Chapter 33 #2
“Then so be it,” Dean said, and lay his head on the ground, listening to the beautiful destruction.
Dean pictured Yasmine’s face, her warm smile even on the darkest of days.
How she held him, loved him, and made him feel like he was someone worth loving.
He could see her standing with their children, and a tear escaped his eye.
If he died on this floor, he only had one regret.
Not having more time. But if his death meant they could live free and safe… then it was worth it.
He'd gotten lucky, having found Yasmine, and luckier that she loved him. His heart was full. Dean closed his eyes and waited.
MAEVE
The corridor shook, and Maeve stumbled sideways into the wall, but Wolf caught her and held her steady.
Sprinklers hissed overhead, turning smoke into a damp veil that stung her eyes and tasted like metal. Muzzle flashes strobed along cracked plaster. The floor was a slick of dust, water, blood, and things she didn’t want to look at.
Maeve ran through it anyway—black hoodie up, gun held tight, boots finding purchase, because there was no other choice. They’d found Ricco almost as soon as they stepped inside, helping servants and other innocents escape the blasts.
“Where’s Dean?” she yelled over the noise.
“They took him to the office, but all of Carlos’s guards are in the hallway, protecting the door,” Ricco yelled back.
“I’ll take care of them, you get to Dean,” Wolf said.
“I’m coming with you.” Ricco waved over one of the guards a little further down the hall. “Instruct all those coming this way to head to the tunnels and stay there.” The guard nodded.
“Let’s go, I’ll take you through a shortcut.” Ricco started marching down the hall.
Wolf protected Maeve’s left, Ricco and another loyalist covered their rear, their bullets disciplined, precise. Nothing went to waste.
“Two more,” Ricco called, tilting his chin toward the bend. Wolf answered with a nod. He got low and slid out into the next hallway, two shots, perfectly aimed. Silence folded back over them.
“We’re good,” he said, slowly standing up.
It had been Wolf’s idea to distract the guards and separate them, and it had worked. He and Ricco handled the setup, but the whole time Maeve only cared about getting through the door to Dean and killing Carlos.
The office door waited at the far end, old wood set into concrete, paint blistered by heat. The four of them moved slowly, not sure how many were still inside the office. Wolf pointed to the smear of red that came out of the office and then disappeared.
“Someone was injured and they were carried away,” Wolf explained.
Wolf’s eyes found Maeve’s. The look wasn’t a question. It was a promise, we finish this tonight.
“You ready?” Wolf asked, and the small group of them nodded. He glanced at Maeve one more time, his eyes saying I love you and always will.
Checking the knob, she looked to Ricco who gave a nod. Maeve took a deep breath to steady herself. Her hands didn’t shake. Not for this. Not anymore.
Wolf kicked.
The door didn’t open so much as it surrendered.
It slammed inward, ricocheting off the wall, and the room came at them in fragments as they burst inside.
Smoke curling in through shattered glass, papers burning scattered on the floor, a desk lay on its side.
Dean was chained to a chair at the room’s center.
His eyes closed, but his lips were moving, like he was speaking to someone only he could see. He was bruised, but not dead.
Five guards remained, and they were all surrounding Carlos, the snivelling piece of shit he was, crouched down, hiding behind the wall of flesh. He looked at them with shock and then a fiery rage.
“You should’ve stayed lost.”
Time seemed to stand still. For one heartbeat she was five again, bare feet on cold tile, the warm sounds of her home, laughter tickling her ears.
The smell of cigars braided with rich food, and the smell of a crackling fire.
Her mother’s soft voice singing to her or reading a bedtime story, her father kissing her forehead goodnight, and then… fear.
The smell of leather as a glove was clamped over her face, ropes biting into her wrists, and tears stained her cheeks.
In a blink, all her memories came rushing back.
Parents she’d long forgotten or blocked out, the fear she felt during the kidnapping.
How she longed for home. The only bright spot was Dean.
The world tunneled. Carlos’s face, her hands, the old helplessness snarling to be let back in.
“Maeve!” Wolf’s voice barely cut through as she moved without thinking.
Guards raised their weapons. Wolf and Ricco dropped them, bullets flying around the room, but Maeve didn’t care. Her eyes were on Carlos. Only him.
A guard lunged from behind a low wall. Ricco’s shot clipped his shoulder, and Wolf finished him off. Maeve dove behind the overturned desk and peered around it at Carlos, their eyes locking amid the chaos.
Carlos was covering his head as blood splattered the walls and his guards dropped around him. He was a coward at heart.
“Are you too afraid to fight me one one-on-one?” Maeve taunted Carlos.
“Is your dick so small that you can’t fight one girl without your guards or your gun?
” His face darkened. “And you dare to think you would’ve ever been worthy enough to have a child with me?
That’s a joke. Look at you, hiding behind your men,” she continued to taunt.
He lifted his gun and pulled the trigger. The hollow click echoed louder than any gunshot. Empty.
Maeve smirked and stood as the last of his guards fell over holding their gut. The noise still surrounded them, but it was all distant and fading into the background, nothing compared to the moment between them.
“So, this is it, you’re going to shoot me?” Carlos tossed his gun to the side, his hands up, making it clear he had no weapon. “You’re going to shoot an unarmed man?”
Just then, Matteo ran in with a handful of guards. Carlos pointed at her and the others. “Kill them,” he snarled, revealing his true colors once more. Matteo glanced at Carlos, then swept his eyes to Wolf and Ricco as they helped Dean. “What the hell are you waiting for? Shoot them.”
Matteo pointed at Wolf. “Help him set Senor Dean free,” he ordered. The guards who’d come in with him fanned out, helping to sit Dean upright and get the cuffs and chains off of him.
“Traitors, you’re all traitors,” Carlos bellowed and then charged at Maeve.
Carlos kicked the toppled desk, the edge came around and slammed into Maeve’s knees.
She doubled over, and Carlos hit the gun out of her hand, sending it skittering across the floor.
He was on her in the next breath, hand catching a fistful of her hair.
They grappled across the room until he slammed her face off the wall.
Stars exploded behind her eyes, and the room tilted as the air rushed from her lungs.
“You bitch,” he growled, and that was it. Maeve had endured more pain than any one man could inflict. She pushed off the wall with everything she had, twisting them until Carlos’s back hit the wall.
She growled like a wild dog and drove her knee into his groin. As he doubled over, eyes bulging, she fisted his hair, yanked him down, and slammed her knee up again. A brutal thud rang out as bone met bone.
“Ahh,” he yelled.
Maeve broke free of Carlos’s grasp and jumped, her roundhouse kick connecting hard. Blood sprayed from Carlos’s mouth as he stumbled sideways, catching himself on the toppled desk. With a guttural growl, he snatched up a shard of glass and lunged at her, slashing wildly.
She could hear Morry’s voice in her head.
The thousands of hours of training slowed everything down.
She dodged the first swipe and then the second.
Carlos lunged forward, and she ducked, kicking him in the back hard.
He lurched forward, hitting the window ledge, and froze as the broken glass stabbed into his body.
The office stank of cordite and rage. Maeve’s pulse beat in her throat as she watched the glass fall from Carlos’s hand.
He slowly pushed himself up and off the window, turned, and slid down the wall as he held a hand to his chest where the blood was freely flowing.
With a groan, he rose, disbelief on his face.
“Killing me won’t free you,” he panted, taking one shaky step toward her. He smirked as he locked eyes with her. “You will always think of me. No matter what, I’ve already impregnated you.” Carlos tapped the side of his head. “Up here.”
Maeve wasn’t the little girl he’d stolen in the night. She was no longer the girl who hid in a closet, in the dark, obedient, small, and scared. No, she would never be the victim ever again.
She reached back and wrapped her fingers around the handle of the gun, tucked into the back of her jeans. Her grip was tight, but her voice didn’t waver.
“No, that’s where you’re wrong. The moment I walk out of this room, I’ll never think of you again.
I didn’t remember you until I was dragged back here, and I’ll forget you just as fast. You’re nothing to me—never were, never will be.
You built yourself up as a monster, but all I see is a sad, scared old man who knows the truth…
when you die, the legacy you worship dies with you. ”
Carlos’s sneer curdled. He drew breath to speak, but she was done listening to anything he had to say. Lifting the gun, she pulled the trigger.
The shot was clean, between the eyes, and settled whatever arguments were left.
Silence isn’t quiet. It’s the weight after impact.
Wolf was suddenly by her side. “Maeve,” he whispered, hand touching her shoulder.
She didn’t look away from the body. Not yet. “That’s for every girl you broke,” she told the room, voice low and even. “For every life you stole.”
Dean walked up beside her. He was holding his side, and blood was dried to his face, but his eyes were steady as he looked down at his father’s body.
“You were right.” Dean looked to Maeve. “He will never be thought of again.”
That lifted the corner of Maeve’s mouth and she finally turned from the body. Dawn had started to pry up the skyline beyond the blown window, thin light smearing the smoke to something almost gold. The office seemed smaller now.
The guns had quieted outside, and as she looked around, she realized that they had won. Stepping away from Wolf, she wrapped her arms around Dean.
“I forgive you. Thank you for freeing me from this place. No matter what happened after, I get why you did what you did.”
He hugged her back, and they stood there in silence, letting the past finally rest in the grave long overdue.
“I guess we should get you home,” Dean finally said, as he stepped back. “I did promise your father that I’d take you there when the dust had settled, and I’m sure his men are waiting downstairs.”
Home.
“I don’t think it is my home anymore,” she said, and looked up at Wolf. You are. But I will go, as long as you and Waya are coming with me.”
Dean’s lip turned up. “Nothing could keep me away.” He looked around. “Where is Keene?”
“Was he injured?” Wolf asked.
“Shot in the leg.”
“Looks like someone carried him outside from the hallway, there is a streak of blood that only goes a few feet and disappears.”
“Come on then, he can’t get away,” Dean ordered, all business once again.
They stepped into the corridor together—Wolf first, Maeve holding his hand, and Dean at her other side. Ricco was a couple steps ahead. The building exhaled as they left it, like it had been holding a breath for years and could finally let it go.
Down the stairs, past walls that remembered names, faint scratches catching the light just right. Past a streak of old paint and the bodies that had given their life for one side or the other.
As they stepped outside, Maeve turned toward the skeleton of the office windows high above. Her story had begun with violence, but it would end with choice. She had saved Dean, killed Carlos, and finally, she was going to live the life she’d dreamed of. A life built on love, not survival.
She looked at Wolf. He was already watching her, the future written in the way his hand found hers like a promise, not a chain.
Her past lay behind her. Her present stood beside her. And somewhere beyond the smoke waited a future she was ready to fight for.
For the first time since she’d been stolen from the world, Maeve finally felt like she’d taken it back.