"The files," I continued, my voice steady and cold. "The financial records going back fifteen years. The personnel dossiers on every operative in your network. The shipping manifests for every 'product' that moved through Mercy Logistics. I've read them all. I know about the buyers in Dubai and the safe houses in Prague and the politician you had on retainer in DC. I know about the children, Nathan. The ones you sold to people who wanted them young."
"That wasn't—I didn't—"
"You did." I stepped closer, the knife still in my hand, my voice dropping to a whisper. "You built an empire on the bones of broken women. On the bones of children. You turned Gabriel's research into an assembly line. You mass-produced what he created, and you sold it to the highest bidder. And you would have kept doing it forever if I hadn't stopped you."
Nathan's face was pale now, his breathing ragged. The blood was spreading, staining his shirt, dripping onto the floor. But his eyes were still sharp, still calculating, still searching for a way out. "You don'tunderstand. The network—the family business—it wasn't my choice. I was born into it. Raised for it. I never had a choice."
"You had a choice when you killed Monika. You had a choice when you dosed me with compliance drugs. You had a choice when you stood over your brother's body and smiled." I shook my head. "You had a thousand choices, Nathan. And you chose wrong every single time."
"I love you." The words came out broken, desperate. "Everything I did—the pills, the protocol, the lies—it was because I love you. I couldn't lose you. I couldn't let Gabriel take you away."
"You couldn't let me be free." I looked at him, this man who'd held me through nightmares and whispered promises against my skin and slowly, methodically, poisoned me into submission. "You never loved me. You loved what I could do for you. The missions I ran. The competition I eliminated. The way I looked at you like you were my savior while you were tightening the leash."
"That's not true." His voice cracked. "The connection we had—the life we built—that was real. You can't fake that."
"You can fake anything if you've been trained well enough." I smiled, and the expression felt foreign on my face. "Gabriel taught me to perform. You taught me to believe in the performance. But the performance is over now. The mask is off. And I'm done being what either of you made me."
Nathan's legs buckled, and he slid down the wall, leaving a streak of blood on the peeling paint. He looked up at me with eyes that were finally, finally starting to understand. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to finish what I started." I knelt in front of him, bringing my face level with his. "The evidence is already in the hands of people who will use it. Your network is already crumbling. Your assets are already being seized. By this time tomorrow, everything you built will be ash."
"And me?"
"You're going to die here." I said it gently, almost kindly. "In the same building where your brother died. In the same building where you both tried to own me. It's fitting, don't you think? Poetic, even."
"You can't—" He coughed, blood flecking his lips. "You can't just kill me. The authorities—"
"Will find your body alongside Gabriel's. Two brothers, killed in a confrontation over the family business. A tragic end to a tragic legacy." I stood up, looking down at him. "No one will mourn you, Nathan. No one will miss you. The world will be better without you in it."
"Bunny—please—" He reached for me, his hand trembling, his eyes wet with tears that might have been genuine or might have been another performance. "Please. I love you. I know I did terrible things, but I love you. That has to count forsomething."
I looked at him for a long moment, this man who'd saved me and destroyed me in the same breath. I thought about the mornings we'd spent tangled together in sunlight. The missions we'd run side by side. The future he'd painted for us, full of wedding vows and garden flowers and children who would never exist. I thought about the pills in my medicine cabinet and the files on his laptop and the grave in Miami where his sister lay buried.
"It counts for something," I said finally. "It counts for this: you die last."
31
The Tasting of Blood
The hallway stretched before me, dark and cold and silent except for the sound of Nathan's ragged breathing behind me. I walked slowly, deliberately, my bare feet leaving bloody footprints on the linoleum, my ruined dress stiff with the combined blood of two brothers. The Institute's walls seemed to press in around me, watching, waiting, bearing witness to the final act of a tragedy that had been decades in the making.
I made it six steps before I heard him move.
The sound was subtle—the scrape of fabric against concrete, the sharp intake of breath that preceded violence.I'd been trained to hear these things. Nathan had drilled me on auditory cues until I could identify the sound of a weapon being drawn in complete darkness. Nathan had reinforced the training with months of missions, months of hunting, months of learning to anticipate violence before it arrived.
So when he lunged, I was ready.
He came at me with a knife—a backup piece, probably, something he'd hidden in an ankle holster or a waistband sheath. The blade caught the moonlight filtering through the shattered windows, a flash of silver in the darkness. He was wounded, bleeding, his movements slow and clumsy compared to the precise killer I'd hunted beside for months. But desperation gave him strength, and hatred gave him focus, and he came at me with the fury of a man who'd just watched everything he'd built crumble to ash.
I sidestepped the thrust with a motion Nathan had drilled into me during our first month of training. My hand caught his wrist, twisted, applied pressure to the nerve cluster at the base of his thumb. The knife clattered to the floor, and Nathan cried out—a sound of pain and frustration and the dawning horror of a predator who'd just realized he'd become prey.
"You trained me too well," I said, my voice calm and steady. "Every move you're about to make, I've already anticipated. Every counter you're about to try, I've alreadyprepared for. You made me into a weapon, Nathan. Did you really think I'd never turn against you?"
He swung at me with his free hand, a desperate haymaker that would have connected if I'd been the woman he thought I was. But I wasn't her anymore. I ducked under the blow and swept his legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor. The impact drove the air from his lungs, and his head cracked against the linoleum with a sound that echoed through the empty halls.
I was on him before he could recover. My knees pinned his arms to the floor, my weight settling onto his chest, the ceramic knife pressed against his throat. He stared up at me with wild eyes, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps, his blood soaking through the random sheet he had shoved under his shirt, a bandage I knew was inadequate to stop the bleeding.
"You're going to kill me," he said. It wasn't a question.
