Page 67 of Psychotic Faith
"Even the same mistakes," he continues, pressing me against the table. "You think evidence matters? I own judges, prosecutors, police commissioners. Your father's little investigation hasn't touched me. What made you think yours would?"
I try to twist my wrist free, but he anticipates it, pushing it in the wrong direction until my arm is forced to bend at the elbow. "Here's what's going to happen, Faith. You're going to disappear. Mental breakdown from grief, perhaps. Your father will receive a note about you starting fresh somewhere far away. He'll be devastated, but he'll understand. Grief makes people do desperate things."
"He'll know you did it."
"With what proof? A meeting between a pharmaceutical executive and a librarian interested in charity work?" His hands move to my throat, fingers resting against my pulse. "No witnesses. No evidence. Just another tragic disappearance in Chicago."
I should have chosen Luca's cage over this trap. Should have accepted his protection instead of walking into death alone.
"My security team may be gone," he continues, reaching out to touch my hair. The contact makes bile rise in my throat. This feels like assault. "But I have other resources. Private investigators who've been tracking you for months."
His free hand moves to my shoulders, sliding down my arms methodically. He finds the wire immediately, fingers closing around it. One sharp pull and he's ripped it free, the tape tearing skin that still remembers gentler violence.
"Really thought you could record me confessing?" The tracker in my bracelet is next. He snaps it off and crushes it against the conference table. Then the backup recorder in my pocket.
Nico's voice cuts to static, then nothing. Complete silence. I'm alone.
"Your Rosetti friends are probably scrambling right now," he says. "Especially that particular one. The one who marks his territory so obviously. Did you think I wouldn't notice the fading bruises you tried to cover? The way he circles you like a hawk?"
My breathing comes faster now, and I no longer have the nerve to cover my fear.
"This room is completely soundproof. Designed for hostile takeovers where millions hang on conversations no one else can hear." He returns to where I stand frozen. "Appropriate, don't you think? You look so much like her. Same righteous anger. Same naive belief that justice means something."
"You always knew," I breathe, the realization hitting like ice water.
"From the first charity event you attended. I've been watching you watching me, waiting to see when you'd make your move. Today seemed appropriately theatrical. You in your mother's dress, playing at recovered memories."
"Your mother was less patient," he says, his hands moving to my throat with horrible inevitability. "She confronted me directly about the clinical trials, the deaths we covered up."
I stumble backward until my spine presses against the cold glass of the floor-to-ceiling window, and then I have nowhere to go. His fingers rest against my pulse. Wrong, all wrong. My throat remembers different hands, ones that knew exactly how to squeeze to make me come apart with pleasure instead of terror. This is violence without desire, death without the dark romance of consensual claiming.
"She fought back at first. Then tried bargaining. Offered anything except herself." The pressure increases slightly, and my breath catches. "But you? Careful planning, and you make the same fundamental mistake she did."
I try to knee him but he anticipates it, using his body weight to pin me between the conference table and the plate glass window. His hands tighten, and suddenly I can't breathe. This is it. The same position, the same grip that killed my mother.
"You thought law mattered," he continues conversationally as my vision starts to blur. "Thought evidence and testimony could bring me down. But I own judges. I own prosecutors. I owned your mother, and now…"
The pressure increases. My hands claw at his, nails drawing blood, but his grip doesn't loosen. My vision tunnels, darkness creeping in from the edges. Through the growing haze, I see his face clearly. That satisfied smile, the one burned into my memory.
Luca was right. He was right all along. I should have chosen violence over law. Should have let him protect me.
My hands are weakening, the struggle fading as oxygen deprivation shuts my body down. The window glass presses cold against my back. Such a contrast to the heat I remember, the warmth of being surrounded by controlled danger instead of this chaos.
Is this what my mother felt? This rage at failing, this desperate need for one more breath, this knowledge that pride led to death?
I claw at his hands, but his grip tightens incrementally. "You want to know something special? Something I never told anyone?"
Black spots dance at the edges of my vision as he leans closer.
"Your mother was conscious until the very end. Three minutes and forty-seven seconds. She stopped fighting after two minutes, but her eyes stayed aware. Just like yours are now."
The pressure increases, and I can't breathe. Can't scream. My hands weaken, the same helplessness my mother must have felt. Through the growing darkness, I hear him talking, casual as discussing stock options.
Luca was right. He was right all along. Violence was the only language Neumann would ever understand.
My vision tunnels. In the distance, something crashes. Glass breaking. Shouting. But it's too far away, and I'm falling into the same darkness that took my mother.
"Such a waste," Neumann murmurs, his grip unwavering. "You could have just lived your quiet librarian life. But you had to be like her. Had to fight back. And so it ends exactly like it began. With a Winters woman dying in my hands."
