Chapter 28
ROXY
The gates open like they’ve been waiting.
No alarms. No guns. No dramatic claxon screaming bloody murder at the top of its lungs.
Just two rusted slabs of metal creaking apart on ancient hinges, swinging wide enough to swallow me whole.
No guards at the threshold.
No orders barked.
Just… eyes. Dozens of them.
Watching from shaded awnings and half-built scaffolding. From guard towers that track my every step with twitching scopes and fingers hovering over triggers. From behind thick visors and cracked windows and mouths stuffed with disbelief.
I walk through.
Alone.
No armor. No weapons. No theatrics.
Just boots scraping against sunbaked ground and the jacket my mother died in.
The heat hits me like breath from a sick animal. Damp, wrong, too close. It smells like rust and old oil and a sourness that clings to places held together by hate. Dust cakes the back of my throat. Sweat pools between my shoulder blades. My pulse is steady. My breath is not.
I walk slower.
Deliberate.
Let them see me. Let them question what this is. Another trick? A trap? Some last desperate maneuver?
Let them wonder.
A whisper catches—skittering through the yard like dry leaves. I don’t catch the words, just the tone. Suspicion. Unease. Nobody moves. Nobody fires. Their uncertainty is its own shield.
I stop in the center of the courtyard.
Same one they marched him through.
Still stained with blood. Still ringed with chains. Still bearing the stink of showmanship and spectacle.
I scan the balconies. Marj isn’t here. Not yet.
“Bring her out,” I say, loud enough to echo.
The Hooves twitch. Two shift their stances, hands tightening on their rifles. Another tilts his head like he’s waiting for orders that aren’t coming.
“I want to speak to Large Marj,” I continue. “Here. Now. Publicly.”
Still no movement.
I take one step forward.
That’s all it takes.
A radio crackles. Somewhere high up on the roofline, someone mutters fast into a comm unit.
I cross my arms.
“I’m not leaving.”
The silence grows teeth.
Then: a door slams open.
She appears like theater. Of course she does. Cloak flared behind her. Boots clicking down a grated catwalk. Hair pulled back tight and shining like lacquered wire. She moves like she’s already won and just came to sign the paperwork.
The crowd parts as she descends.
She stops ten feet from me.
Smiling.
“Well,” she drawls, “if it ain’t the Butcher’s widow.”
“I’m not his widow,” I say.
“You will be,” she replies smoothly.
Her eyes flick up and down my frame, assessing. “No armor. No guards. No weapons. Hell, no eyeliner. What is this?”
I don’t blink.
“You made this.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“This show. This crowd. This war. You made all of it.”
She laughs, loud and throaty. “Sweetheart, I didn’t make shit. The Butcher did.”
“No,” I say, quieter now, but firmer. “You made him.”
Something shifts.
Small. Barely perceptible.
A wrinkle around her eyes. A twitch at the corner of her mouth.
“The Butcher,” I continue, “wasn’t born. He was built. Out of fear. Out of fire. Out of stories that made you sleep better at night, knowing the monster had a name.”
She takes a step closer. “You got a hell of a nerve walking in here and lecturing me.”
“I’m not here to lecture.”
“Then why are you here? You think this is some kinda peace talk? You wanna trade yourself for him? That it?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not here to fight. And I’m not here to beg.”
Another whisper moves through the gathered crowd.
Marj hears it too. She flinches.
I take a step closer.
“You want the Butcher,” I say. “You want him chained, bleeding, stripped of mystery so you can prove you’re bigger than your own myth.”
“Damn right I do.”
“But the myth isn’t his,” I say. “It’s yours. You built him up so high you forgot he was a man. You made the monster. Now you don’t know what to do when he won’t perform.”
She stiffens. Just barely. But it’s there.
“You want blood,” I say. “I get it. You want a finale. You want to stand over his body and say, ‘I ended it.’ But here I am. No bombs. No traps. No snipers in the hills.”
She doesn’t speak.
“I came to tell you the truth,” I say.
I raise my voice now, projecting to the edge of the compound.
“I’m not a warrior.”
The crowd shifts again.
“I’m not the Butcher. I never was. I’m just a woman who survived. Who got lucky. Who learned how to fire a rifle because no one else would.”
Marj's jaw tightens.
“You can kill me,” I say. “Right here. Right now. Add another corpse to your mountain. But it won’t fix the hole you’re trying to fill. It won’t make you a legend. It won’t end the story.”
I step in, close enough I can smell her perfume again—cloying and bitter, like flowers left too long in the vase.
“You don’t want to kill him,” I say. “You want him to beg.”
Her breath catches.
“You want him to submit. So you can tell yourself you broke the myth.”
I let the words hang in the air.
She blinks.
Just once.
Then, finally, she speaks.
“You done?”
“No,” I say.
And then I go quiet.
On purpose.
Letting the silence press down like a boot on the back of the neck.
She waits.
So do I.
And in that breathless span between seconds, something breaks.
Not loud. Not violent.
Just the tiny snap of her control slipping at the edges.
Behind her, one of the guards lowers his weapon a hair.
Just a little.
Like maybe the script isn't playing out how it was supposed to.
Like maybe they’ve seen something they weren’t meant to see.
Marj sees it too.
And for the first time since I walked into this compound, she hesitates.
Only for a second.
But a second is all it takes.