Page 42 of Breakdown
“You think you can offer memymoney, from the businessIbuilt from the ground up, to make me disappear. Unbelievable. I don’t need your permission to run all this if I wanted to. I barely stopped. I wasn’t going to let you drag my name through the mud. Better to end it all first. I certainly wasn’t above tipping off Volkov when you moved your base of operations. This little war kept both of you busy. Did you really think you could ever fill my shoes?” Erik asked with cold amusement, still mirroring her movements. Nik wasn’t even in his peripheral anymore. “Don’t think you’re in charge here, little girl. You have never been.”
If bravery was measured only by grand heroic gestures, then Nik had never been a particularly brave man. He’d never rushed into a burning building, or dove into a pool to save a drowning man, or even gotten a cat down that was stuck in a tree. But if, instead, bravery was marked by small, impossible acts of personal courage—showing up every day for your daughter, loving someone again even after you’d been unspeakably hurt, not falling apart even when your life did—then Nik figured he was doing just fine. The next few seconds were going to require the other type of bravery though, and he was going to have to find out if he had any of that to match.
Nik let out a shaky breath, and then he dove hard into Erik’s waist. The tackle was muscle memory, left over from his high-school football days. Erik was bigger, but Nik caught him by surprise. Erik swore loudly as he fell, his sharp hipbone crashing down on Nik and knocking the wind out of him. Nik rolled, took an elbow to the face, landed a solid knee into Erik’s chest and heard a satisfying crack as at least one of the man’s ribs broke beneath his weight. Erik moaned and jerked away before Nik could get another shot in, but he gave Nik his back and the opportunity he needed.
Nik slid his bent right arm around Erik’s neck. Peter had shown him a little hand-to-hand combat. Nik tried to remember what he’d been taught. He grasped his left bicep and pinched his elbow together, steadily tightening the triangle to squeeze off his blood supply, even as Erik writhed beneath him. A few seconds more and Nik would have him.
Unlike his son, Erik didn’t make it easy for Nik. With a violent jerk he slipped the hold, capturing Nik’s shoulder and wrenching it back and out until it burst free from its socket, the pain exquisite and shocking. Reeling, Nik didn’t even see the gun until Erik brought the butt of it crashing down into his temple, and then everything went black.
—-
HIS PHONE WAS RINGING. Too far away, underwater, nearly unintelligible over the dull, pulsing throb of his brain suddenly being two sizes too big for his skull. A wave of nausea rolled over him. Nik wished the noise would stop.
“He’s unconscious. Tying him up sort of feels like overkill.”
“You think I’m playing a game here, Olivia? I’m not about to let you two pull that shit again.”
There was a brutal, meaty crack. Dave cried out, the sound like a nail gun shooting through Nik’s skull.
“Jesus, I’m tying him up.” Liv voice was on the edge of a scream. That hurt too.
There were hands on him. Nik squinted, the shop painfully bright, Liv wavering in and out of focus in front of his face. Up close, he could see the hot, angry tears pricking unfallen at the corners of her eyes. “I appreciate the gesture, but next time just go for the gun,” she said quietly to him, tearing off a crude length of duct tape with her teeth.
She yanked his shoulder behind him and up, popping it back into place as she bound Nik’s wrists to the arms of the waiting room chair. He nearly passed out again, his chest heaving hard as Liv finished securing his ankles. He was soaked in a cold sweat.
“Him too,” Erik commanded, shoving Dave forward and nearly into Liv. The left side of Dave’s face was pulp, sagging and swollen, and Nik guessed the earlier crack had been the sound of Erik breaking his orbital bone.
Her hands hooked into his armpits, Liv guided Dave gently to one of the chairs, her forehead pressing into the hollow of his shoulder as she lowered him into place. The intimacy of the gesture took Nik’s breath away.
“I’m sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Liv muttered as she taped Dave in place, so softly Nik wondered if he was imagining it. “I was supposed to be able to protect everyone.”
“Quiet,” Erik warned, yanking her back by the collar of her shirt, her head snapping forward. She gagged against the force of it, her eyes white and wide with terror. Her body shook with silent, shuddering gasps as Erik pinned her wrists to the armrest, winding the duct tape around them so tight that her fingers immediately started to purple. “I think I’ve had enough of your conspiring against me for one evening. For a lifetime, if I’m honest.”
With a calm, eerie smile, he returned to the truck, removing two massive jerrycans from the bed. Methodically, he began pouring the contents out onto the floor of the garage, the smell of gasoline rich and noxious-sweet. He was going to set fire to the shop. Everything Nik had worked so hard to rebuild, and it was about to be gone in an instant.
Olivia let out an agonized wheeze of protest. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll give you everything, okay?” Her voice had an alarming, airy whistle to it, like something had been crushed in her windpipe.
Erik ignored her, continuing the neat trail of gasoline, ending in a pool on the waiting room tile just beneath their feet. Cold, pure terror gripped Nik as he realized it wasn’t just the shop Erik was planning on setting ablaze.
Liv thrashed wildly against her restraints. “Jesus Christ, at least shoot us first.”
“I’m aiming to make this look like an accident, Liv. I’m not sure that there’ll be enough of you for forensics, but why take the risk?” he said with brutal pragmatism, capping the cans and placing them neatly next to the fallen oil drum. “You’re a waste of bullets, anyways. I spoiled you Liv. Consider this catch up on all the discipline you missed out on.”
A phone went off again, but this time it wasn’t Nik’s. He was surprised when Erik answered it, like he had all the time in the world before he burned them alive. “Bauer.” A pause. “Slow down.” His eyes went pitch-black. “What do you mean he got away? ...Yes...No.... Fine.” Erik pulled his fingers back through his hair as he hung up, taking a seat across from Olivia. He let out a slow, dark laugh, furious annoyance hiding in the furrow of his brow. “I should have known; somehow your brother managed to fuck this up too.”
“We all have our talents,” Liv rasped, her smile bitter and triumphant. Nik wasn’t sure he shared her optimism.
“Well, no matter. I’ve waited two years to get my revenge, what’s a few minutes more?” Erik retrieved a single match from the book in his pocket, dread settling in Nik’s stomach in a tight knot. “We’ll just have to sit tight until Peter joins us.”
