Chapter 12
NEW YORK
The smell that hit Bryson was a mixture of decomposing plants and iron.
As he ventured deeper into the room, the plush carpet muffling his footsteps, a high-pitched sound sliced through the air. Almost like someone was crying.
Heart hammering, he rounded the marble corner. There, amid gleaming fixtures and polished stone, sat Adria. Surrounded in porcelain white, she leaned her head against the golden flecked-tile.
Seth and Kaydon stood near her, but she wasn’t crying. She was laughing.
It was a shrill sound, with an unnatural pitch. When she looked at him, her gaze was unfocused, and she seemed to look right past him as she said, “You’re here. I got your location out of him ten minutes ago.”
She laughed again, and the tone put Bryson’s nerves on edge.
He looked her over. She didn’t seem hurt. Just to her right was a small pool of blood and a silver knife.
He knelt down. Gently bringing his hand under her chin, forcing her to look at him.
“Adria, what is it? Where is he?” he asked.
She shook her head, and he saw her attention focus on him, if only for a moment.
“Bryson. I tried,” she said, and she gestured towards the knife.
“I got him to talk. But I couldn’t finish it,” she said, closing her eyes.
When she opened them, they were clouded and a spine-chilling laugh cackled through her.
“But here you are, anyway,” she said, motioning dramatically with her hands.
Bryson stood up. “Stay with her,” he said.
Kaydon grabbed a bathrobe and draped it around her shaking form. Adria didn’t even seem to notice. Seth knelt down, his face assessing.
Moving back into the bedroom, Bryson followed a trail of blood. Tracking it, he followed the drops into a walk-in closet.
Just past the threshold, he paused.
Jonathan was there.
Tied to a chair.
The knife near Adria’s side revealing its purpose as Bryson took in Jonathan’s face and torso. Strips of skin had been meticulously peeled back, hanging like loose ribbons at a birthday party.
The smell in the room was clearly coming from him as the scent of blood and dying flesh mingled. Normally, a body would need hours if not days to reach this level of aroma, but Adria had taken her time. She had kept him alive while killing so many pieces of him.
Jonathan’s head lolled at an unnatural angle, suspended by mere threads of gristle and sinew.
The right side of his face bore a precise laceration that bisected his cheek from eye socket to jawline, the edges curling back to reveal glistening red muscle beneath.
When Jonathan’s eyes flickered toward Bryson, both sides of his face twitched in grotesque synchronicity.
The damaged side moved like a marionette with half its strings cut.
His labored breathing quickened, and wet gasps bubbled through his blood-flecked lips.
His biceps had been methodically filleted, strips of muscle peeled back and pinned like butterfly wings, exposing bone-white tendons that dangled uselessly from the wounds.
The woman was a surgeon.
Many, many times Bryson had been forced to watch his father torture. Never had he witnessed anything like this.
If anyone thought her weak, he dared them to stand here. To see what he was seeing. To breathe in the metallic air of her handiwork and understand the lethal error of their judgment.
“Please,” Jonathan said, his voice barely a whisper.
It was a whisper of a whisper.
He was a ghost already, just waiting on that final shove.
Adria had gotten him to the door. She just hadn’t pushed him through.
That didn’t make her weak. It made her strong.
Bryson brought the gun to the pathetic excuse for a human being in front of him.
“You deserve so much worse than this,” Bryson said, pulling the trigger.
The boom of the gun echoed in the room, and the force hit Bryson in the chest. He felt the shot more than he heard it. The recoil sent daggers through his newly injured healed ribs, and he bit back a groan as his vision tunneled briefly.
Whatever semblance of life still in Jonathan vanished immediately. His head fell forward, and the weight of his body pulled against the restraints.
And just like that, the Balin line was wiped out, erased from the Earth.
Seth came running into the room before skidding to a stop. Bryson holstered the gun in the back of his waistband and turned to leave. Seth peeked around him, getting a full view of the carnage.
“Wow, our girl did that to find us?” Seth said. “Here, we thought we were coming to save her.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Bryson’s mouth despite everything. The woman he’d rushed to save had carved a man into pieces to find them. Had he really thought she needed rescuing?
Kaydon had Adria wrapped up in a bathrobe and was carrying her into the room. She lay limply in his arms, head turned and buried in his chest. Seeing her like that removed all humor from Bryson’s face.
Adria had literally given her soul to find them, and Bryson was going to spend the rest of his life giving his to her. Nothing he could do would make her sacrifice worth it, but it was a start.
“Girl, did you kill him yet, it’s been hours?”
The familiar voice jerked Bryson’s attention upward. Elena stood in the doorway, blood streaking her sleeve.
“What are you doing here?” The two of them demanded in perfect unison.
His sister’s scowl deepened. “I’m saving your ass, not that I’ll get any gratitude for it.”
Kaydon shifted Adria’s weight carefully in his arms as he moved toward Elena, eyes fixed on the crimson stain spreading across her jacket. Elena twisted away. “It’s all right. Just a graze. The other guy is upstairs, if you want to check him.”
Bryson’s thoughts struggled to align with this new reality. His sister. Here. Why?
Eric appeared behind Elena, his gaze immediately finding Adria’s motionless form in Kaydon’s protective embrace. “We need to get moving. I called ahead. There’s a safe house we can sit in for a little while. But this isn’t going to stay quiet for long.”
The words landed like stones in Bryson’s stomach. Treason. They had committed treason. The families would hunt them down. When word spread about Jonathan and his son, there would be sanctioned death warrants for all of them.
“Jonathan kidnapped Bryson. His son helped,” Kaydon said, coming to Bryson’s defense.
“Do you have proof?” Eric asked.
Kaydon opened his mouth but shut it. What proof did they really have? At this point, it was their word against the families’. And Adria, she came here, instead of a tribunal.
It didn’t look good.
They got halfway to the car before a wave of dizziness hit Bryson. He pressed his hand against the banister to stay upright.
“Hey, you, okay?” his sister asked.
“I’m fine,” he said. At least that was what he tried to say. Instead, something a little less loquacious slurred out and the entire room went dark.