CHAPTER 13 THE ASHES OF MY RUIN POV SYBIL
The heavy, suffocating silence of the rotting hunting cabin is infinitely louder than the explosion that just buried us alive.
It rings in my ears, a high-pitched, agonizing frequency that completely drowns out the violent roar of the storm lashing against the thin wooden walls.
I sit on my heels on the dusty floorboards, my hands hovering uselessly in the freezing air.
They are completely coated in thick, dark crimson blood.
His blood. It is already beginning to dry, turning sticky and tight against my skin, turning my fingers into the grotesque appendages of a butcher.
“I burned your entire life to the ground, little bird, just so I could be the only one standing in the ashes with you.”
Thayer’s final, psychotic confession loops through my shattered mind, a dark, venomous snake coiling tighter and tighter around my throat until I can barely drag a breath into my burning lungs.
I stare down at him. The Devil of Chicago. The untouchable Don of the Thorne Syndicate.
He is lying entirely motionless on the floor, his massive, battered frame completely slack.
The pale, glacial gray of his eyes is hidden beneath heavy, bruised eyelids.
The rise and fall of his chest is terribly shallow, a jagged, rattling rhythm that sounds like grinding glass.
The pool of blood beneath his torn shoulder has stopped expanding, thanks to the chemical gauze I ruthlessly shoved into his torn flesh, but the damage is already catastrophic.
His skin, usually radiating an overwhelming, furnace-like heat, is rapidly turning a translucent, terrifying shade of ashen gray.
He is dying.
And he is the architect of my complete and utter destruction.
I push myself backward, my boots scraping against the rough, splintered wood.
I scramble away from his unconscious body, crab-walking until my spine hits the opposite wall of the cabin.
The impact sends a jolt of pain up my back, but I welcome it.
I welcome anything that grounds me in this horrific, twisted reality.
My chest heaves violently. A ragged, fractured sob tears its way up my throat, but I clamp my bloody hands over my mouth to completely smother the sound.
He knew. The realization is battery acid in my veins, burning away the last, fragile illusions I had desperately clung to.
I thought I was a casualty of war. I thought my father’s desperate greed had accidentally thrown me into the path of a monster.
But there were no accidents. There was no desperate, last-minute deal.
Thayer orchestrated every single agonizing second of my current existence.
He watched me for six years. He cataloged my traumas, my fears, my desperate need to disappear into the background.
And then, he deliberately, methodically removed every single exit door.
He allowed my father to betray the Syndicate.
He gave Arthur Vance the rope, knowing perfectly well the greedy coward would hang himself with it.
Thayer invited the Commission’s assassins into our lives, sacrificing his own warehouses, his own men, and almost his own life, just to manufacture the absolute, undeniable necessity of locking me in a subterranean vault where no one else could ever touch me.
He didn't just buy me. He engineered my isolation so flawlessly that I actually begged him not to leave me alone in the dark.
I pull my knees tightly to my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs, rocking back and forth in the freezing, drafty cabin.
I should run.
The thought materializes in the dark, frantic chaos of my brain, sharp and blindingly clear.
The door is less than ten feet away. Thayer is unconscious.
He cannot stop me. The spare 9mm Glock he brought from the bunker is sitting in the heavy, waterproof tactical duffel bag on the floor.
I could take the gun. I could take the flashlight.
I could walk out into the freezing, torrential rain and disappear into the dense, endless expanse of the northern woods.
If I run now, I am free. I am no longer a pawn. I am no longer a captive. I can leave the monster to bleed out on the floor of a forgotten cabin, the absolute, poetic justice for the psychological warfare he waged against me.
I slowly lower my hands from my mouth. I force my shaking legs to unbend. I push myself up from the wall, my muscles screaming in protest, completely exhausted from the adrenaline crash and the brutal trek through the mud.
I take a step toward the heavy wooden door.
The wind howls violently outside, rattling the rusted hinges, a terrifying reminder of the frozen hell waiting beyond the threshold. But the cold doesn't scare me. The darkness doesn't scare me.
I take another step. I am standing directly over the duffel bag. I look down. The matte-black grip of the spare Glock is visible beneath a fold of waterproof canvas.
I kneel. I reach out, my bloody, trembling fingers brushing against the cold steel of the weapon.
“You protected yourself. I have never been more fucking proud of anything in my entire life.”
His words, spoken just moments after he waded through a literal warzone to get back to me, echo in the silence of the cabin.
My hand freezes over the gun.
A violent, debilitating shudder rips entirely through my nervous system. I squeeze my eyes shut, a fresh wave of scalding tears cutting through the ash and mud on my face.
I look back at him.
Thayer is lying in the shadows, his head lolling to the side, completely vulnerable.
The man who commands an army of ruthless killers.
The man who snaps necks with his bare hands.
He is lying in the dirt, entirely stripped of his power, his life slipping away with every shallow, rattling breath he takes.
And he is dying because he threw himself over my body when the ceiling collapsed. He is dying because he carried me through a mile of subterranean rock while his artery pumped his life onto the floor.
The cognitive dissonance completely and violently fractures my sanity.
He is a psychotic, manipulative stalker who completely destroyed my life. But he is also the only person on this miserable, bloody earth who values my existence above his own. My father sacrificed me to save himself. Thayer sacrificed his empire, his men, and his own blood to save me.
The trauma bond is an absolute, undeniable poison. It has completely infected my bloodstream, rewriting my biology until the very thought of leaving him here makes my lungs seize in pure, unadulterated panic.
I cannot leave him.
I am completely, entirely ruined.
I snatch my hand back from the gun. I scramble across the dusty, blood-stained floorboards, throwing myself onto my knees beside his massive, motionless body.
"Thayer," I whisper, my voice completely broken, frantic. I press my bloody hands flat against his uninjured right shoulder, shaking him gently. "Thayer, wake up. Please."
He doesn't respond. His skin is shockingly cold to the touch.
The freezing wind howling through the cracks in the cabin walls is rapidly dropping the ambient temperature.
He is in severe hypovolemic shock from the blood loss, and hypothermia is already setting in.
If I don't raise his core temperature immediately, his heart will simply stop beating.
Panic, pure and blinding, completely overrides my horror.
I look around the pitch-black cabin, the beam of the dropped flashlight illuminating dancing motes of dust and rotting wood. There is a rusted iron stove in the corner, but no dry wood. There are no blankets. There is absolutely nothing in this abandoned tomb that can save him.
Except me.
"Okay," I breathe, the sound a frantic, jagged hiss in the silence. "Okay. I've got you. I'm not leaving."
I move to his boots. My fingers fumble with the heavy, mud-caked laces of his tactical boots. My hands are shaking so violently I can barely grip the thick nylon cords, but I force myself to focus. I rip the laces loose and yank the heavy boots off his feet, tossing them aside.
I crawl back up his massive frame. His tactical pants are completely soaked, heavy with freezing rain, mud, and his own blood.
My breath catches in my throat. The deep-seated, paralyzing fear of intimacy—the terrifying vulnerability that my father beat into my subconscious—screams at me to stop. But the sight of Thayer’s pale, graying lips silences the ghosts.
I reach for the heavy metal buckle of his tactical belt.
I unfasten it with a sharp click, unbuttoning the waistband of his pants.
I grip the heavy, wet fabric and pull. It requires a massive, agonizing physical effort to lift his dead weight enough to slide the soaked material down his muscular thighs and off his legs, leaving him in nothing but his dark boxer briefs and the heavy white bandages wrapped tightly around his torn shoulder and chest.
He shivers—a violent, full-body tremor that rattles his teeth.
"I know," I whisper, tears streaming freely down my face. "I'm sorry. I have to get the wet clothes off."
I look down at my own body. I am wearing the oversized black tactical jacket he gave me, and beneath it, his dark gray cotton t-shirt and my black leggings. The jacket is completely soaked from the storm.
I don't hesitate. I reach for the heavy zipper of the jacket and pull it down, shrugging out of the freezing, wet material. I discard it onto the floorboards. I peel the wet leggings off my shivering legs. Finally, I grab the hem of his oversized t-shirt and pull it over my head.
I am left in nothing but the sheer black lace underwear I had grabbed from the penthouse.
The air in the cabin hits my bare skin like a thousand tiny blades of ice. A violent wave of goosebumps erupts across my flesh, my teeth chattering uncontrollably. The vulnerability is absolute. I am completely stripped bare, kneeling in the dirt beside the monster who orchestrated my captivity.
I crawl toward him.