We’re running now, a blind, stumbling sprint through the last of the thicket. Peter’s hand is a vice around mine, practically dragging me as my legs begin to give out for the final time. My lungs are on fire, every breath a jagged shard of glass, but the sound of the .50 cal is fading behind us, swallowed by the dense dampness of the lowlands.
“There!” Hook’s voice cuts through the dark, sharp and urgent.
Through the skeletal branches, I see it. A sleek, blacked-out hull sitting low in the water, its engines a low, muffled thrum that vibrates in the soles of my feet. It’s a ghost ship, no lights, no markings—just our ticket out of this graveyard.
“Go! Go! Go!” Hook bellows, spinning around to fire a final, suppressive burst into the tree line we just vacated.
We hit the mud at the bank, the freezing sludge swallowing my boots, but Peter doesn’t let me slip. He scoops me up, his muscles bunching as he heaves me over the gunwale and onto the deck. I hit the fibreglass floor hard, gasping for air, the taste of mud and adrenaline coating my tongue.
Peter leaps in after me, followed a second later byHook, who hits the deck with a grunt of pain, clutching his shredded shoulder.
“Punch it!” Hook screams at the shadow behind the wheel.
The engines roar to life, a deep, guttural growl that sends a wake crashing into the muddy banks. The boat surges forward, the bow lifting as we tear away from the shore, leaving the burning woods and the bodies behind.
I crawl toward the stern, my fingers clawing at the deck, and look back.
The safe house is a tiny, flickering orange spark on the horizon now. It looks like a fallen star, a piece of hell that finally burned itself out. The white flares have stopped. The gunfire has gone silent. There’s nothing left but the wind and the spray of the black water against my face.
Peter collapses beside me, his chest heaving. He reaches out, his hand trembling as he cups the back of my head and pulls me into his lap. He’s covered in soot, blood, and the filth of the forest, but when he looks at me, his eyes are clear. The obsession is still there, but the desperation has been replaced by a grim, terrifying peace.
“We’re clear,” he rasps, the wind whipping his words away. “We’re out, Wendy.”
I look at my hands. They’re stained dark, the blood of the man I killed dried under my fingernails. I’m shaking, the cold starting to settle into my bones, but for the first time in months, I don’t feel like I’m waiting for the next hit. I don’t feel like I’m waiting for a door to lock.
I lean back against him, letting the vibration of theboat’s engine hum through my spine. Fifty million dollars is sitting in bags at our feet. The world thinks we’re ash.
“Where are we going?” I whisper, my eyes fixed on the disappearing shoreline.
Peter kisses the top of my head, his grip tightening, his body a shield against the rest of the world.
“To a place where they don’t have names for people like us,” he says. “To the end of the map, darling. Just you and me.”
I close my eyes, the spray of the ocean hitting my skin like a baptism. The needle is gone. The cage is gone. There is only the dark water, the man who saved me by becoming a monster, and the long, silent road to whatever “happily ever after” looks like for the ruined.
Epilogue
The sun over the Amalfi Coast doesn’t feel like the sun back home. It’s thicker, heavier, a golden weight that sinks into the skin and stays there. Here, the air doesn’t smell like soot or bleach or the chemical tang of a dealer’s kitchen. It smells of lemon groves, expensive salt, and the $50 million we used to buy our way out of purgatory.
I stand on the balcony of the villa, looking out over a sea so blue it looks like a bruise. I’m wearing a silk robe that cost more than my first car, and beneath it, my skin is clean. My hands are steady. The tremors stopped three months ago, replaced by a stillness I never thought I’d reclaim.
I hear the glass door slide open behind me. I don’t flinch. I don’t even have to turn around to know it’s him. I can feel the change in the air, the way the atmosphere shifts when Peter enters a room—the gravity pulling toward him, always toward him.
He slides his arms around my waist, his chest a solid, familiar wallagainst my back. He’s dressed in linen, looking like a man who has never held a gun in his life, but when he presses his face into the crook of my neck, I feel the same predatory heat that dragged me out of the dark.
“You’re thinking again,” he murmurs, his voice a low, dark honey. “Stop it. The world is dead, Wendy. Only we’re left.”
“I’m not thinking about them,” I say, leaning my head back against his shoulder. I reach up, my fingers tracing the scars on his forearms—the maps of what he did for me. “I was thinking about the girl who used to live in that booth. I wonder if she’d even recognise me.”
“She wouldn’t,” Peter says, his grip tightening just a fraction. He turns me in his arms, forcing me to look at him. His eyes are still as obsessive as the day he found me, still filled with a love so dark it’s almost a threat. “She was a ghost. You’re the queen of this cliff, darling. You’re the woman who put a bullet in the dark and walked out the other side.”
He reaches for the small table beside us and picks up a glass. It isn’t filled with the poison I used to crave. It’s just water, sparkling in the light. He holds it to my lips, a silent reminder that he is the one who sustains me now. I am addicted to him—to the way he looks at me, to the way he guards the door while I sleep, to the way he’s erased every other touch from my memory.
I take a sip, my eyes never leaving his.
“Do you ever regret it?” I ask. “The bodies? The fire? The fact that we can never go back?”
Peter laughs, a soft, dangerous sound that makes my pulse skip. He setsthe glass down and cups my face, his thumbs brushing over my cheekbones.
