Page 107 of The Wrong Play

Air rushed past my ears as my body tilted forward, weight tipping over the ledge, gravity yanking me toward the abyss below. For half a second, I pictured it in my head—the vast stretch of city lights beneath me, a glowing sprawl of streets and steel, the dark ribbon of pavement that would have been my grave. Concrete death, waiting.

Then—

The yank.

A sharp, brutal snap at my waist, the sudden force jerking me mid-fall, snapping my body back so violently my teeth rattled.

I wasn’t falling anymore. I was swinging.

A fucked-up human pendulum, arms flailing, legs scrambling for purchase as I dangled hundreds of feet above the city, my body twisting in open air.

My brain barely managed to catch up before the sheer panic hit. My pulse roared, my breath coming too fast, too unsteady. I should be dead.

But I wasn’t.

Something held me.

I fought to get my bearings, sucking in air, my stomach flipping as I twisted midair like a rag doll. My belt. There was something attached to my belt. I ripped off my blindfold.

A rope.

A near-invisible, black climbing harness had been clipped to me at some point—thin, sleek, strong enough to stop my fall but impossible to notice in the dark.

I clenched my jaw, dragging in one long, shuddering breath as realization over what had happened sank in. They’d fucking pushed me!

They’d fucking wanted me to believe that I was going to die!

This wasn’t just about seeing if I had the balls to walk blindfolded across the ledge. This was about trust. About seeing if I would hesitate. If I would question the game. Or if I would throw myself into the void, blindly believing the Sphinx had no intention of letting me die.

I forced my hands to unclench, flexing my fingers, feeling the tremor still running through my limbs. Slowly, I exhaled.

And I grinned.

“All right, motherfuckers,” I muttered under my breath, voice raw from the adrenaline still ripping through me. “I see how it is.”

The line above me tightened.

I felt myself being reeled back up, slow and deliberate, my body dragged toward solid ground as if some unseen force had decided I’d had enough fun for one night.

Within moments, I’d flopped over the edge of the building, my heart still hammering like a war drum as I pulled myself all the way onto the roof.

And there, standing just a few feet away, was a single masked figure. Watching. Silent. His expression unreadable beneath the black mask.

In the thick, charged air between us, he clapped. Once. A slow, deliberate sound, slicing through the night like a knife.

Then, without a word, he turned and walked away, disappearing into the shadows.

I stood there, breathing hard, hands braced on my knees, my entire body humming from the experience.

Then I let out a low, breathless laugh, shaking my head.

“They really need to start providing cookies.”

I woke up to pain.

Not the dull, lingering ache of sore muscles or the bruises forming from my latest attempt at impressing a group of masked psychopaths. No, this was a sharp, bone-rattling impact as I hit the floor face-first, limbs flailing, blankets twisting around me like some kind of fabric straightjacket.

The mattress above creaked. A slow, menacing breath filled the silence. And then?—

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