Page 106 of The Final Contract
The words dig into me.Burning angel.
My stomach drops as he leans in closer. “You should know… you inspired me. Your name. And of course—our father’s favorite way of settling debts.”
The memory of Killian’s voice crashes into me.He burned down a church with his enemy inside.
My chest seizes as the realization slams into me. This place—the charred stone, the blackened beams sagging above me—it’s not just ruins. It’s history. A grave. The very church their father burned, the walls still standing like broken teeth after swallowing his enemy and innocent children whole.
And before Cormac even says it, I know. This is what he has planned for me.
To let me burn.
His smile is thin, cruel. He grabs my chin again and forces my head to turn, to look past the collapsed wall.
“Before that, though—tell me. Any of those buildings look familiar to you?”
I choke on a gasp as my eyes fix on the skyline. Of course it’s familiar. It’s home. My home. Right there in the center of the horizon, tall and gleaming—the Black Ledger.
He doesn’t need to explain. The vantage point is perfect. My stomach twists into a fist of ice.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he says softly, almost reverent. “The perfect place to watch my own method of revenge. A little different than Father’s. But just as permanent.”
He nods to one of the men behind him. “Go ahead and let it go, Johnny. What’s a minute early?”
The man pulls out his phone, taps the screen.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. I’m tied to this chair, helpless, forced to stare through the jagged frame of collapsed stone at the city beyond.Mycity.
The Ledger’s upper floors detonate with a roar that shakes even the bones of this ruined church, fire punching into the sky as if to burn out the stars themselves. More blasts march down the building, blowing out windows like an elevator of destruction riding straight to the ground.
My scream claws at the gag, strangled, useless—swallowed by the blaze ripping through the horizon.
Cormac exhales smoke like he’s savoring it, his grin split wide, eyes alight with triumph. “There it is,” he says, voice almost reverent. “Lucian Vale gutted our empire, so I’ve gutted his. The infamous Black Ledger, reduced to ash. Cleansing this rotten city of its whores and dogs by fire. Poetic, isn’t it?”
The building hasn’t collapsed. Through my tears, through the smoke billowing, the structure is there—but God knows if it will remain.
He turns back to me, his smile curdling, cruel. “And as for Killian…” He crouches close, his breath hot with nicotine. “My brother spilled family blood. Our cousin’s blood. Before I take his life, I’ll spill the blood that will carve the heart out of him. Yours.” His eyes glitter. “He was so emotional when the children burned. I can only imagine how he’ll beg when he learns the woman he loves was burned alive too. All for his sins.”
My stomach lurches, bile clawing up my throat, but I hold his gaze, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me break.
“And he was the one who walked in your penthouse and planted my little device. Pretty ingenious, huh? He never even felt it when the kid stuck it on his jacket.”
Cormac turns and spits. “And you know the tech giant that engineered it—well, reverse-engineered it, at least. Elijah Carter made a few modifications to the tech Lucian has been protecting the Ledger with. And we used it to bring it down.”
There’s a grumble of laughter from the surrounding guards.
“We also used it to shoot my big brother’s falling angel right out of the sky. That tiny littlespeckyou found on his jacket did it all.”
He jerks his head, and one of his men steps forward, a knife flashing as he slices through the rope binding me to the chair. My hands are still tied in front of me, raw and burning, but my torso is free now.
Cormac grabs a fistful of my hair, yanking me to my feet. Pain sears across my scalp, and I claw at his wrist, desperate to ease the pressure, but his grip is iron. I kick, twist, dig my heels into the ground, but I’m outsized and outnumbered. He’s not as big as Killian, but big enough.
They drag me through a doorway into the darker part of the church, where the stone hasn’t burned as badly. The air is damp, colder. The corridor turns sharply before ending in a flight of narrow stone stairs, spiraling down into total black.
Every nerve in me screamsno.I know with every shred of my being that if they take me down there, I’ll never see daylight again.
I cling to the only thought that keeps me upright—that somehow, by some miracle, Killian wasn’t in that building when it went up. That he’s alive. That he’ll come for me. That he stillknows his brother well enough to guess where he’s brought me, even with my tracker destroyed.
The stairs yawn before me like a throat waiting to swallow me whole.
