Pivot.
Ten steps back.
I’m a caged animal on a short, unforgiving chain.
Each swing of my arms is a tight, controlled motion, my fists clenched so hard the bones in my hands ache. I can’t stop moving. If I stop, the silence will rush in. And in that silence, there is only the phantom image of Grace lifting up that pistol, placing it into her mouth and pulling the trigger.
They took her from me on a gurney, her face pale as wax, a mask held over what remained of her face. One team for her, another for our unborn child. Our baby. The words the doctor used are burned into my skull.
‘Massive haemorrhage. Emergency caesarean to save the infant. Then we’ll try to save your wife.’
Try.It’s the most terrifying word in the English language.
I’ve faced down men with guns I’ve negotiated mergers worth billions, I’ve stood in rooms where a single wrong word would mean a bullet in the brain. I have never, ever felt this out of control.
This utterly, completely powerless.
My money means nothing here.
My influence is a joke.
All I can do is wear a groove in this fucking floor and pray to God and hope he listens.
I pivot on my heel for the hundredth time, my gaze sweeping the empty corridor, and I freeze.
He’s there. Leaning against the wall by the water cooler, as if he’s been waiting for a bus. Devin Fucking Blake. Dressed in his usual dark, nondescript clothing, his face a mask of calm neutrality.
A hot, irrational fury spikes through the cold fear in my veins.
Why is he always there, a vulture circling whenever my life is about to crater? A silent, ominous shadow at the edge of every bloody catastrophe. He’s a goddamn harbinger.
“What do you want?” The words come out as a low growl, raw and abrasive. I don’t have the energy for politeness, for the careful dance of our usual interactions.
Devin pushes off the wall, his movements economical, precise. He doesn’t approach, respecting the invisible barrier of my rage. “I came to update you. The ruse worked.”
I just stare at him, my mind struggling to shift gears from the life-and-death reality of this hospital to the shadow war he represents.
“Konstantine’s apparent assassination,” he continues, his voice level. “The Esau took the bait. They’re out in the open, celebrating. Makes them easy to find. They’re being hunted down as we speak.”
I give a sharp, jerky nod. Good. Let them all burn. Let every last one of them pay for what they did to us, for what they’ve done to my Grace. The thought is a dark, satisfying ember in the cold ash of my fear.
“And we have the last of Ines’s murderers,” Devin adds, his eyes never leaving mine. “They’re being taken to Konstantine’s house to be dealt with. Justice, of a sort.”
Justice. It feels like a hollow concept right now. It won’t guarantee my wife opens her eyes again.
I’m about to tell him to leave, that his war and his supposed justice mean nothing in this sterile purgatory when another figure detaches from the shadows at the far end of the corridor.
My breath hitches. For a dizzying second, I think I’m hallucinating from stress, from grief. But no. He steps into the light, and there’s no mistaking that face, the sharp cheekbones, the silver-streaked hair.
Konstantine.
He’s smiling. A small, triumphant curve of his lips. He holds his hands out, palms up in a gesture of benevolent conclusion. “Antonio. I told you. Everything went exactly to plan.”
The air leaves my lungs. The sheer, unmitigated gall of it. The absurdity.
I don’t think about the fact his brother is dead, I don’t think about the fact we murdered him and God knows how many other Brethren Lords to save ourselves. All I can think about is my wife being torn apart on an operating table right now.
The fury that was a spike before becomes a tidal wave. I take a step forward, my body vibrating with it. “My wife is on an operating table, fighting for her life,” I say, my voice dangerously low. “They had to cut our child out of her to save it. None of this…noneof this went to plan.”
