Page 42 of D-Day

Apparently, her ploy hadn’t worked because Lando appeared in the doorway, his face twisted with suspicion. He looked at the mug in her hand, then at his brother on the bed. When his eyes flicked back to her, she knew that she couldn’t bluff her way out of this, dread beating in her chest. Facing him was going to be terrifying, and her insides curled up just thinking about it. But her time had run out.

Cold to the core, she gestured toward the bed. The longer she put it off, the worse it would be. With dread climbing her throat, she couldn’t speak for a moment.

“What is going on?” he bit out, starting toward the bed.

Expelling the air out of her lungs to try and clear away the sick flutter, Helen worked at staying calm. Willing down the queasy feeling and trying to keep her voice from trembling, she said, “He’s gone.”

He roared, “No!” as if the power of his denial was enough to breathe life into his brother. The word shook with the fierce power of his agony. He rushed toward the bed and knelt on his haunches, gathering his brother’s body to him, and just sat there, his body shaking with his grief. “Maliit na tigre,” he whispered softly, over and over, an obvious beloved nickname, his voice breaking on the words.Little tiger. The monster had a heart, but only for his twin. There was not going to be any mercy for her. She backed toward the door, not sure what she was going to do, running would be futile. His men were outside, and she would never get away. Besides, she wasn’t leaving D-Day.

The dread came back with a vicious rush, and Helen’s stomach dropped away to nothing. Her hands suddenly clammy, she braced herself with a deep breath.

D-Day—she had to get to him.

But before she could move, she heard the bed squeak, and Lando set his feet on the floor, tension in every line of his body. His eyes were strange, empty, dark, evil, and all of it murderous, remorseless, and completely out of control. He lunged at her, and she threw the hot broth into his face. He howled with pain and stopped moving, and she darted into the hall, but he caught her, tumbling with her to the floor.

She shrieked in anger and pain, and twisted out of his hold, lashing out with her feet, kicking at his knees, shins, any part of him she could hit.

She scrambled to her feet and backed up. His lips pulled back against his teeth in a feral snarl, and he was up, rushing toward her, the back of his hand exploding against the side of her face, snapping her head to the side, bringing another bright burst of stars behind her eyes and the split lip started bleeding again.

For a moment, she took gasping breaths, as his chest heaved with his righteous fury.Hisfury! Forwhat? Her constant, unrelenting subservience to a dead man when he left Greg out in the jungle, wounded, all alone to die. Her only consolation was that D-Day, her brother, and Zorro had been there when he’d taken his last breaths. Those last breaths used to send them to her rescue.

Lando had no humanity, and all that black morass of rage, sorrow for not only Greg but for her team, who had been murdered at the hands of such a man as Lando, bubbled to the surface like a swamp beast. Their screams filled her head like the echoes of ghosts. Their pain clawed at her. Their panic rose in her throat.

Pushed to the limit of her endurance, she covered her stinging cheek with the palm of her hand. Something broke open in her, all the grief, sorrow, the restlessness, recklessness, the wildness rushed out on a wave of loathing for such a contemptible person. He stood between her happiness and the end of her life. He stood between the man she loved beyond reason and the agony of loss, and he stood between the living, breathing life of the Philippines, and devastating annihilation. He was the trigger, the linchpin, and the designer of Armageddon.

And she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

Adrenaline pumped through her in a strengthening rush, driving her forward instead of away. She punched him in the face, slashed his throat with the side of her hand, andhe coughed, clutching his windpipe, and backed up from the sudden, brutal blows.

Then she kneed him in the groin, and as he cried out, incapacitated from what looked like excruciating pain, the heel of her palm connected solidly at the base of his nose with all the force she could muster. He staggered back and fell to his back, his hands around his nuts, blood flowing from his nose.

A heavy object crashed against the back of her skull, spinning the room around her, as she struggled for balance. She staggered to the wall to keep herself from falling. Catching a glimpse of Lando’s housemaid, she worked at staying upright.

She stilled automatically as the blade of a dagger glinted. Helen’s heart drummed, impossibly hard, impossibly loud, as the blade came nearer and nearer to her face. It was slim and elegant, like the hand curled around its golden hilt. The blade was polished steel that had been ornately engraved from the guard to the tip. Beautiful, deadly, like the man who held it.

“You fucking bitch,” he growled, blood flowing from his nose, his eye red and swelling from her fist. “I’ll cut your heart out of you.”

“Wait,” she said desperately, knowing that she had seconds to live as the blade traced down her chin, down the center of her throat to the vulnerable hollow at its base. The dagger rested in the V of her collarbone, the point tickling the delicate flesh above. The sensation made her want to gag. She swallowed back the need, felt the tip bite into her skin. Every cell of her body was quivering. “Don’t you want to know what Taer said before he died?” she whispered, seizing her anger and hate and using them as shields to beat back the terror. “Don’t you want to know what his last words were for you?”

Lando froze, his muscles still taut, but she felt the change in him, the ravenous need for some shred of information that would soothe him. She was sure he despised his weakness, butthere seemed to be no way he could handle killing her with his brother’s words unsaid.

“What did he say? Or I will gut you right here.” He was on the very edge of murder, and the relish in his voice made her stomach roll.

She took a hard breath. “He said that you shouldn’t mourn him, that he reaped what he sowed, and he was thankful that his last act on this planet was to save me from those drugrunners,” she said, fighting for her life with the only thing she had left—her words.

“You’re a lying bitch,” he spat venomously.

She didn’t respond to his deranged tone. “He said he hoped that you would see the light and save your country the terrible, utter devastation that only you could prevent. He said that he loved you and always would.”

Lando choked up, the sound of his distress a hot stream of heat and moisture against the back of her neck.

“I think I might have a satisfactory compromise.”

The sound of D-Day’s voice made her eyes fill, but she held back the tears, held back the hysteria, grabbed her sanity with both mental hands, and hung on as D-Day’s next words made her stiffen, an effective reaction on her part to what he suggested. Lando spun around, and she found D-Day not far away, dressed in only a pair of white flowing pants, his hair still damp from the shower.

He was a talented actor, and she was surprised by the lack of feeling in his voice. He sounded completely without remorse, completely devoid of conscience. Emotionless, soulless. It was clear from the expression on his face that there would be no appeal to his sense of mercy or humanity.

“Let me have her… She embarrassed me in front of my guys, and I feel the need to teach her some respect.” He grabbed his crotch and hefted it, then he smiled with a lazy, dangerous grinthat would have left any woman in terror if he wasn’t putting on a show to save her life. “Let me give you something valuable for such a useless whore,” D-Day said without even an inflection of emotion in his thickly accented words.

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