His eyes go to Sloane again. Wild. "Sloane. Stop this."
Sloane pushes off the wall. She walks to the chair. Stands in front of her father, close enough that he could touch her if his hands were free. She looks down at him. He looks up at her. He's bound to a chair in a room with a drain in the floor, and she's standing over him. The last time they were in a room together, he grabbed her wrist hard enough to bruise.
"Anna was in college," Sloane says. "Her father brought her to an auction, and you helped sell her. I was your daughter, and you were going to do the same to me."
"I was protecting you—"
"You were selling me because I tried to save her." Her voice cracks. A fracture that's sealed immediately. "You were punishing me for having a conscience."
"You don't understand how the world—"
"I understand exactly how the world works. I patched up the girls you sold. Checked their vitals before they went on stage. Bandaged the ones who came back." Her voice drops to a whisper. "I know what you did because I cleaned up after it." She steps back. Looks at me. "Finish it," she says.
I stand.
Harrison's breathing has gone shallow. His eyes are wide, darting between us, hunting for an opening, an angle, a way to negotiate. He's spent his entire life finding exits.
"Wait. Wait. I can give you everything. Accounts. Names. The full network—"
"Ruby has it," I say. I draw the Glock from my waistband. "Every server you thought was encrypted, Arden cracked months ago. Safe houses. Shell companies. Payments. We don't need you for information."
The gun sits in my hand. Heavy. Familiar.
Harrison's face drains. "You won't. You can't. There are laws—"
"There are." I check the chamber. Slide the round home. "You broke every one of them."
"Sloane." His voice is high now. The fatherly warmth is gone. The authority is gone. What's left is a man in a chair who is about to die and knows it. "Sloane, please. I'm your father. Whatever I've done. I'm still your—"
"You stopped being my father the night you put Anna on that stage." Sloane's voice comes from the wall behind me. Clear. Final. "And you stopped being anything at all the night you tried to put me there too."
Harrison makes a sound. Low, animal. I step forward. Press the barrel to his forehead. The metal dimples his skin. His eyes squeeze shut. His mouth moves. The trigger pulls against my finger, weighted and certain, metal warm where it meets skin.
My finger tightens and the room shifts.
Concrete walls become compound walls. Bare bulb becomes desert sun. The man in the chair becomes a detainee in a black hood. The gun in my hand is the same gun, always the same gun. The last time I pressed a barrel to a man's forehead, the interpreter's daughter was already gone. A burning vehicle was still sending smoke into a sky the color of bone.
My finger tightens.
"Knox." I feel Sloane's hand on my forearm. Warm. Her thumb on my pulse point. "Knox. Stay here. Stay with me." The desert fights. It feels as though the heat stays on my skin. The compound walls pulse against the concrete. "You're in the Blackwell. Basement. Chicago. You're with me. Feel my hand." Her thumb bears down. I feel the pressure. The warmth. The specific shape of her fingers on my arm.
The compound fades and the desert releases me. The room returns. Concrete. The overhead light. Harrison in the chair, eyes open, staring at me.
"You're broken," Harrison whispers. "You're a broken man with a gun and you're going to—"
I pull the trigger.
The sound is enormous in the concrete room. It bounces off cinder block and fills the space, a physical force that pushes against my chest and rings in my ears.
Harrison's head snaps back. The chair holds. His body slumps against the zip ties, chin dropping to his chest, hands going slack on the armrests.
The echo takes a long time to die.
I lower the gun. My hand is steady. My breathing is even. The calm that settles is absolute. After the shot. After the decision. After the moment when the threat stops being a threat.
Behind me, Sloane's breathing has changed. It's shallower. Faster. I turn. She's standing against the wall. Face white. Eyeslocked on her father's body. Her hands are flat against the cinder block behind her, fingers spread, holding herself upright.
She's looking at the man who built her nightmares with a bullet in his head and she's processing it with the same clinical focus she brings to everything that might destroy her if she lets it in.
