30. Blaze
BLAZE
As soon as the lights go out, I make my way toward my father. He doesn’t check his phone or attempt to flee, only watching as I stop in front of him.
“I was wondering if you’d approach me,” he says. “What is this stunt meant to do? You already have all the information you need about these people.”
His bodyguards, Isaac and Sven, stay close to him.
“It’s meant to put an end to all of this,” I say steadily. “You didn’t think I could do it, did you?”
George shakes his head. “Did I think you would be stupid enough to endanger our entire legacy, all because you got bewitched by some cunt? No, I had higher expectations of you than that.”
I wonder how true that is.
All my life, I’ve done what my father demanded.
I never questioned him.
I never went against him.
I’ve listened to him call me a coward; I’ve stayed silent as he belittled my abilities.
I never once thought he believed in me. That’s why I had to be the top dog. I had to prove to him I could be just as vicious and ruthless as he was, so he’d acknowledge me.
“I’m done with you,” I say, my voice steady even as the crowd begins to shout.
People are trying to leave the bleachers and rush for the doors, but Reaper and his crew are there to wrangle people back. They’re supposed to grab all the phones and wallets and make sure nobody is leaving too early in the game.
River must already be dragging Allers to Pandora.
I’m going to be there for her.
We’ll take him apart together, and I’ll watch her shine as she’s meant to shine.
I turn away from my father.
“Where do you think you’re going?” George demands. “Isaac, stop him.”
Shit. I manage to avoid getting grabbed by Isaac, but he’s fast despite his size.
Where’s Asch?
“You can still walk away, Dad,” I say. “Your phone might be compromised, but if you’re fast, you can prevent a bigger disaster for yourself.”
He shakes his head. “The only disaster here is you, and the fact that you’re being led around by your hormones. Women are things we use, Blaze, not ones we follow.”
My breath stops in my throat.
No.
I don’t believe that.
Not anymore.
Pandora isn’t somebody to use. She’s wild and dangerous and she makes me laugh in a way nobody else ever has. She’s protective, generous.
Completely crazy, but I love that about her.
I love everything about her.
I love her.
“Fuck you,” I say. “You’re going down. Your entire empire means nothing to me.”
It’ll suck not having my fortunes, but I’ll deal with all that later.
Whatever my father says next is lost as people shout.
Isaac attempts to grab me again. I duck down, going for a roundhouse kick, only Isaac doesn’t so much as flinch when my leg connects with his shin.
Yeah, I’m in trouble if I need to fight him directly.
I go to the gym, and I know how to fight, but I’m not as good as River or Asch.
Maybe I do need bodyguards of my own.
Isaac reaches for me again, and this time he manages to grab me by my shirt collar.
I grimace and struggle against him. When he pulls me closer, I punch him in the face. Isaac grunts, but his grip on my shirt doesn’t falter.
Fuck.
“Barely felt it,” Isaac says.
I smile at Isaac. “Come on. You don’t have to do what my dad says. You know this isn’t right.”
Somebody screeches in my ear.
“Mel!” Ares shouts. “Fuck, fuck, Kratos, we need to—”
That really doesn’t bode well. I thought I’d put Mel somewhere far out of danger.
“Sorry, kid,” Isaac says. “Your dad’s the one paying me. Now let’s take you home.”
He starts dragging me, heedless of everybody else in the room.
No. No, I can’t leave now. I’m not going to let my father ruin anything anymore.
I lean forward, toward Isaac’s exposed arm, and bite down hard.
Unlike the punch, this has Isaac crying out. He lets go of me, and I scramble away, into the crowd of people. I hear more yelling, but everybody is yelling.
I need to get to the murder theatre.
If we can take care of Allers, the rest barely matters.
I find the side door, the one well out of sight from the main audience, and push through. The air is instantly cooler out here, and I take a breath to steady myself.
No time to rest, though. I jog onwards to the room we’d set aside for Pandora’s murder opera.
It doesn’t take long before I hear Allers’s voice, begging.
“Please! I’ve got money! I can pay you!” he yells.
I push the door open and walk inside.
Allers is strapped to the table, naked, with bright lights shining directly on him. Pandora, wearing gloves and bright-pink scrubs, waves a knife in front of him.
River stands off to the side, expression stern.
“I know you have money,” Pandora says with a soft laugh. “That’s how you bought all your toys, right? All the women you used up and discarded and dismembered and threw away!”
I survey the room, but Asch isn’t here. My hackles rise.
“Asch?” I ask.
No response.
Pandora looks at me. “No Asch. Maybe he doesn’t have the stomach for it.”
That isn’t true. I’ve seen what he’s done for us.
“Blaze!” Allers calls out. “Call off this crazy cunt! She’s—”
He doesn’t finish, because Pandora stabs him in the gut. Allers cries out, letting us hear his own opera wails.
Pandora’s eyes light up, her smile stretching wide.
My breath catches at how fucking beautiful she is.
River crosses his arms against his chest. “Don’t hit anything vital too early,” he says.
“He deserves more than a quick death. I doubt they gave Rachel a quick death. Do you remember Rachel?” His eyes are intent upon Allers.
“Pretty girl, still in high school? You played with her, then you got tired of her. She ended up in the trash, which is where you’re going to end up. ”
Allers only whimpers.
I go up behind Pandora and wrap my arms around her waist. She smiles and gives me a quick kiss on the jaw before turning back to her canvas.
Blood gushes out of the cut she’d made. If I look closer, I can see past the outer meat and straight to his intestines.
It reminds me of the slaughterhouse Asch and I had once visited, except I feel no sympathy for Allers.
He hurt Pandora, even if it was indirectly.
He deserves all of this.
“Nothing personal, Allers,” I say, pasting on a smile of my own. “But you’re going to look better after Pandora carves you up.”
Allers shakes his head. Tears leak out of his eyes. “P-please.”
“Rachel begged, didn’t she?” Pandora says. She lays her knife at the end of Allers’ wound and drags it up, towards his ribs. “But did you give her any mercy?”
Allers sobs and cries.
Pandora abandons that cut and stabs him on the other side, drawing the knife along his flesh and baring even more of his insides. Blood is spilling out of him at a rapid rate, fast enough to where I’m not sure he’ll survive enough to truly regret what he’d done.
I wonder if he even remembers Rachel.
With Bobbi and Anastasia’s help, I’d found all the records of our transactions with Allers. Rachel was just one of many. I’d known he had a voracious appetite, and hell, I know what it’s like to get bored with somebody.
But he’d gone through so many of the girls. They didn’t all end up dead, but none of them came out of it whole.
“She wanted to go to film school,” Pandora says. “She wanted to make stupid indie movies with lots of long pauses and meaningful imagery.” She reaches forward and pulls on Allers’ flesh, exposing his innards. His blood stains her gloves.
I kiss the back of Pandora’s neck.
“She never got the chance to do anything. She was an easy target, an easy victim,” River says, his voice as hard as his expression. “But you didn’t know she was Pandora Pavone’s best friend. Would that have changed anything?”
Allers can’t respond.
He’s too focused on the pain as Pandora pulls out his intestines and piles them onto his chest.
That’s a sight.
There’s something wrong with me, too, if I’m not even slightly nauseated.
“Do you need this body part?” Pandora asks, reaching in. “What about this one? I’ve been dying to get to the dissection portion of my classes.” Her laugh rings out in the concrete room. “I skipped ahead. I’m a teacher’s pet like that.”
River snorts.
We all know she’s not a teacher’s pet by any means, but she’ll shine when it does come to the dissection parts of her classes.
She has plenty of experience, after all.
“Do you think there’s a heart inside his chest?” I ask.
Pandora’s hands still. “It would be ironic, wouldn’t it? If he has a heart, and I don’t.”
I raise my hand up to her chest and kiss the back of her neck again. “You have a heart, Pandora. That’s why you feel so strongly. That’s why you’ve been fighting to protect all these women. That’s why—”
The door to our theater slams open.
I’m hoping for Asch.
It’s my father, though, with Isaac at his heels. No Sven.
“I wasn’t done with our conversation,” George says. His face is contorted into an ugly sneer. “But you’ve led me straight to the source of all our troubles.”
Pandora waves. A few drops of blood fly from her gloves onto my cheek. “Hi, Mr. Bouchard! Or George? You’re my sort of father-in-law. I should call you George.”
I let go of Pandora and get between her and my father. “No. The source of our problems is you, Dad.”
River moves to stand beside me, both of us shielding Pandora from view… and from easy attack. I don’t know if my father will try anything, but I’m not willing to risk it. Apparently, River isn’t either.
Allers makes a gurgling sound that almost sounds like George.
As if my father can help him.
As if anyone can. Even if help arrived in the next few moments, I don’t think they’d be able to place his internal organs back where they belong.
He’s a dead man.
My father extends his arm and aims his gun.
Not at River, not at Pandora, but at me.
“Move, son,” George says. “I’m not going to let you destroy everything I’ve worked for.”
I guess that’s his answer.
I know exactly how much I’m worth to him.
I laugh. “Everything you’ve worked for? What did you do? You inherited your father’s empire. You’re just as pathetic as Allers there, sucking on other people’s dicks for scraps of their success.”
His face turns red, but before he can answer, a female voice sounds over the speakers.
“Everybody! The front doors are open. Evacuate now. Don’t stampede! But get the fuck out!” It’s Anastasia, and it means something went wrong because people aren’t supposed to be escaping right now, like this.
River glances at me then steps back, going to Pandora’s side. “Pandora,” he says, “let’s go. The doors wouldn’t be open unless something is seriously wrong.”
Pandora shakes her head. “No! I’m not done with Allers.” Pandora stabs her knife into his penis.
It comes right off, and the screams are louder than anything else before.
Pandora bursts out laughing. “How does that feel? Do you regret it yet? Do you regret it?”
George shakes his head. “Do you see what you’re tying yourself to, Blaze?” He motions to Isaac. “Grab Blaze. We’re getting out of here.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m not leaving without Pandora!”
“You want to get the fuck out,” Bobbi’s voice says in my ear. “Ezio set bombs. Anastasia and I found one of them, but there’s more. And we aren’t exactly a bomb squad.”
“Fuck,” River snarls. “I should’ve known he’d cause trouble.” He grabs Pandora by the arm. “We’re getting out of here. Allers can blow up with the rest of the place. He’s going to pass out from the pain soon anyway.”
I’m surprised he hasn’t already passed out. The pain must be excruciating.
Pandora struggles against River. “Let go! He hasn’t suffered enough yet!”
I join Pandora. “You heard Bobbi. You can’t avenge Rachel by dying, Pandora.”
Pandora slaps her gloved hand against my chest. If River weren’t holding her other wrist, I suspect I would have gained a deep stab wound instead.
How much time do we have?
My carefully spun plan is unraveling in front of my eyes.
We were going to burn down the murder opera. Once the smoke started filling the halls, we’d have let people out. Casualties weren’t an issue as long as Allers was dead and burned and we had all the passwords and financial information from the guests.
I’d invited everybody who ever partook of the Bouchard merchandise.
“What’s going on?” George snaps. “Blaze, if everybody’s in danger, we need to get out now.”
Isaac puts his arm on George’s shoulder. “Forget him, sir. We need to evacuate while we can.”
“Not without Blaze,” George hisses.
Like he really gives a fuck about what happens to me.
River pulls Pandora to him, wrestling the knife from her grasp. “You got him. He’s as good as dead,” he says. “But we need to get out now. I’m not risking losing you, so I will drag you out of here if I have to.”
“Stop it!” Pandora yells. “Fuck off, all of you!”
I help River manhandle Pandora, my stomach twisting as we force her like this.
I should be helping her destroy everything.
But I’m not going to lose her.
She’s more important than anything, even her own revenge.
“I hate you!” Pandora screams as we drag her out. “Stop it!”
George and Sven are a few steps ahead of us.
The door to the murder theatre closes.
And then the world explodes.