklift, and magnetized to the sides of the shipping containers, are three pounds of C4 explosive.
We are standing on a powder keg. And I am the match.
"Radio check," Silas’s voice whispers in my earpiece. It’s barely a breath, intimate and steady.
"I see you," I whisper back. "I’m in position."
"If this goes sideways," he says, "if he brings more men than we counted... you blow the stack on the left first. It will create a barrier. Then you run."
"I’m not running, Silas."
"Ivy..."
"I’m not running," I repeat, my voice hard. "We finish this tonight."
He is silent for a moment. Then, I hear the ghost of a chuckle. "Stubborn."
"Devoted."
"Check your angles," he commands, shifting back to general mode. "He’s early."
I shift my gaze to the entrance of the shipyard.
Headlights.
