Page 158 of Mason

Because Shelby cried, too. And no one came for her.

Except me.

Brando leans in. “You know why you’re still alive?”

Sloane doesn’t answer.

Brando smiles. “Because death for someone like you is a mercy.”

I pull my Glock from my holster and press it under Sloane’s jaw.

He starts to sob. “Please… please?—”

“I told you,” I growl. “You messed with the wrong woman.”

Bang.

Blood sprays up the wall. His head snaps back, body sagging against the restraints.

Done.

Silence settles like dust.

Brando exhales. “You good?”

I stare at the wreckage. The monster in the chair.

“No.”

Then I grab the staple gun.

We pin a note to his chest, through skin and bone:

She lived.

Let the mayor choke on that message.

Because this is the beginning of the end.

And I still have a few more bullets left in my chamber.

The drive home is quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that soothes. The kind thatclings. That lets you hear everything you don’t want to think about—blood still drying under your fingernails, the ringing silence after a gunshot, the way Sloane’s head snapped back like a puppet with its strings cut.

I should feel something.

I should feel satisfied.

But satisfaction doesn’t live in me anymore.

Only hunger and heat. Theneedto see her again.

To touch her skin and know it’s not made of bruises anymore.

To hold her face in my hands and remind myself that she’s still here. Still breathing. Stillmine.

Because every time I close my eyes, I see her on that hospital bed. Pale. Small. Quiet in a way that doesn’t suit her. And it makes something ancient inside mehowl.

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