Chapter 25 Chapter 25
The gun clicked. I moved.
I threw my shoulder into a stack of metal crates and shoved. They toppled with a crash, bottles exploding, lids spinning. The men flinched. I dove low, slid on wet brick, and knifed into the space between a dumpster and the wall. A shot cracked past my ear and bit the brick, spraying grit. My cheek burned. I didn’t look back.
I rolled under a rusted drainpipe and yanked it down. Screws screamed. The pipe tore free and slammed into the shorter man’s shins as he lunged. He stumbled. I grabbed a broken slat and swung. It snapped against his wrist. His gun skittered, metal on stone. The taller man swore and fired again—wide, cautious.
“Stop!” he barked.
I didn’t. A milk crate lay by the fence. I flipped it, jumped, and caught the bent bottom rung of a fire escape. Rust bit my palms. A hand clamped my ankle. I kicked down with my heel, wild. My shoe met mask and skin. He cursed and let go. I hauled up, chest heaving.
Another shot. Sparks spat from the bolt above me. I ducked, dragged the ladder up, muscles shaking. It stuck, then scraped high enough to keep them from jumping. I jammed my foot between rungs.
“Lisa!” the shorter one yelled, anger stripping the warmth from his voice. “You can’t run from this.”
I ran anyway. I moved along the narrow platform, stepped over laundry lines and flower pots, and hit the end. The next roof sat higher across a gap too wide to be kind, close enough to tempt me.
Below, they kicked aside crates and aimed up. I backed up, breathed once, and leaped. The gap opened like a mouth. My foot hit gravel. I slid, caught the lip with my fingers, hung, legs scraping the wall. My shoulder screamed. I swung a knee up, rolled onto the roof, and kept going. A service door gave under my weight. Stale stairwell air hit my face.
Down. Down. Shoes slapping concrete, bleach in my nose, breath echoing. I burst into a hallway, past a laundry cart, past a cook with a cigarette, through a back exit into a different alley. I didn’t stop. The city swallowed me—horns, buses, strangers who didn’t care.
In a corner store, I grabbed a cheap hoodie and paid with shaking hands. The cashier glanced at my blood-smeared jeans and said nothing. I pulled the hood up, wiped my cheek with a tissue until the red faded, and checked my phone. No calls from Damien. A small relief that felt like a threat.
I didn’t call him. I couldn’t hear his voice and keep the secret pressed to my skin.
Dusk turned the mansion to a ship—stone, glass, the fountain whispering. I kept to hedges, slipped along the side path, and climbed the servant stairs two at a time. My breath tried to run away. I reached my room, shut the door softly, and turned the lock like it mattered.
The flash drive sat against my skin like a warning. I pulled it free, stared. It looked like nothing. It felt like everything. I lifted the rug, pried up the loose floorboard, wrapped the drive in an old sock, and tucked it deep between joists. Wood settled with a small thud. I smoothed the rug, wiped my palms on my jeans.
Footsteps stopped outside my door.
“Lisa.” Damien’s voice—calm laid flat like a blade.
I opened the door. He stood there with sleeves rolled, tie gone, jaw set. His eyes scanned me—hair, face, hands, the dust on my knees, the line on my cheek I’d missed. His fury was quiet, and that scared me more than shouting.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“I went for a walk,” I said. Simple. Steady. “To clear my head.”
He looked past me into the room, then back. “Without telling anyone. Without a driver. Without a phone I could trace.”
“I needed air,” I said. “It was loud in my head.”
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The room shrank. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t have to. The air changed.
“Victor hit two warehouses,” he said, as if we were already mid-briefing. “One burned. One bled. My men died. I called you. You didn’t answer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. True, and also not the point.
He moved closer, close enough for me to see a cut on his thumb, the bruise under his eye. “Were you alone?”
“Yes,” I said. The alley flashed—guns, masks, grit. I held my face still.
He studied me. He was very good at it. “You’re shaking.”
“I ran,” I said. “I wanted to feel my body. Not my thoughts.”
He watched my mouth the way he always did when I lied. “Where did you go?”
“The park,” I said. “Around the lake.”
He didn’t believe me. The flicker at his eye, the breath through his nose, the silent count to ten—things he did when trust bent. He turned to the window and looked out at the lawn where everything was in order. His hands went into his pockets to keep from doing something else.
“Victor wants a show,” he said. “I won’t give it on his terms.” He looked back. “Stay inside. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said. My heart beat against the lie under my floor.
He stepped closer and touched my face, thumb brushing the thin line of dried blood. His touch was careful. It almost broke me.
“What is this?” he asked softly.
“I tripped,” I said. “A branch.”
He held my gaze another second, then let it go. He leaned in, pressed his lips to my forehead, and breathed me like I was a place he used to know. The tenderness hurt.
“Don’t shut me out,” he murmured.
I wanted to tell him everything and nothing. I wanted him innocent and I wanted him dangerous enough to keep me alive. I nodded instead. He stepped back.
“I have calls,” he said. “Eat. Shower. Sleep if you can.” His hand found the doorknob, then paused. “If you need me, call. Even if you think you don’t.”
“I will,” I said.
He left. The door clicked. His footsteps faded.
I stood still until my knees remembered how. Then I moved like a thief in my own room. I washed my face until the skin went pink. I changed into soft clothes and listened to the house breathe—doors opening and closing, men speaking low, the war moving like weather.
Night pressed the windows. I turned off the overhead, pulled a small lamp close, and sat with my laptop. My hands had stopped shaking. That scared me too.
I lifted the rug, pried up the board, and took out the flash drive. It sat in my palm like a dare. I plugged it in. The screen woke blue and honest. The drive’s folder opened.
Files lined up in neat rows. Names. Dates. Numbers. One file sat at the top with a single word: Mercy.
My mouth went dry. I clicked.
A concrete room bloomed on the screen—bare walls, bright light. A man sat tied to a chair, hands bound, mouth taped. He shook. Off camera, footsteps. Damien stepped into frame.
White shirt, sleeves rolled, calm like weather. He looked at the man as if studying a painting. He drew a gun and aimed at the man’s chest.
No speech. No warning. He fired. The sound was dull and final. The man jerked and slumped. Damien stepped forward, peeled the tape from the dead man’s mouth, and closed his eyes with two fingers. The tenderness felt obscene.
My heart climbed into my throat. The laptop’s light washed my hands pale. Damien angled slightly toward the camera, as if he knew it was there, as if he didn’t mind being seen.
On the table beside him, a phone lit with a name I knew too well. He picked it up, typed, and turned the screen so the camera could see.
Done, he had written. Pick up. No police.
A reply blinked in at once.
On my way.
I stared at the name above the reply. The letters carved into me. The room tilted. Footsteps sounded in the hall outside my room. My doorknob began to turn.