Chapter 39 #2
Emir straightens beside him, the ledgers still in hand. “Books are clean,” he says. “Smash and Sugar. Exile.”
Gabriel nods once.
Then looks back at me.
“It’s a start,” he says. “Not an excuse.”
Gabriel studies me for one long second.
“You were seen.”
My stomach drops.
“At the Amatos,” he says, voice flat. “One of my informants saw you go in.”
I don’t say anything. Don’t move either. Because there’s nothing to say that doesn’t make this worse.
“You’re getting in too deep with the enemy,” he continues. “Playing house with Maksim Korsakov.”
The words land uglier than they should.
Playing house.
Like the townhouse. Like his bed. Like the tattoo burning under my clothes.
Gabriel tilts his head.
“So tell me,” he says. “Do I pull you out, or do I set you straight?”
My mouth opens.
He doesn’t wait for me to try.
His palm cracks across my face so fast and hard the world blurs out—the kind of hit meant to make a point, not just hurt, and the point lands.
My vision blooms with static. My eyes fill with the sick white pain of impact, a throb that pulses from cheekbone to temple, my teeth clacking together hard enough to taste blood on my tongue. I barely register the chair’s legs skidding on the tile.
The heat running from my cheek to my nose and then, suddenly, the slow warmth of blood sliding over my upper lip.
I suck air through my nose. That’s a mistake.
The sting explodes, multiplies, something raw and metallic filling my mouth.
My body convulses with a noise between a cough and a whimper.
I blink hard, try to focus through the haze, and when I do, Gabriel is already standing over me again, jaw set, eyes like a dead animal’s behind glass.
“Too slow,” he says. His voice is calm, but there’s a notched edge to it, something like boredom mixed with fury.
He turns, deliberate, and reaches behind him, he pulls out his gun. My lungs seize.
Black. Heavy. Familiar enough that my whole body goes cold.
For one awful second I think, this is it.
He sees it on my face. The fear. The bracing.
His mouth curves.
Then he lowers the gun.
“No,” he says softly. “Too easy.”
The relief is so sharp it almost feels like another injury.
He puts the gun away and pulls out a knife.
Smaller. Cleaner. Worse.
He brings it up slow, close enough that the point kisses just under my jaw, then drags lightly toward my cheek. Not cutting yet. Just letting me feel the edge.
I go still. By instinct.
“Are you still part of this syndicate?” he asks.
The knife slides lower. To my throat now.
“Or are you part of his?”
My heart is pounding so hard I can barely hear myself think.
I force the words out anyway. “Yours.”
His eyes stay on mine.
“I’m part of yours.”
He says nothing. So I keep going because silence feels like dying.
“We’re family,” I say. “We’re blood.”
His hand is sharp.
The hit comes with no warning, a sound like a gunshot in my skull and a high, ringing whine that drowns out everything else for a split second.
The shock of it flings my head sideways, whiplash-fast, so hard, the chair slams off-balance on the tile, both my feet scraping uselessly for purchase. There’s copper in my mouth, thick and instantaneous, and a spray of something hot and wet across my lip and down my chin—blood, definitely blood.
My ears are singing now, every nerve ending flaring with the shock, but the real pain is so sharp and bright it feels weirdly clean, like the split second before you actually start to cry.
I can’t even get a breath before Gabriel’s hand is fisted in my hair again, wrenching my head upright so I’m forced to look at him through the blur and the tears gathering in my eyes.
The hatred in his face is clinical, surgical. He could be taking apart a watch or a bug, something small and infinitely beneath him.
“We are not blood,” he spits.
The knife presses in just enough to sting.
“Do not insult me like that.”
My chest is heaving now.
He leans closer.
“You are our father’s mistake,” he says quietly. “Don’t forget your place, Ayla.”
Something in me shrinks anyway, no matter how hard I try to keep my face blank.
He sees that too.
He releases my hair. He straightens and takes one step back, knife still in hand.
I can barely feel my fingers now. The rope has cut deep enough that my hands are starting to go numb behind the chair.
Gabriel looks at me like he’s recalibrating.
Then he says, “I don’t care how you get away from him to bring me information.”
My stomach drops all over again.
“I don’t care what you have to do, what lies you tell, or how suspicious it makes you.” His voice never rises. It doesn’t need to. “You figure it out.”
He nods once toward the bag on the floor.
“You got me something useful this time. Good. Next time, I want more.”
My throat feels tight. Dry.
He starts toward the door, then pauses. Looks back.
“And if you get too comfortable again,” he says, “I won’t hesitate to kill you.”
Emir moves after him, quieter, carrying the ledgers under one arm. At the door he glances back once.
Not long.
Just enough for me to catch it.
Pity.
I hate that more than everything else.
Then they’re gone. The door shuts. Silence drops over the apartment so fast it rings. I don’t move at first. Don’t breathe right.
Just listen.
For footsteps.
For the lock.
For Gabriel changing his mind and coming back.
Nothing.
Still I wait. One minute. Then another. My cheek throbs. My jaw aches. My wrists feel flayed where the rope dug in.
I wait until my bladder starts screaming.
Only then do I move.
I rock the chair once.
Twice.
The legs scrape loudly against the floor and I freeze, heart jumping into my throat.
Nothing.
Again.
Harder this time.
The chair jerks sideways. I throw my weight with it and crash to the floor hard enough to knock the breath clean out of me. Pain shoots through my shoulder, my hip, my face.
I bite it back.
I lie there for one second, stunned, then roll and drag the broken edge of the chair leg toward my bound wrists.
Come on.
Come on.
The wood bites. The rope strains. My hands shake. I keep sawing.
Because no one is coming.
And if I want out, it’s going to be the way it always is.
Alone.
The rope finally gives.
It snaps loose all at once, and my arms jerk forward so hard pain rips through my shoulders. A raw sound tears out of me before I can stop it. My hands are useless for a second, pins and needles exploding through my fingers, my wrists burning where the fibers skinned them open.
I don’t move.
I stay on the floor beside the broken chair, cheek pressed to cold tile, breathing like I’ve run for miles.
The apartment is too quiet now.
My heartbeat still hasn’t realized he’s gone.
I peel the rope off my wrists with clumsy fingers and roll onto my back, staring at the ceiling. My face throbs in ugly, pulsing waves. My mouth tastes like blood. Every inch of me feels wrung out, like whatever was keeping me upright before has finally burned through.
I should get up.
Lock the door. Clean this up. Think.
Instead my eyes slide shut.
Just for a second, I tell myself.
Just until the room stops spinning.
Darkness takes me whole.
When I open my eyes again, sunlight is cutting across the floor.
For a second I don’t know where I am.
Then pain finds me all at once.
My cheek. My jaw. My wrists. My hip.
The kitchen comes back in pieces—the overturned chair, the rope on the floor, the metallic smell still hanging in the air like something rotten left behind.
I swallow against the dryness in my throat and push myself upright too fast.
Bad idea.
The room tilts. Black creeps in at the edges of my vision, and I brace one hand against the cabinet until it passes.
I don’t know what time it is.
Don’t know how long I’ve been on the floor.
Don’t know if Gabriel meant to leave me alive or just assumed I’d stay exactly where he put me.
I stand there breathing through it, one hand pressed to the counter, and the only thing I can think is that I need to get clean.
I make myself go to the bedroom first.
Every step pulls at my side.
The room looks untouched, which somehow makes everything worse. The bed still half-unmade. My things where I left them. The kind of normal that feels offensive after a night like that.
I grab the first soft clothes I find—an old shirt, sleep shorts, underwear—and carry them to the bathroom in numb hands.
I do not look in the mirror.
I know what I’ll see.
The tub groans when I turn the handle. Water rushes out in a hard, echoing stream, steam starting to gather against the mirror. I strip slowly, peeling fabric off sore skin, wincing when denim drags wrong over my hip.
Everything hurts.
My face.
My ribs.
The raw bands around my wrists.
I step into the bath before it’s even fully filled and lower myself down inch by inch.
Heat wraps around me.
It stings at first—sharp enough to make me suck in a breath, but then it starts to blur the edges. Not better. Just quieter. The kind of quiet that only exists when your body has something else to focus on besides fear.
I sink deeper.
Tip my head back against the porcelain.
Close my eyes.
For the first time since last night, no one is touching me.
No one is yelling.
No one is demanding anything.
Just heat. Water. Silence.
My throat tightens on something that isn’t quite a sob.
I slide down farther until the water laps at my chin.
Then over my mouth.
My nose.
And finally, I let myself go under.