Chapter 26 - Luca
Ten minutes earlier
The luxury suite on the eighth floor might as well be a prison cell.
"For your own good," Marco had said, guiding me here with six of our men after I'd vowed to kill them all for letting her use herself as bait. "She needs to do this alone, and you need to not interfere."
"Fuck you."
"Plus, you need not to kill us all," Marco added like this was all some big joke.
The lock engaged from the outside—electronic, no manual override. They'd planned this. Known I'd never let her face Neumann alone. The betrayal burns almost as much as the fear.
Now my fists bleed from hitting the reinforced walls, knuckles split from testing every weakness. Through the window, the conference center mocks me. So close. She's right there, playing bait while I'm trapped like an animal.
"I've been having dreams lately." Faith's voice crackles through the wire feed, that vulnerability making my chest crack. She's using herself as bait, and they've locked me here to stop me from interfering. "Or maybe memories? From when I was young."
My body slams into the door again, using my full weight.
The electronic lock holds. No manual override, no weakness in the frame.
Marco planned this perfectly. The impact sends pain shooting through my shoulder, and I realize I've been hitting this door for too long, too hard. Something's not right in the joint.
"Minor disturbance on eight," Alex says from outside, his voice carrying through the door. "Nothing I can't handle."
My guard. My own brother stationed outside to keep me contained while Faith walks into Neumann's trap. The irony would be funny if rage wasn't eating me alive.
"Perhaps we should discuss this privately," Neumann's voice makes my vision fracture red. "My office is upstairs."
I pace to the minibar, mind racing. Chemistry degree, years of knowledge about reactions and compounds. The vodka gleams clear in its bottle. High proof. Flammable. My hands move without conscious thought, grabbing bottles. Gin. Rum. Anything over eighty proof.
The bathroom yields window cleaner, ammonia-based.
Not ideal, but workable. I tear apart the smoke detector, extracting the nine-volt battery.
The lamp cord gets stripped with my teeth, copper wire exposed.
Ethanol doesn't burn hot enough alone. I need an oxidizer.
The battery's lithium could work, but it's too unstable.
A simple accelerant will have to do. Sometimes brute force beats elegance.
"Actually, let's use the executive boardroom," Neumann says through the wire. "Tenth floor."
That's not the plan. My hands shake as I soak a towel in the alcohol mixture, creating an improvised fuse.
Then the wire cuts to static.
Complete silence.
"Lost signal," Nico's voice comes through Alex's earpiece, just loud enough for me to hear. "Can't find her signal."
The panic hits like ice water. No more pretending she's safe. No more faith in the plan. She's alone with him, and the silence could mean anything. Could mean everything.
I wedge the soaked towel against the lock mechanism, position the exposed wire. The spark catches immediately. The accelerant flares hot and bright, and the lock's circuit board fries with a sharp crack and the smell of burning plastic.
The door swings open.
Alex is already reaching for his weapon, but I'm past him before he can draw. "Luca, wait!"
"Tenth floor," he calls after me, not trying to stop me. "Boardroom's locked!"
Two floors. Just two floors between me and Faith. The tenth floor has no cameras, it's a dead zone for surveillance. I know that from the building schematics Marco showed us during planning.
The stairs disappear under my feet, three at a time. My shoulder screams from the repeated door impacts, definitely separated now from my desperate escape attempts. Each second could be her last. How long since the wire went dead? Ten seconds? Fifteen?
Brain damage starts at four minutes without oxygen. How long can Neumann's hands squeeze before her throat collapses? How long before the light leaves her eyes like it left her mother's?
The ninth-floor landing blurs past. One more flight. My legs burn, lungs screaming for air I don't have time to take. Still no sound from above. The soundproofing up there is absolute. She could be screaming. She could be silent. She could be dead already.
No.
The tenth-floor hallway stretches empty before me. The boardroom door at the end, electronic lock glowing red. Executive override, no bypass I can see. No time for chemistry here.
I back up, measuring the distance. The door is reinforced, but the frame is just wood and drywall. Newton's laws: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. My shoulder is already damaged from the escape attempts. Might as well use it.
The first kick lands exactly where the frame meets the wall. Pain explodes through my separated shoulder, but the wood cracks. Again. The frame splinters, gap forming between door and wall. Again. My vision grays at the edges, but I can see daylight through the crack now.
Again.
The frame tears partially free, still connected at the top but gaping at the side. Wide enough. I squeeze through, shoulder grinding bone on bone, into silence.
Neumann has Faith pressed against the window, her body completely limp, face purple-blue from lack of oxygen. Not moving. Not breathing. The afternoon light through the glass makes her skin look translucent, already fading to gray.
I cross the room in two strides and tackle Neumann off her. We hit the conference table hard, but I'm already rolling away, back to Faith. She collapses boneless to the carpet, head lolling at an angle that makes my chest crack open.
My fingers find her throat. Her pulse is barely there, thready and weak. But no breath. No rise and fall of her chest. Her lips are blue, eyes half-open but seeing nothing.
My science knowledge kicks in. Strangulation causes laryngeal spasm, her breathing muscles are paralyzed. Rescue breathing might work if the airway isn't crushed. I tilt her head back, pinch her nose, seal my mouth over hers.
Breathe.
Her lips are ice, no warmth, no response. I breathe my heat into her, tasting coffee and that underlying sweetness going cold. My lungs burn from giving her everything, emptying myself to fill her. Her chest rises with my air. Falls. Nothing.
Again.
The copper and sweetness coat my tongue. All going cold.
"Please." The word rips from my throat between breaths. "Please, Faith. Come back."
Another breath forced into her lungs. Her chest rises, falls, stays still.
"Breathe, Faith. You don't get to leave. Breathe for me."
Another breath.
"PLEASE."
Her body convulses. A rattling gasp tears from her throat as her lungs remember their purpose. She's coughing, choking, fighting for air, but she's breathing. Breathing.
Alive. She's alive. ALIVE.
I pull her against me, and my hands are shaking worse than any withdrawal, worse than any kill. The shake spreads through my whole body, uncontrollable tremors that have nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with how close I came to losing her.
"You're okay. I've got you. You're okay." The words pour out without thought, a prayer to no god I believe in, just to the universe that gave her back.
She tries to speak but only manages a wheeze. The bruises are already forming on her throat, perfect purple impressions of Neumann's fingers, the same pattern her mother wore to the grave.
"Don't talk. Just breathe. Just keep breathing."
But I'm the one hyperventilating now. The shaking gets worse, my whole body convulsing with something I don't recognize.
Terror. This is what terror feels like. Not when my father died across the room.
Not during the massacre. This is worse because she chose this.
Chose to be bait. Chose to die for revenge.
"I can't… If you…" The words won't form right. How do I explain that she's become necessary as breathing? That I'm just meat and violence without her? "You can't die. I don't work without you anymore."
The pressure builds behind my eyes, foreign, wrong.
My body fights it, a decade of trained numbness battling against this new fracture.
But watching her chest stay still, feeling her pulse fade under my fingers…
something breaks. The tears come like arterial spray from a wound that won't stop bleeding.
Crying like I haven't in ten years. Hot salt streaming down my face, snot running, body shaking with sobs that come from somewhere deep and broken.
The crying gets worse when she's alive in my arms, when I realize how close I came to holding her corpse instead.
Not since Mikhail. Not since I became what I am.
But she's broken through all of it, cracked me open to the child who could still cry.
Faith lifts one trembling hand to my face, fingers barely able to move but trying to wipe away tears.
"Lu-ca." My name comes out destroyed, barely a whisper through her damaged throat, but it breaks me completely.
"I can't… If you… Faith, you can't die." The words tumble out between sobs, my hands shake as I hold her, feeling her alive, breathing, here. "I don't exist without you."
"How touching." Neumann's voice cuts through my breakdown as he pulls himself to his feet, adjusting his tie like we're in a board meeting. "The Rosetti psycho crying like a child."
Her breathing steadies against my chest, alive but damaged. The tears stop as suddenly as they started, leaving something colder in their wake. Not the empty cold from before. Purpose. Crystal clear purpose. She's alive, which means Neumann gets to suffer for what he almost took from me.
I set Faith down with infinite gentleness, making sure she's stable, still breathing. Then I turn. Not fast. Not rushed. The slow pivot of someone who's found their purpose.