Page 43 of Say You're Mine

The door slams open, Faulkner striding in with his usual sneer of smug satisfaction. "Well, well, my boy. How are we feeling today? Ready to stop fighting the inevitable and embrace your glorious purpose?"

I stare straight ahead, a perfect mask of blank obedience. Let him think he's won, that he's hollowed me out and filled the void with his poison. It will make the shock on his face that much sweeter when I tear out his tongue and feed it to him.

He gestures, and the orderlies swarm me, unstrapping me from the table and hauling me to unsteady feet. "Look at you," Faulkner crows, circling me like a jackal. "So close now, so beautifully broken. Just a few more tweaks, a little fine-tuning, and you'll be ready to take your rightful place at your mother's side. The perfect son, the sharpest blade in the Deveaux arsenal."

My lips curve in a smile, small and secret and sharp as sin. "A blade, am I?" I murmur, my voice a rasp of sand and smoke. "Then let me share with you the first rule of warfare, doctor. Never put a weapon in the hands of a man with nothing left to lose."

His face twists with confusion, then dawning horror as I explode into motion. A headbutt to shatter his nose, blood spraying in a satisfying crimson arc. A knee to the groin of the first orderly, an elbow to the throat of the next. They fall like dominoes, like straw men before a hurricane, as a lifetime of training and fury sings in my veins.

And then it's just me and Faulkner, his eyes wide and rolling in terror as I pin him to the wall, my hand an iron vise around his throat. "W-wait," he sputters, scrabbling uselessly at my grip. "Mr. Deveaux, please, let's be reasonable, I was only following ord--"

I lean in, my smile a wolf's grin in the dark. "You know," I purr, "you're absolutely right. You were just following orders. So it's only fair I return the favor and follow the orders my beautiful, brilliant wife gave me not so long ago."

He blinks, uncomprehending, and I tighten my grip until he squeaks. "'Burn it down, June,' she told me, her eyes bright with righteous rage. 'Burn it all down and salt the fucking earth.' And oh, good doctor..." I bare my teeth in a snarl of savage joy. "I aim to please."

I feel the flutter of his pulse against my palm, the bulge of his eyes, the piss running warm over my wrist as he empties his bladder in terror. And I feel nothing. No pity, no remorse, not even a flicker of self-recrimination. Only a cold, clear certainty that this is right, that this is just, that this is the only possible ending to the tale they've forced me to live.

"Oh, and Faulkner?" I lean in until I can taste his fear, thick and cloying. "Cara sends her regards."

And with a final, vicious wrench, I snap his neck like kindling, letting him crumple to the floor in a boneless heap.

For a moment I just stand there, chest heaving, hands shaking with the aftershocks of adrenaline. The weight of what I've done, of the carnage I've wrought, presses down like iron bands around my lungs.

But there's no time for guilt, for second guessing. Cara is out there, our child nestled beneath her heart, and every second I waste is a second they're in danger. A second Elaine has to spin her webs and sharpen her knives.

So I move. I strip the corpses of keycards and weapons, stuff them into the pockets of a stolen lab coat. And with a final, contemptuous kick to Faulkner's slack face, I slip out into the hallway, into the labyrinth of steel and shadow and the distant promise of freedom.

I have no fucking clue where I'm going, the facility a clinical maze designed to confound and disorient. But I can't stop, can't falter. Cara is out there. My family, my future, the only thing in this godforsaken world that matters.

And I will claw my way back to them if I have to carve a path in blood and bone.

Alarms blare, a rising cacophony that sets my teeth on edge. Booted feet thunder on tile, the crackle of radios and barked orders echoing off the sterile walls. They've found Faulkner, found the gore-spattered ruin of the room where he thought to break me. And now they're coming, a pack of wolves scenting wounded prey.

I'm fast, surefooted, darting through twisting corridors with the economy of motion Cara so loves to admire. But they're faster, a relentless tide crashing against my heels, the searing hiss of a bullet kissing past my cheek a stark reminder of how badly the odds are stacked.

Four dead ends, a fresh slice of hell behind each one, and the snarling of the hounds draws ever closer. My lungs scream, my muscles shake, the last dregs of my reserve sputtering out in an acid wash of exhaustion.

They've got me pinned now, the thunder of their approach swelling from every direction. No way out, no clever feint or desperate gambit left to play. Just me, a stolen pistol, and the grim determination to make the fuckers work for it.

I snap off a shot, then another, the gun bucking savagely in my grip. A cry, a spray of blood, and one of the faceless goons goes down in a boneless sprawl. But it's a drop of rain against a forest fire, a single stone before an avalanche. They just keep coming, a remorseless tide of kevlar and auto-fire, and I know with a cold, sinking certainty that this is where it ends.

In a heartbeat the hall will be choked with lead and smoke and the screams of the dying. In a heartbeat I'll be just another cooling slab of meat on the tiles, my last thought a prayer that somehow, against all odds, my sacrifice will buy Cara the freedom I never had.

But the heartbeat passes, and then another, the gunfire suddenly conspicuous in its absence. Shouts ring out, fury and disbelief swallowed up by a rising tide of panic. Boots slap tile in a ragged beat, a disorderly retreat so at odds with the mechanical precision of moments before.

And through the confusion, through the choking haze of spent cordite, a single word rises like a beacon. A name, heavy with threat and promise, spat like a curse and whispered like a prayer.

Corleone.

Understanding slams into me like a hammer blow, staggering in its intensity. Sarah. Dante. The favor he called in, the weapon he wanted primed at the heart of Elaine's empire.

They've come for me. They've come to bring the devil home to roost, and God fucking help anyone stupid enough to stand in their way.

A laugh bubbles up in my chest, tasting of blood and hysteria. Oh, it's far from over - Elaine is too canny, too entrenched to fold at the first hint of resistance. There will be countermoves and contingencies, shell companies and shadow wars waged in boardrooms and back alleys. A thousand fresh hells to wade through on the long road to freedom.

But it's a chance. A narrow ledge to balance on, sharp and treacherous as a blade. And for Cara, for our child, for the promise of a future without fear...

I will dance on the edge and call it solid ground.

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