Chapter 30 Choice
The sirens weren't a distant wail anymore. They were a rising scream, clawing up from the street, flooding the penthouse through the wall of glass. Blue and red lights strobed against the grey sky, painting the room in frantic, urgent color.
Lia was already moving, a blur of focused panic. "Service elevator is compromised. Vance just used it. Stairwell is forty floors down. They'll have it covered." She ran to the window, her eyes scanning the sheer face of the building. "The terrace. The emergency rappel lines for the window cleaners. It's the only way."
Sebastian wasn't listening to her. He was staring at the space where Vance had stood, his face a battleground. The cultured voice echoed in his skull. The man who saved her, or the man who watched her break.
Aria grabbed his arm, her fingers digging in. "Sebastian. Look at me."
He turned his head slowly. The storm in his grey eyes was terrifying. It was grief, and fury, and the most profound helplessness she had ever seen.
"Don't you dare," she said, her voice low and fierce, shaking with the effort to hold back her own fear. "Don't you even think about what he said. It's a lie. It's just another cage."
"Is it?" The question was a raw scrape from his throat. His gaze darted to the window, to the flashing lights. "They're not coming for me, Aria. They're coming for you. With warrants. With men in uniforms. They'll take you to a white room and they'll pick apart every memory Wells planted in your head until there's nothing of you left. He's right. I can't fight that. Not with guns. Not with money."
"So you hand me over to him instead?" The betrayal in her voice was a physical thing, sharp enough to make him flinch.
"To keep you out of a concrete box!" he roared, the control finally snapping. He gripped her shoulders, his hands desperate and rough. "Don't you understand? I can't protect you from this! Not from the state! All I can do is… is choose the monster who will at least keep you in a room with a view!"
The words hung between them, ugly and true. The ultimate, helpless compromise. Choosing one prison over another, because freedom was no longer on the menu.
Lia slammed her palm against the window frame. "We have maybe ninety seconds before they breach the main door! The rappel lines go to the 60th-floor mechanical terrace. From there, we can get to a freight stairwell. It's a chance. It's not a good one, but it's a chance."
It was the choice. Vance's gilded offer. Or a mad, dangling sprint down the side of a skyscraper with the police waiting at the bottom.
Aria looked into Sebastian's tormented eyes. She saw the man who had rebuilt an empire from ash, brought to his knees by the prospect of her in a white room. She saw the love that was about to make him surrender everything, including her.
She couldn't let him do it. If he gave her to Vance to "save" her, it would kill the man she loved. It would turn his love into a chain, and he would spend the rest of his life hating himself for it.
She made the choice for him.
She pulled out of his grip, her movement sudden and final. "Lia's right. It's the only way."
Sebastian's eyes widened. "Aria, no—"
"There's no time to argue!" she yelled, the sirens now a deafening shriek right outside the building. She turned and ran for the terrace door, Lia right behind her.
The cold wind on the penthouse terrace was a slap, snatching her breath away. It whipped her hair across her face, howling around the building's corners a thousand feet above the city. Lia was already at a discreet panel, yanking it open to reveal two coiled, black nylon ropes anchored to heavy bolts.
"Harness! Now!" Lia tossed a complicated tangle of straps at her.
Aria's hands fumbled, numb with cold and fear. The straps were unfamiliar, confusing. Across the terrace, she saw Sebastian emerge, his face pale against the dark sky. He saw her struggling and started toward her.
From inside the penthouse, a new sound—a heavy, resonant THUD. Then another. They were battering the front door.
"Leave it!" Lia shouted. She grabbed Aria, spinning her around, and began clipping the harness onto her with brutal, efficient speed. "Arms through here! Leg here! Clip locks here!" Her fingers were a frantic blur.
Sebastian reached them. He didn't speak. He just took Aria's face in his hands, his thumbs rough on her cheeks. His eyes drank her in, as if memorizing her. The wind tore at his hair, at his clothes. "You listen to me," he said, his voice raw and carried away by the gale. "You get down. You run. You don't stop. You don't look back. You get to the cove, and you wait for me. You wait, do you hear me?"
Another horrific CRACK from inside. The door was giving way.
"Sebastian, your harness!" Lia yelled, shoving the second set of straps into his chest.
He ignored her. He kissed Aria. It was hard and desperate, a kiss of terror and promise, tasting of salt and cold air. "The lighthouse," he breathed against her mouth.
Then he pushed her toward the terrace edge. "Go!"
Lia hooked Aria's main clip to the rope. "Lean back! Feet against the wall! Rappel device—here, squeeze to go down, let go to stop! Don't look down!"
Aria's heart was a wild animal trying to escape her ribs. She glanced over the edge. The world dropped away into a dizzying chessboard of tiny lights and moving specks that were cars. The wind tried to pluck her off the ledge.
"NOW!" Lia screamed.
Aria squeezed the metal device and stepped off the edge of the world.
The descent was a controlled, screaming fall. The wall rushed past her face, a blur of glass and steel. The harness bit into her thighs. The rope whined through the metal descender, burning hot even through her gloves. The noise was immense—the roar of the wind, the shriek of the device, the siren song of the void below.
She looked up. Sebastian was at the edge, clipping his own harness. Lia was already descending a few feet away, a dark shape spidering down the wall.
Then she saw the figures spill out onto the terrace behind Sebastian. Dark uniforms. Not police. Tactical gear. Vance's corporate security. They moved fast, silently.
Sebastian saw them too. He had one clip secured. He was fumbling for the second.
Aria's breath froze in her lungs. "SEBASTIAN!" Her scream was torn away by the wind.
One of the figures raised an arm. Not a gun. A sleek, black cylinder. A taser? A dart gun?
He fired.
A small, feathered dart sprouted from Sebastian's neck.
He jerked, his hands flying to his throat. His eyes, wide with shock, found Aria's for one last, endless second as his fingers slipped from the second clip. His legs buckled. The single secured clip wasn't enough. It wouldn't hold his weight in a fall.
He didn't scream. He just slumped backward, away from the edge, into the reaching arms of Vance's men.
Aria watched, helplessly dangling a thousand feet in the air, as the man she loved was swallowed by the darkness of the terrace, disappearing from her sight.