Page 138 of The Devil's Thorn
“Where?” he asks.
“No.”
He raises an eyebrow.
I shake my head. “I didn’t bring you here to give you my trauma on a silver platter, Rafael. I asked if you knew them. That’s all.”
He leans back again, watching me. “So you’re still keeping secrets,” he says.
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Says the man who drugged me in his gun room.”
His lips tug into something that’s not quite a smirk.
I lean forward slightly, resting my elbows on my knees. “I don’t trust you.”
“Good.”
The word is sharp. Final. But there’s something else beneath it—approval?
He lifts the necklace again, holds it between two fingers. “You’ve been carrying this around with you all these years?”
My voice is quieter now. “It’s the only thing I have left of them.”
He looks at it one last time, then sets it down again. I don’t move to take it back.
We sit in silence for a moment. Not enemies. Not allies. Two ghosts in different war stories. Two people with blood on their hands and names in their nightmares.
And neither of us looking away.
He doesn’t speak for a while. He just sits there, watching me. Not with pity. Not with curiosity. But like he sees something—something I’m not sure I want him to see.
Then, slowly, he reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. My breath stills and when he pulls his hand out, he’s holding my dagger.
Clean. Polished. Almost gleaming beneath the lights.
I sit up straighter, my heart kicking harder. It’s like seeing a part of myself in his hands.
He turns it once, then again—testing the weight, the balance—before extending it toward me. Blade first.
The silver edge glints under the low lighting. A quiet promise between us.
He holds it without flinching. And for a second, I just look at it. Then at him. Then back again.
His fingers don’t tremble. His gaze doesn’t shift. It’s not a threat. It’s a surrender.
I reach for it, but before my fingers close around the handle, his voice cuts in—low, quiet, lethal.
“I thought about that night.”
My hand stills, hovering inches from the blade. His thumb shifts, and in one smooth motion, he flips the dagger so the hilt is now pointed toward me.
“I thought about the feeling of you lunging at me with this.” He taps the flat side of the blade against his own chest, exactly where my knife had once been aimed. “About how fast it all happened. The sound of the glass, the weight of your body when we hit the floor, your hands…” His eyes flick to mine, and there’s a dangerous glint now. “Shaking. But not from fear.”
No. Never from fear.
He drags the dagger across the front of his shirt—not cutting, just gliding it over the fabric as if mapping invisible lines only he knows exist.
“I’ve seen death more times than I can count.” His tone drops into something darker. “I’ve been shot here—” he taps his left side, just above his ribs, “—stabbed here,” he touches the spotlow on his waist, the one where I first saw the scar, “—and burned across my shoulder when I was fifteen.”
