Chapter forty two
Roxy
People always assumed addiction made you stupid. Like all the drugs hollowed your brain out until nothing worked anymore except cravings and self-destruction. The truth was actually worse. Addicts notice everything.
Every twitch.
Every hidden look.
Every slight change in tone.
You learn fast when survival depends on knowing whether the person standing in front of you wants to help you, hurt you, or use you. And the woman reaching for the gun beneath her scrubs? She moved like someone who’d killed before. My body reacted before my brain fully caught up.
I grabbed the metal IV pole beside Nadia’s bed and swung hard. The fake nurse ducked fast, too fast, but the pole still clipped her shoulder hard enough to throw off her aim. The gun fired. The sound exploded through the room violently. Glass shattered behind me.
“Fucking bitch!” I screamed.
The woman recovered instantly. She was a professional. Not gang professional either. This wasn’t Stonebridge brutality. No wild rage, no hesitation, no adrenaline-fueled sloppiness. This woman moved like murder was routine.
She lunged toward me, grabbing the IV pole and ripping it from my hands with terrifying strength. The pole clattered across the floor as she drove me backward into the wall hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
Her forearm crushed against my throat. Cold eyes stared into mine. Emotionless, not even angry.
“You should’ve stayed seated.” She said calmly.
Then, she raised the gun toward my face.
A body slammed into her sideways before she could pull the trigger.
Abby. The gun discharged into the ceiling as Abby tackled the woman away from me with enough force to send both crashing into the hallway wall.
“Roxy!” Abby shouted.
“I’m good!” I wheezed immediately.
What a fucking lie. I haven’t been in this much pain since the Nadia incident.
Honestly though, I think Nadia could give this bitch a run for her money.
The fake nurse recovered absurdly fast, twisting beneath Abby and slamming her elbow into Abby’s ribs hard enough to make her curse.
Then the woman kicked Abby off and rose smoothly to her feet.
Still calm, still composed. Blood dripped from a cut near her eyebrow now, but she didn’t even acknowledge it. Pop appeared at the end of the hallway holding a gun. Everything stopped. The fake nurse looked at him; Pop looked at her.
What did she do? She fucking smiled, that same creepy smile, not scared at all. She was interested.
“Well,” She murmured softly.
“That explains the reports.” Pop’s expression darkened instantly.
“Who sent you?” The woman tilted her head.
“You already know.” Then she raised the gun again.
She was too late; Pop fired first. The hallway exploded into chaos.
The assassin moved with horrifying speed, diving sideways behind the nurses' station as bullets shattered monitors and sprayed sparks across the walls.
Abby grabbed me by my shirt and dragged me behind the doorway just as another shot tore through the hall.
“What the fuck is happening?!” I shouted.
“Nobody knows!” Abby snapped back. Pop advanced slowly down the hallway, gun steady.
“Come out.” The assassin laughed softly from behind cover.
“You people really still think this town belongs to you.” Then the lights went out. Darkness swallowed the entire floor instantly.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” I hissed.
Emergency lights flickered on dimly red. And suddenly the hospital looked less like a building and more like a slaughterhouse. Pop moved immediately. Years of violence carved into instinct. He fired twice toward movement near the station, forcing the
assassin backward, but she used the distraction to sprint the opposite direction instead. Toward Nadia’s room.
“No!” Abby shouted.
The assassin burst through the doorway just as Abby lunged after her.
I followed without thinking. Inside the room, the woman grabbed Nadia’s IV line violently and ripped it free before yanking another syringe from her pocket.
Clear liquid. Not medicine, poison. Abby slammed into her from behind before she could inject it.
Both crashed hard into the bed. Nadia’s unconscious body shifted violently with the impact, and something primal snapped inside me instantly.
“No!”
I grabbed the metal tray from beside the monitors and brought it down across the assassin’s face as hard as I could.
Bone cracked and blood sprayed. Still. Still she kept fighting.
The woman rolled off the bed and drove her knife upward into Abby’s thigh fast enough that Abby screamed. Then the assassin pivoted toward me.
Gun up. Eyes dead. I genuinely thought I was about to die.
Then someone slammed through the doorway like a hurricane.
Riven. He hit the assassin full force before she could fire, driving her backward into the wall hard enough to crack drywall.
The sound he made didn’t even sound human.
Not anger. Not rage. Something much, much worse.
The assassin recovered enough to slash the knife toward his throat, but Riven caught her wrist midair and slammed it repeatedly into the wall until the knife dropped.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Crunch , her wrist bent wrong. She still tried reaching for the gun with the other hand. Riven grabbed her by the throat and smashed her head into the wall.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Blood streaked across the paint. The woman laughed. Actually fucking laughed. Even while choking. Even while bleeding.
“Hades was right about you.” She rasped. Riven froze. Just slightly. But it was enough. The assassin smiled through bloody teeth.
“He said grief would finally make you useful.” Then she reached into her pocket. Pop shouted immediately.
“Riven!”
Too late. The assassin bit down on something hidden between her teeth. A capsule. Her body convulsed instantly. Foam hit her lips seconds later. Riven shoved her backward in shock as the woman collapsed, twitching, onto the floor. Dead. Silence
crashed into the room. Only Nadia’s monitors still beeped.
Steady. She was alive, but barely. Riven stared down at the body, breathing hard, hands covered in blood. Abby limped against the wall, clutching her leg. Pop slowly approached the corpse and crouched beside it. Then his expression darkened.
“Shit.”
“What?” Riven asked hoarsely.
Pop grabbed the woman’s sleeve and yanked it upward. Tattooed on the inside of her forearm was a black pillar wrapped in olive branches. Beneath it were three smaller pillars arranged in a triangle. The room went cold. Because until now?
Olympus had only been whispers. Symbols, rumors. Ghost stories buried beneath Stonebridge. But this? This was real. And they had just tried to murder Nadia in her hospital bed.