"Talk to me," she begs, her voice shaking as she ties another knot. "Thayer, keep your eyes open. Talk to me."
"What do you want to know?" I murmur, my voice a slurred, heavy rasp.
"Anything," she gasps, piercing my skin for the fifth time. I flinch violently, my knuckles turning white against the headboard. "Tell me... tell me about the first time you saw me."
She is trying to distract me. She is trying to force my brain to process a memory instead of the agonizing trauma being inflicted upon my body.
"Six years ago," I whisper, my eyes locking onto hers, the memory entirely crystal clear despite the fever burning my brain. "Your father's house. I had just broken his enforcer's jaw. I walked out of the office. And you were standing at the top of the marble stairs."
"I was terrified of you," she says softly, pulling the thread tight.
"You should have been," I reply, a dark, breathless smile curving my lips. "I was covered in blood. I was a monster. But you didn't run. You just stared at me with those massive, fractured blue eyes."
She pushes the needle through again. The pain is a dull, roaring background noise now, entirely eclipsed by the vivid, intoxicating memory of my initial obsession.
"I knew, right then," I murmur, my voice dropping into a dark, reverent hum. "I looked at you, in that oversized nightgown, clutching the railing... and the absolute, terrifying realization slammed into my chest. You were mine. You had always been mine. The universe just took thirteen years to put you in my path."
"You decided my entire fate in three seconds," she whispers, tying the knot, a profound, heavy realization settling over her features.
"I decided my own fate," I correct her softly. "Because the moment I saw you, I knew I was going to burn my entire life to the ground to keep you."
She pauses. The needle hovers over my skin. She looks at me, the sickly pink neon light illuminating the absolute, unadulterated devotion burning in my pale gray eyes. The cognitive dissonance is completely eradicated. She understands the sheer, psychotic depth of my love. It is not gentle. It is not kind. It is a violent, consuming fire that will destroy anyone who tries to extinguish it.
She swallows hard, her eyes dropping back to the wound.
She works for another twenty minutes. Every stitch is a battle of endurance. By the time she ties the fifteenth and final knot, my entire body is completely soaked in a cold, feverish sweat. Thecheap motel mattress is ruined. The dark black sutures stand out starkly against my pale, inflamed skin like a row of brutal, ugly staples.
She drops the needle and the hemostats back into the Pelican case.
She grabs a heavy roll of sterile gauze and medical tape, quickly and securely wrapping my entire shoulder, pressing the bandages tightly against the closed wound to prevent any seepage.
When she is finished, she collapses entirely. She slumps forward, her forehead coming to rest gently against my uninjured right collarbone. Her chest heaves with exhausted, jagged sobs. The adrenaline has completely left her system, leaving behind a hollow, terrified shell.
"It's done," she cries, her bloody hands resting weakly against the mattress. "It's closed."
I slowly release my death grip on the metal headboard. My right arm is heavy, trembling from the sheer exertion of enduring the pain, but I force it to move. I wrap my arm around her back, pulling her fragile, shivering body completely on top of my uninjured side.
"You did perfectly," I murmur, pressing my lips to the damp crown of her head.
She buries her face in my neck, crying quietly, the sheer trauma of the surgery finally breaking her.
I hold her in the dark. The fever continues to rage, but the immediate threat of bleeding to death has been entirely mitigated. I am weak, exhausted, and hunted, but I have never felt more absolutely, terrifyingly victorious.
The woman in my arms is not a captive anymore. She is an active, entirely complicit participant in her own kidnapping. She sewed the monster back together. She chose me over the law, over her father, over her own freedom.
We lie in the silence for an hour. The rhythmic drumming of the rain against the motel window slowly tapers off into a faint, miserable drizzle.
Sybil stops crying. Her breathing evens out, the exhaustion pulling her toward the edge of sleep.
But my paranoia never sleeps.
The heavy, synthesized narcotics that Dante pushed into my IV at the compound are entirely burned out of my system. The pain is a sharp, agonizing reality, keeping my mind entirely alert.
I stare at the peeling, water-stained ceiling of the motel room, calculating the variables. The FBI has the files. Arthur Vance’s dead man's switch effectively outed me to the federal government as a parricide and the head of the largest organized crime syndicate in the Midwest. They will freeze the accounts. They will raid the safehouses. They will squeeze Dante and the Capos until someone breaks.
We cannot stay here. The ghost car is untraceable, but the motel owner is a liability. A blood debt only buys silence until the federal government offers immunity.
Suddenly, a sound completely shatters the heavy silence of the room.
