A soldier materializes at my elbow. “Sir. We need to move her to the perimeter.”
I withdraw enough to see her face, grime streaked acrossone cheek, raw redness circling her wrists where the rope carved its signature, eyes glazed with tears she hasn’t permitted to fall. “Go with him. Get outside.”
“No.”
“Elizabeth—”
“I’m not leaving without you.” Her hands remain on my arms, almost desperate. “If you stay, I stay. That’s how this works.”
“It’s not safe?—”
“I’m not going anywhere without you!” she interrupts. “Don’t you understand? I don’t care about the walls you build or what words you use to push me away. I’m staying!”
Before I know what I’m doing, I kiss her. Deeply and passionately.
It’s heaven.
And when she kisses me back, I understand what she is to me.
Everything.
By the time our lips part, the warehouse has grown quieter. Alexei’s teams have neutralized the majority of Dushku’s forces, and the residual sounds of engagement have migrated toward the far perimeter.
My shoulder bleeds with a steady, insistent warmth, and the pain has escalated past the threshold where I can comfortably compartmentalize it.
None of that matters.
I rise to my feet. Elizabeth comes with me.
Dushku is precisely where I left him, collapsed against the base of the pillar, one leg rendered useless beneath him, his suit darkened with blood and concrete dust.
The diminishment is total: a man who commanded this room twenty minutes ago, who orchestrated, postured, and delivered terms from the center of his private stage, now reduced to a crawling, bleeding mess.
He lifts his gaze as I approach. The composure barely persists. I can see the labor required to maintain it, the visible strain of a mask that no longer fits.
I seize the front of his shirt and haul him upright. His weight sags against my grip, and I hold him there, forcing him to meet my eyes at a distance that permits no evasion.
The first blow connects with his jaw. The second splits his lip. The third produces a noise from his throat that makes me quite pleased.
“Alexei, knife.”
Alexei appears at my shoulder. I extend my open palm without diverting my gaze from Dushku’s face. The object arrives handle-first.
“Besnik.” I lower myself to his level. The proximity is deliberate, intimate, inescapable. “What did I tell you would happen if you touched her?”
“I’m —”
“I told you, I would rip off your hands.” I take his right hand and isolate three fingers. “As you know, I’m a man of my word.”
When I’m finished, I stand and hold the blade out to Alexei without removing my attention from Dushku’s contorted face.
“I’ll be taking my woman home now, you son of a bitch.”
Alexei takes the knife. “Make it last,” I say to him. “Every hour. Until there’s nothing left to take.”
He nods.
I turn.
