Nila
Cut’s voice physically hurt me as he forced me up the crudely made steps and onto the wooden foundation. My heart tore through my ribcage.
Jasmine screamed from across the room. Her cry split the ballroom apart, tears staining her pretty cheeks. “Please.”
Tears of my own threatened to wash me away, but I wanted to remain dry-eyed. I wanted to remember my last few moments in perfect clarity and not swimming with liquid.
Cut wrenched my arms behind my back; I groaned with agony from my break. The twine wrapped around my wrists, bending my forearm unnaturally.
“Please. Don’t—”
Cut spun me around with his large hands on my shoulders. His golden eyes glowed with apology, and at the same time, resolution. “Hush, Nila.” His lips touched mine, sweet and soft, before he marched me to the kneeling podium and pressed hard. “Kneel.”
“No!”
“Kneel.” His foot kicked out, nudging the back of my knee, shattering my stability and sending me cracking into place. I cried out as the pain in my kneecaps matched the pain in my arm. Like a snapped needle, I lost my sharpness, my fight.
The ballroom splendour mocked me as I bowed unwillingly at the foot of my executioner.
Velvet and hand-stitched crewel on the walls glittered like the diamonds the Hawks smuggled—a direct contrast to the roughly sawn wood and crude craftsmanship of the guillotine dais.
“Don’t do this. Cut...think about what you’ve become.
You can stop this.” My voice mimicked a beg, but I’d vowed not to beg.
I’d seen things, understood things, and suffered things I never thought I would be able to endure.
I’d been their plaything for months, their adversary for years, their nemesis for centuries.
I refused to cry or grovel. I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
I know the history of the Hawks. I know I’m stronger than they are.
“I want to live. Please, let me live.”
He cleared his throat, masking any thoughts of hesitation. “In five minutes, this will all be over.” Cut bent to the side and collected a wicker basket.
The wicker basket.
I didn’t want to think about what its contents would be.
He placed it on the other side of the wooden block.
My heart jack-hammered, thudding faster and faster until lightheadedness made me sick.
My lungs demanded more oxygen. My brain demanded more time. And my heart...it demanded more hope, more life, more love.
I’m not ready.
Not like this.
“Cut—”
“No. No more talking. Not after everything you’ve done.
My son. My mother. You think you’ve stolen everything I care about, but I’m going to steal so much more from you.
From Jethro. And when I find out where Kestrel is, I’ll steal from him, too.
” Ripping a black hood from his pocket, he didn’t hesitate. No fanfare. No pauses.
“No!” I cried out as the scratchy blackness engulfed my face, tightening by a cord around my throat.
The Weaver Wailer chilled me. The diamond collar that’d seen what I’d seen and whispered with phantoms of my slain family prepared to revoke its claim and detach from around my neck.
This was it.
The Final Debt.
Cut pushed my shoulders forward.
I struggled, willing my wrists to unlock, to find a weakness in the rope to get free.
A heavy yoke settled over the top of my spine.
No. This can’t be it. This can’t be!
“Goodbye, Nila.”
The breeze of Cut moving to the side sent goosebumps over my nape. My breath clouded the hood. My eyelashes jewelled with unshed tears.
I hunched, tensing against the painful conclusion.
I couldn’t get free.
I couldn’t save myself.
I hadn’t won.
Cut’s boots crunched on the platform, the gentle clink of rope and pulley signalling he’d reached for the release of the blade.
I waited for his last history lesson.
Surely, I should have a history lesson.
All the debts did. He couldn’t have forgotten the theatrics of the debt. His story would extend my life just a little longer.
But no words fell.
Only my breathing...
My heart beating...
My tears falling...
My body living its final seconds...
I’m dead.
I curled inside, waiting to perish.
A loud bang rang in my ears.
For a moment, I thought I’d died.
In my mind, I saw the jerk of the rope. I felt the slice of sharpness. I suffered the untethering severance.
I waited for some mystical deliverance where my soul flew free, growing wings to hover over my decapitated body.
I hung in limbo waiting for pain or freedom.
But neither came.
What was death?
How would it feel?
What should I expect?
Would the blade slice through and turn me from alive to dead? Would I know once it had happened? Would I witness the end and feel the agony as my soul snipped free?
Or would it be over so fast I wouldn’t even know he’d stripped my life away?
I tensed.
Nothingness...
Am I dead?
Nothing happened.
Then every sense rushed into liveliness. The hood still covered my head. The yoke still crushed my shoulders. And the burning break in my arm still throbbed.
All my discomforts returned along with noise.
So, so much noise.
Deafening noise.
Gunfire slaughtered the air as footsteps pounded the hardwood floor of the ballroom. Men hollered. Things banged and clanged and a cacophony replaced the empty silence.
Curses. Words. Promises. They were all cut short as fighting broke out all around me.
I couldn’t see, but I could feel.
The whoosh of wind as bodies flew past. The flinch of bullets flying too close to my skin. And Cut’s hand on my head as he bellowed for it all to stop. “Black Diamonds! Attack!”
More boots. More curses. More bullets.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
My final hopes had been answered, my prayers delivered.
Help had arrived at the last second.
Who was out there?
Who fought on my behalf?
My eyes begged to see. My body twisted to know. But Cut’s fingers dug into the hood, pressing my throat against the wood and the yoke tight over my shoulders.
Instead of dying, I’d entered a warzone where my vision couldn’t tell me a story.
I huddled at Cut’s feet, my spine curled and knees bruised beneath a guillotine just waiting for the sharp edge to plummet.
My heart lodged in my throat, terrified a rogue bullet would slice the rope and drop the blade to butcher my tender flesh.
I was alive, but for how much longer?
How reckless was the fighting?
How could they prevent an unforeseen event from killing me all while they tried to save me?
“Fuck.” Cut never stopped touching me, his fingers digging into my scalp as anarchy rained. “Over there, get him!” His orders fell on the raucous, delivered to an unseen fighter.
I had no way to judge time, but the war only increased in ferocity. More gunfire, more thuds as bodies fell and fists connected with flesh.
My ears rang with gunshots. My thoughts suffocated with violence and mayhem.
Grunts and curses bounced off portraits and velvet, changing the destiny of the ballroom from dancing frivolity to carnage brutality.
Stop.
Don’t stop.
Save me.
Don’t kill me.
Slowly, curses switched to moans and stampeding footsteps gave way to limping.
The fight could’ve lasted hours or seconds. The only thing I knew with certainty was I clung to this life—the one I didn’t want to leave—and the break in my arm cemented me firmly into being.
Finally, a stranger’s voice crescendoed over everything else. “You’ve lost, Hawk. Step away from the rope if you wish to remain alive and not meet your maker.”
That voice...I didn’t recognise it.
Shivers stole my muscles.
Cut could still kill me.
The battle was over, but my life could be, too.
I couldn’t breathe.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Disbelief and uprising perfumed the air. Boots stomped forward, the click of a bullet entering a trigger chamber the only noise in the suddenly silent ballroom.
“Let her go, Cut.”
That voice I did recognise. I would know it anywhere.
Him.
I trembled in love.
I wept in gratitude.
He’d come for me.
He’d saved me.
Jethro.
“Never. Lower your weapon, or I pull. I’ll do it, Jet. You know I will.”
Another voice I adored joined that of my lover. “You do and I’ll shoot you until you’re so full of holes even the worms won’t want you.”
My father.
“And if he shoots you, I’ll shoot you three. You’ll be fucking shredded.”
My twin.
Their voices pulsed with barbarity I’d never heard before.
Three men I never thought would be in the same room together, let alone fighting on the same side. How things had changed since that night in Milan.
I wanted so much to stay alive. To launch into Jethro’s arms and kiss my father and touch my twin. But no one moved as I remained trapped by the guillotine.
Hope warred with defeat.
Cut could still kill me so easily and no one would be able to stop him. If they shot him and he held the rope in his hand, the guillotine would fall. If he decided to commit suicide and die right alongside me, no one could stop him from releasing the blade.
Only the final shred of decency left in Cut could stop him from doing the unthinkable and stripping me of a future I so desperately wanted.
Do something.
I didn’t know what. My mind was blank.
Play him...
Cut had welcomed me into his home, he’d had moments of civility, of normalness—he was human beneath his devilish ways. Perhaps...perhaps there was some way to cajole him into listening.
I whispered through the hood, “I forgive you.”
It sounded condescending and forced.
Try harder.
“I forgive you for everything you’ve done. What you did to Emma, me, your children. I forgive you. Let me live and break the indebted history.”
Jethro sucked in a breath.
No one else spoke.
Everything hinged on the bond between Cut and me.
I huddled beneath the blade...waiting for his decision. Over the past few months, we’d come to understand one another. I knew he loved his children in his twisted way. And he knew I wouldn’t give up without a fight.
There was hatred between us but respect, too.
If only that respect saved my life.
The whole room paused, watching history unfold.
Feet scuffled and weapons spewed rich-smelling smoke from used gunpowder, but no one moved.
My spine tickled with tears, fearing the worst.
I’d offered my forgiveness, going against everything I’d wanted to say. I’d traded my own morals for the right to keep my life. But what if it wasn’t enough? What if my only value to Cut was in pieces?
“Cut...” I breathed. “Don’t let her win.”
The pulley clanked as Cut flinched. I didn’t need to look into his eyes to know I’d hit home.
Watching Bonnie die of her body’s own volition had taught me something.
She had been the root of all psychotic and immoral behaviour in her family.
She was the one who drove her children to the point of lunacy.
She was the seed sprouting such demonic petals.
And now, she was dead.
“You don’t need to obey her anymore.” My voice came out half-prayer, half-beg. “Free me. End this.”
Once again, silence settled like a smothering pillow.
No one moved.
Cut’s body heat branded my thigh, standing, just standing. Deliberating.
Then...finally...the clinking of rope and mechanism sounded again, only this time I didn’t fear it. Cut’s leg nudged me as he secured the rope, staying the blade and my death.
I didn’t breathe as he squatted beside me.
I didn’t flinch as his hands landed on my shoulders, undoing the yoke and helping me to my feet.
I didn’t make a noise as his fingers untied the rope around my wrists and his touch grabbed a handful of hair as he tore off the hood in one swipe.
I didn’t do anything to make him regret his courageous decision.
He’d saved me knowing he was doomed himself.
Was that redemption? Was it enough to be free of everything he’d done?
I trembled as the black material freed my vision, blinking as my eyes accommodated to light.
Cut didn’t smile or grimace, he just stared.
I wanted some time to take stock of how close I’d been to dying. To look my potential murderer in the face and thank him for sparing me even while hexing him to hell.
But the moment our gazes met, Jethro stormed up the podium and yanked Cut’s hands behind his back.
Bryan didn’t say a word, submitting to his son.
I remained locked in the moment, reading so much into Cut’s eyes but not understanding any of it. Rubbing my throat and the phantom slice through my neck, I nodded. “Thank you.”
Cut shrugged in answer to all the questions I wanted to ask, before allowing his eldest to jerk him down the steps and throw him into my father’s control.
The minute Cut looked away, my attention switched to the space around me.
I gasped.
The pristine ballroom had turned into a warzone. Blood spilled and broken men decorated the pretty floor. Men dressed in black and Black Diamond brothers both moaned and held their multiple wounds.
What the hell happened?
Who were these men?
Flaw came forward with Jasmine at his side. He gave me a tight smile as Jethro gripped my upper arms. “Are you okay?”
I flinched, drinking him in.
Was I in shock? A dream?
I couldn’t make sense of how calmly I accepted that I was about to die and now...wasn’t. I’d been granted a second life...and all I could do was nod in a daze and blink in a stupor.
“Fuck, Nila.” Jethro crushed me to him. My broken arm wailed, but I didn’t care at all. All I cared about was him.
I hugged him back, squeezing as hard as I could. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.”
“You saved me.”
“You saved me first.”
“I love you.”
“I love you more.”
“It’s over.” He pulled back, kissing my lips with the softest flutter.
“Is it truly?”
Jethro smiled with the wattage of a thousand moons. “It’s done.”
My heart unfurled, and for the first time, I believed that.
The Final Debt would never be paid.
The Hawks had lost.
The Weavers were free.
The Debt Inheritance would never claim another victim.