“Is it? Or are you just telling yourself that to sleep at night? Murderers always have justifications, son. Always have reasons why their killing was necessary, why their victims deserved it. I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but you’re not thinking clearly. You’re emotional. You care about the girl, I understand that. She’s pretty, she’s forbidden, she represents everything I wouldn’t allow you to have. Of course you want her.But she’s poison, Dredyn. She’s making you weak. Making you betray your family, your legacy, everything I built for you.”
“Everything you built was rotten from the foundation,” Dredyn says, but he’s wavering. I can see it.
“EverythingIbuilt,” James corrects, taking another step forward, almost within arm’s reach now, “was power, security, the ability to control our own destiny instead of being controlled. And I was going to give it all to you—my empire, my legacy. You could have been next in line for the OCK seat. You could have had everything.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Then you’re a fool. You have ten seconds to lower that weapon and walk away. Ten seconds before this becomes something none of us can take back. Something that ends with you in prison or dead.”
“You already made it something we can’t take back the moment you killed Evangeline. The moment you tried to control Mara. You’re the one who made this inevitable.”
“Then you’re choosing this,” James says. “Choosing to throw away your future. Choosing to become a murderer. Choosing?—”
The stranger moves.
It’s subtle—just a shift of weight, hand sliding smoothly toward his jacket pocket where something bulges slightly against the fabric.
A weapon. He’s going for a weapon.
“GUN!”
Everything happens at once.
Talon’s already firing—phut, phut—two shots, but the stranger is diving behind the table with surprising agility for a man his age. The shots spark off the polished wood surface, punching holes but missing flesh.
James lunges at Dredyn.
Father and son collide like titans. Dredyn’s gun goes flying, clattering away across the concrete floor, spinning into a corner. James’s older, slower, but he’s been training his whole life. Knows every dirty trick in the book and invented a few new ones. His thumb goes for Dredyn’s eye socket, knee driving up brutally toward his groin.
Dredyn blocks, barely, before he gets an elbow into James’s ribs. I hear the crack of bone even from across the room. They go down hard, rolling, trading blows that would break a normal person.
“GO!” Dredyn shouts between gasps, pinned under his father’s weight. “Get them! Don’t let them?—”
Edmund and the stranger are already through a door I didn’t even notice—concealed in the wall paneling. Probably a fire exit or escape route.
“Talon!” I don’t sign it—can’t afford the time. I just shout it and move.
We go through the door together, leaving Dredyn to face his father alone.
THIRTY-FIVE
DREDYN
My father and I circle each other like boxers between rounds. Both looking for the weapon. Both knowing whoever reaches it first wins.
“Well, this is unfortunate,” he says.
“Unfortunate?” I keep my eyes on him, searching my peripheral vision for the gun. “That’s what you’re calling this?”
“I’d prefer ‘unnecessary.’ You could have walked away, Dredyn—taken the deal. You, your friends, the girl—all alive, all safe. But you had to push.” He feints left, but I don’t take the bait. “Had to be dramatic about it.”
“You killed Evangeline.”
“I made a decision. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” I spot the gun—ten feet away, near the overturned chair. “You decided she had to die. You ordered it and Chase followed your orders. She ended up dead. That’s not a decision, that’s murder.”
He sees where I’m looking, sees the gun. We’re equidistant from it. “She was going to destroy everything. Decades of careful construction, generations of legacy, gone because one idealistic girl thought she could change the world.”
