Chapter 31- Jade
The guards change shifts sometime in what I think is the middle of the night.
Two new faces, same energy. My ribs have settled into a deep constant ache that sharpens when I breathe too deeply, and the left side of my face has gone from throbbing to numb, which is either an improvement or something worse.
My wrists are bleeding. I discovered that an hour ago when I felt the warmth of it against my fingers, slow and persistent, the rope having done its work on the skin underneath over the course of however many hours I've been in this chair.
The binding is looser than it was.
Not loose enough. But closer.
I work at it in small movements, nothing visible from across the room, just the constant steady pressure of wrists rotating against rope while I keep my face forward and my expression blank and give the new guards nothing worth watching.
The warehouse has settled into its nighttime sounds, the metal roof contracting in the cold, the chain above still tapping its patient rhythm, the low murmur of the guards' conversation near the door.
I think about Phoenix.
Not the Phoenix who is coming for me, though I know he is, I have never doubted that for a single second.
I think about the Phoenix who looked at me through a phone screen with his face completely still and his eyes anything but, the effort of that stillness visible to me in a way it probably wasn't visible to Dominic.
I think about what it cost him to say I need time instead of what he actually wanted to say.
He's going to do something reckless. I know it the way I know his coffee order and the sound of his breathing when he's pretending to be asleep.
I just need to not be tied to this chair when he does it.
The rope gives another millimeter. My wrists burn. I keep going.
The sound comes around what I estimate is the second hour of the new shift.
Distant at first, the low growl of engines that could be anything in this part of the city at night, trucks or equipment or the ordinary machinery of a place like this going about its business.
But then a second engine joins the first and the guards hear it too, their conversation stopping.
They exchange a look.
The broader one speaks into a radio, low and terse. The response that comes back makes his body tighten.
Then the first gunshot splits the night open.
It comes from outside and to the left, followed immediately by shouting, multiple voices, the controlled chaos of men who are trained for this and men who aren't colliding with each other in the dark.
The guards move fast, the broader one drawing his weapon and positioning himself between me and the warehouse door, the other moving toward the side exit with his hand already on the latch.
More gunfire. Closer. The sound of it bounces off the corrugated walls and fills the warehouse and I feel it in my chest.
The side guard looks back once, then goes through the door.
Which leaves one.
He's good, the one who stays. He keeps his back to the wall and his weapon up and his eyes moving between me and the main door. He's not going to get distracted. He's not going to get close enough for me to head butt, and my hands are not free yet, and the gunfire outside is getting closer.
I rotate my wrists and feel the rope catch and pull and the skin underneath screams and I do it again.
The warehouse door comes off its hinges.
Phoenix comes through the gap with a weapon in his hand and blood on his jacket that I tell myself is not his.
He takes in the room in one second. The guard. Me. The distance between all three points.
The guard swings his weapon toward Phoenix.
Phoenix is faster.
The shot is very loud in the enclosed space. The guard goes down and stays down and the echo of it rings off the walls and then the warehouse is quiet except for the distant sounds of the fight still happening outside. Phoenix crosses the floor toward me in long strides.
"Jade." He drops to his knees in front of me, his hands going immediately to the rope at my wrists.
"I'm okay," I say, which is not entirely true but is true enough. "Phoenix, listen to me. Dominic isn't—"
His hands work at the knot, fingers moving fast. "My father's team is outside. We tracked him here two hours ago and I told them I'd wait and I—" He stops. "I heard the gunfire start and I couldn't."
"You were supposed to wait."
"I know."
"He predicted this. He told me you'd do exactly this."
Phoenix looks up at me, and whatever is in his eyes in that moment is not something I have words for. He has the expression of a man who knows he has made the mistake he was warned against but cannot bring himself to regret any of them.
"Are you hurt?" His voice drops. His hands have stilled on the rope.
"My ribs. My face. Nothing that won't heal." I hold his gaze. "The rope. Keep going."
He goes back to the knot.
"Drop the gun, Crawford."
The voice comes from the shadows to the left, from the gap between two stacked pallets where the warehouse light doesn't reach.
It is calm and flat and utterly certain of itself.
Dominic steps forward into the light with his weapon already leveled, and I understand immediately why he waited.
He wanted Phoenix disarmed and distracted, hands on the rope, eyes on me.
He was patient until the last possible second.
Phoenix goes completely still.
"Drop it," Dominic says again. "Or I put a bullet in your spine and you spend whatever's left of your life in a chair. Your choice."
Phoenix sets the gun on the floor. Dominic kicks it across the concrete, well out of reach, and circles around to face him, keeping the distance between them constant and controlled.
He looks the same as he always looks. Dark jacket, pale eyes, the horrible cologne I can smell even from here.
The only thing different is the quality of his stillness, something in it that has shifted from patience into arrival.
"You came alone." His eyes move over Phoenix with something that might be appreciation. "How romantic and stupid."
"Let her go." Phoenix's voice is level. "This is between us."
"It stopped being just between us the moment she watched you kill my brother and helped you bury him." Dominic glances at me briefly, then back to Phoenix. "She's part of this. Just as guilty as you are."
"She's innocent. Marcus attacked her. He was going to—"
"I don't care." The flatness in his voice cracks, just slightly, just enough to show what's underneath it, something hot and damaged. "He was my brother. My blood. Whatever he did or didn't do, he was mine, and you beat him to death."
Phoenix says nothing. The warehouse breathes around us, the chain overhead, the distant sounds of the fight outside going quieter now, which could mean anything.
Dominic raises the gun until it's level with Phoenix's head.
"Any last words?"
My wrists are almost free. The rope has one loop left, pulled tight by hours of work and bleeding skin, and I need fifteen more seconds and I need Phoenix to still be standing at the end of them.
Phoenix's eyes find mine.
He sees. I watch him understand what he's looking at, the slight movement of my arms, the angle of my shoulders, and something shifts in his face so quickly that only someone who knows it as well as I do would catch it. He looks back at Dominic.
"Your brother was a rapist," he says, very clearly. "And a coward. He deserved exactly what he got.”
The effect is immediate. Dominic's composure shatters. Two steps and he swings the gun across Phoenix's face with a force that has nothing controlled left in it, just rage, just grief, just a man who has finally run out of patience.
Phoenix goes down to one knee. Blood on his mouth. He stays there, head down, breathing.
Dominic stands over him, his chest moving hard, the gun still in his hand. The composure comes back slowly, visibly, like watching a man rebuild a wall brick by brick. When he speaks again his voice is almost steady.
"I was going to make this quick," he says. "But now I'm going to make you watch while I hurt her. And then I'll kill you both."
He turns toward me.
The last loop of rope comes free.
I'm out of the chair before he's taken a step, my legs numb from hours on concrete, the feeling in them returning as fire as I push to my feet. Dominic stops. His pale eyes drop to my hands, to the rope falling away from my wrists, and for one suspended second the warehouse holds its breath.
Phoenix moves from the floor.