Chapter 26 No Air Left #3
Rafael fought all of us at once. He was faster, better trained, more prepared. But even he couldn't sustain this. He was bleeding from the shoulder, the face, a dozen cuts across his arms and torso. His breathing was labored. His movements, while still precise, had lost their earlier fluidity.
“You can't win this,” Luka said. He was breathing hard, blood dripping from a cut above his eye. “Even if you kill us all, the Network survives. Other people will come for you.”
“Let them come.” Rafael blocked Ash's strike and countered with a kick that caught him in the knee.
Ash went down. “I don't need to survive this, Luka.
I just need to watch you fail. I need you to live with the knowledge that you couldn't save them. That your protection was an illusion. That everything you built was a lie.”
Dmitri came at him from the side. Rafael saw him coming and drove his knife toward Dmitri's throat. Dmitri caught his wrist, but Rafael was stronger than he looked. The blade inched closer.
I threw myself at Rafael from behind. Got my arms around him and pulled him off Dmitri. Rafael drove the back of his skull into my already fractured nose.
Stars exploded across my vision. I lost my grip. He spun and drove a knee into my gut.
“You're all going to die here,” Rafael said calmly. “And Luka's going to watch every second of it.”
Luka moved in fast. He caught Rafael with a combination that actually drove him back. For the first time since the fight started, Rafael looked off-balance.
“The difference between us,” Luka said between strikes, “is that I learned to let go. You're still holding onto ghosts.”
“The ghosts are all I have left.” Rafael countered and they traded blows again. “You took everything else.”
They crashed into the wall. Grappled. Both bleeding. Both exhausted. Both refusing to give up.
Dmitri got back to his feet. So did Ash. We all converged on Rafael at once.
He was good. Better than good. He was the best fighter I'd ever seen.
But he was one man against four. And we had everything to fight for.
Rafael drove an elbow into my temple. The world tilted. I felt my legs give out.
Then a gunshot cracked through the room.
Rafael jerked. Stumbled. Looked down at the red blooming across his chest with an expression of pure surprise.
Behind him, Troy stood swaying on his feet. One hand braced against the wall for support. The other holding the gun he'd somehow grabbed from one of the dead guards outside.
“Told you,” Troy said. His voice was rough and broken and beautiful. “He'd fucking kill you.”
Rafael turned. Tried to say something. Maybe a threat. Maybe a final piece of ideology he needed to share before the end.
Troy shot him again. This time in the head.
Rafael dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Hit the floor and didn't move again.
For one impossible second, nobody moved. We all just stood there in the ringing silence while the smoke curled from the barrel of Troy's gun and the blood spread dark across the concrete.
Then Troy's legs gave out.
I caught him before he hit the ground. Pulled him against my chest while his body went limp in my arms. He was cold and shaking and barely conscious, but lucid enough to look up at me with the eyes that held recognition.
“Declan,” he whispered.
“I've got you.” My voice cracked. “I've got you, Troy. You're safe now.”
“Thought you were dead.”
“Takes more than an explosion to kill me.”
He tried to smile. Couldn't quite manage it. “Good.”
Then his eyes closed, and he went completely still.
“Troy?” The panic clawed up my throat. “Troy, stay with me.”
Luka was already moving. Checking for a pulse. Assessing the damage with the practiced efficiency. “He's alive. Pulse is weak but steady. We need to get him to a hospital now.”
Dmitri and Ash moved to help. Between the four of us we got the chains off Troy and carried him out of that basement hell.
Back through the warehouse we'd turned into a warzone.
Bodies littered the path we'd taken. Bullet holes scarred every surface.
The whole building smelled like death and cordite.
We loaded Troy into the SUV. I held him in the backseat while Dmitri drove at speeds that should have gotten us arrested. Luka made calls to the contacts who could get us into a hospital without questions. Ash applied pressure to the wounds that kept bleeding despite our best efforts.
Troy stayed unconscious through all of it.
I kept one hand on his chest. Felt the rise and fall of his breathing. Counted each breath like a prayer.
We'd gotten him back. Rafael was dead. The nightmare was over.
But looking at Troy's pale face, at the bruises covering his body, at the way he didn't wake even when we hit the potholes hard enough to jar the whole vehicle, I understood that we'd almost lost him.
That we'd come so close to a world where I never got to tell him properly that he'd never been a burden. Never been a mistake. That loving him was the only thing I'd done right in years.
“Stay with me,” I whispered against his hair. “Please, Troy. Just stay with me.”
Outside the window, Chicago blurred past in streaks of light and shadow.
And I held onto him like letting go would kill us both.