"The bag," I whisper, my voice barely audible, my head lolling back against the cold stone. "Open the bag."
She scrambles to the waterproof duffel I dropped on the floor. Her shaking, mud-caked hands tear the zipper open. She pulls out an industrial emergency medical kit.
"What do I do?" she asks, her voice completely frantic, ripping the plastic seal off the kit. "Thayer, tell me what to do."
"Cut the shirt off," I command, my eyes fluttering shut, the darkness completely overwhelming my senses. "Pack the wound. QuikClot gauze. You have to push it deep inside the muscle, Sybil. It is going to hurt."
She doesn't hesitate. She pulls a pair of trauma shears from the kit. I feel the cold metal slide against my skin as she completely cuts the ruined tactical shirt away from my torso, exposing my bare chest and the brutal, gaping mess of my shoulder to the freezing air of the cabin.
She rips open a packet of hemostatic gauze.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, a sob breaking in her throat. "I'm so sorry."
"Do it," I order.
She presses the gauze directly into the open wound.
A blinding, catastrophic explosion of pure agony tears through my entire nervous system. I roar, a dark, animalistic sound of pure suffering, my body violently arching off the floorboards. My right hand shoots out, my fingers wrapping completely around her throat—not to strangle her, but a completely involuntary, violent reaction to the blinding pain.
Sybil doesn't flinch. She doesn't pull away. She leans into my grip, her blue eyes locked onto mine, completely fearless, as she ruthlessly packs the gauze deeper into my torn flesh, forcing the chemical agent to clot the severed artery.
"Look at me," she demands, her voice dropping into a dark, commanding tone that sounds terrifyingly similar to my own. "Look at me, Thayer. Stay awake."
My breathing comes in ragged, shallow gasps. The pain is a white-hot fire burning through my veins, but the bleeding begins to slow. She grabs a thick roll of pressure bandages, quickly and tightly wrapping them around my shoulder, completely binding my arm to my chest to immobilize the joint.
When she is finished, her hands are completely coated in my blood.
She sits back on her heels, her chest heaving, the tactical jacket falling off one shoulder. She looks completely feral. A dark, beautiful queen forged in the fires of my violence.
I look at her, the blood loss completely stripping away the last remnants of my civilized facade. The calculated, untouchableDon is dead. Only the obsessed, psychotic stalker remains, lying bleeding on the floor of a rotting cabin.
"You saved me," I whisper, a dark, twisted smile curving my pale lips.
"You're not going to die," she breathes, wiping a bloody hand across her forehead, completely smearing my crimson across her pale skin.
"Do you know why I let them do it, Sybil?" I ask, my mind fracturing, the dark, toxic truth spilling from my lips before I can lock it away.
She freezes, the flashlight casting long, demonic shadows across her face. "Let who do what?"
"Your father," I murmur, my gray eyes completely dilating, burning into her soul. "I knew Arthur Vance was going to betray me. I knew he was meeting with the Commission three weeks before the wedding."
Sybil stops breathing entirely. The blood completely drains from her face. "What are you talking about? You said he surprised you. You said he firebombed your warehouse as a distraction."
"I let him firebomb the warehouse," I confess, the words a lethal, unapologetic poison. "I let him board that plane. I let him sell you out to the Commission."
"Why?" she whispers, horror completely consuming her voice, scrambling backward a fraction of an inch. "Why would you let him do that? They tried to kill me!"
"Because I needed the justification," I growl, my uninjured hand shooting out, wrapping around her wrist, completely refusing to let her pull away. The possessive, unhinged obsession in my blood completely overpowers the pain.
"Justification for what?" she demands, her voice shaking.
"To annihilate your entire world," I whisper, pulling her closer until my bloodied chest brushes against the heavy fabric of her jacket. "If I just married you, you would always have a connection to your father. You would always have a tether to your old life. I didn't want a piece of you, Sybil. I wanted every single, miserable fragment of your soul."
Her blue eyes widen, the profound, absolute depravity of my master plan finally crashing into her mind.
"I let him betray the Syndicate so that I would have the absolute right to hunt him down and slaughter him," I confess, a dark, victorious satisfaction bleeding into my tone. "I let the Commission attack so that I could lock you in a bunker and completely sever you from the outside world. I burned your entire life to the ground, little bird, just so I could be the only one standing in the ashes with you."
She stares at me, completely paralyzed by the sheer, psychotic depth of my obsession.
