29. Killian
KILLIAN
Ninety seconds.
That’s all Jackson needed to blind the perimeter. Ninety seconds of camera loops and localized sensor blackouts.
I'm through the garden entrance and into the main foyer within forty-two.
It smells like flowers and bleach. I know that smell. It's what you use when you need to scrub blood off the walls. When you want a torture chamber to smell like a fucking spa.
I don't walk. I fucking hunt. And I'm here for Grace's throat.
I don't need a map. I’ve spent the last few hours burning these floor plans into my mind until I can navigate the mansion blind. The Order doesn't build homes; they build fortifications. I only needed a few hours with a blueprint to know exactly where the weak points are.
I move past crystal chandeliers, golden sconces, and silk-lined walls. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the estate. Polished hardwood under my feet. Grace built herself a palace to hide the screaming from the basement.
The first guard is positioned by the gallery entrance. He’s looking at a landscape, a quiet, pastoral scene, when I take his throat. It’s a clean slice. I catch him before he hits the hardwood, making sure his boots don't scuff the floor. I don't stop to watch him die. I’m already moving.
“Main hall clear,” I whisper into the comm.
I pass a sitting room filled with antiques that look like they belong in a museum. A bar cart with crystal decanters. Oil paintings of people long dead. Grace’s little kingdom of refinement.
The monitoring room door stands open. Jackson is silhouetted against the glow of multiple screens, blood splattered across his shirt and face. The guard who’d been watching them is a heap in the corner now, slumped against the cooling fans. Blood spreads in a pool around him.
"Jesus Christ," he breathes as I join him.
I can see it for myself. Holding cells. Sunken pits viewed through one-way glass. Medical rooms designed for torture, one looks like an operating theatre, another like a mortuary.
“Three occupied rooms,” Jackson reports, his fingers flying over the keyboard to index the files.
“Eighteen victims over the past two years. Most were released after consolidation. These three...” He pauses, the only break in his professional mask.
“They didn't finalize. Grace kept them for failure analysis.”
I look at the screens. One woman is staring at a corner, her eyes wide and fixed. Another is rocking in a slow, rhythmic cradle. The third is tracing the pattern of the tiles with a trembling finger.
Seeing them is like looking into a mirror I broke a decade ago. Suddenly my hands are vibrating, a frantic energy I haven't felt in a decade. I clamp them on the edge of the console until the bones in my wrists ache, forcing the stillness back into me.
Every muscle in my body is screaming to move, to kill, to make Grace pay in pieces for what she has put these women through. My hands are shaking. I force them still.
Not yet.
Ellie first.
"Where is she?"
Jackson highlights another monitor. And strapped to a chair, with IV lines running into both arms.
Oh, fuck.
Ellie.
My hands grip the edge of the desk. The desk creaks under my fingers. Jackson's mouth is moving, but I don't hear him. Just the sound of my own heartbeat. And all I can see is her on that screen.
She's motionless. Head lolling to one side, eyes closed.
Auburn hair matted with sweat. Her skin is gray.
Purple bruises ring her wrists where the restraints have been chewing on her.
Injection sites up and down her arms, some fresh, some fading to yellow-green.
She's lost weight. Too much weight. I can see her collarbones jutting out from where her shirt has fallen off her shoulder.
But it's her face that breaks me. Even unconscious, she looks haunted. I can see it in the hollows of her cheeks. The way her hair hangs limply. Grace did this. I don't know if I can fix it.
I'm moving before the sentence is finished. Down corridors lined with more paintings. Persian rugs muffling my footsteps.
I unscrew the silencer, not needing it anymore. I want them to hear me coming. I want Grace to hear her guards dying and know exactly who is walking through her house.
The next guard is younger, scrolling on his phone by a doorway marked 'Private.' Two shots to the chest. He goes down, collapsing onto an antique side table, sending a vase crashing to the floor.
The third is in a gallery, running towards the sound of the gunfire.
Marble torsos of dead Greeks watching us fight.
He's almost as big as me, tattoos up his neck, nose ring. He actually knows how to fight, a bit more of a challenge. He reaches for my throat with both hands. I peel his right fingers back until the knuckles snap the wrong way. He opens his mouth to scream, and I drive his face into the marble pedestal. The stone goddess comes down on top of him, pinning him to the marble with a wet, heavy crunch. His face is a ruin of white dust and red blood, but his eyes are wide, the pupils blown, and they roll toward me. He’s still in there, feeling every ounce of the stone crushing his lungs.
I put a round into his skull, and the twitching finally stops.
I don’t look back.
I reach the staircase leading to the basement.
The air grows colder with each step. The kind of cold that comes from knowing what waits below.
White walls stretch in both directions. Numbered doors with small observation windows. I can see into some of them, empty rooms waiting for victims. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, the type that never turn off. The air is damp down here. Cold in a way that seeps into your bones.
Antiseptic burns in my nose, sharp enough to taste. Metal and fear and the particular smell of places where they create monsters.
I know this place. The Order built dozens of them. Different continents. Same design of horrors. Cameras in every corner. Biometric locks on every door.
The corridor ends at a reinforced door, electronic locks that would take hours to bypass. Through the small observation window, I can see medical equipment. A chair in the center of the room. And Grace standing over someone strapped to it.
Ellie.
I place shaped charges at the hinges and around the lock mechanism. My hands are steady even though everything inside me is screaming to just kick the fucking door in. But I can't risk it. Debris could hurt her.
I step back and trigger the detonator.
The explosion blows the door into splinters, and I'm through before the noise even stops. I don't wait for the smoke to clear.
My eyes find her instantly.
She's still in the chair. Her eyes are open now, but she isn't there. She's staring at the ceiling, lips moving in some silent, agitated rhythm. Over and over. Like she's repeating something to herself, but no sound comes out.
The monitor didn't show how bad it is. She's translucent. Fragile. Like she's started to fade into the white of the room.
Grace is standing over her. The needle is inches from Ellie's arm. She doesn't flinch. She doesn't even look at me. She keeps her eyes on her patient, her focus absolute.
"Killian," she says. Her voice is calm and steady. "You're just in time for the final imprint."
All I see is the needle. And my finger is already tightening on the fucking trigger.
“Step the fuck away from her.” I growl, raising my gun to point directly at her. It isn't an order. It's the last sound she'll ever hear if she doesn't move.
Grace starts talking. Contingencies. Leverage. Trading information for her life. Other facilities, other victims. Like I give a fuck.
I'm watching Ellie.
Grace's voice climbs higher. Desperate. She's screaming coordinates and biometric codes like they're going to save her.
I don't give a fuck about her codes. Jackson will find them. If he doesn't, I'll burn the answers out of the people she leaves behind.
"Killian," she begs. "You need me. Without me, they all die."
I look at the monster who spent the last twenty-seven days—it's past midnight—ripping the soul out of the only woman I've ever loved.
At the syringe in her hand. At the needle, inches from Ellie's arm.
The rage is gone. Burned out. All that's left is cold.
I don't see a person anymore. I just see a corpse that's still breathing.
"You're mistaken, Grace," I say quietly. "The only thing I need is for you to be dead."
I don't give her a chance to scream.
I pull the trigger.
The sound is deafening in the small room, but Ellie doesn't even flinch. She just keeps staring at the ceiling, lips still moving.
Grace hits the floor. I don't give her the satisfaction of a second look.
I'm at the chair before the echo of the shot even dies, hands shaking as I claw at the leather.
The straps are slick with her sweat and her blood, making my fingers slip.
I want to rip the metal out of the fucking floor to get her free.
When the last buckle gives, she collapses forward. I catch her before she hits the floor, pulling her flush against my chest. I cradle her head, holding her like she might disappear if I let go. She weighs almost nothing. Just bones. I can feel her ribs through her shirt.
"I've got you, Ellie," I whisper into her hair, cradling her head against my chest. Her heartbeat thuds against me, thready, shallow, but there. "I've got you."
Her eyelids flutter. Once. Twice. Then close. Whatever was keeping her conscious finally lets go. Her body goes slack, head falling limp against my shoulder.
I scoop her up, terrified by how light she is, and carry her through the wreckage, stepping over Grace's body. The numbered doors blur past as I move through the corridor. Up the stairs. The basement's cold gives way to warmer air, but it doesn't help. Nothing helps.
My comms are screaming. Jackson. Gabriel. Something about the other rooms. The other victims.
"Get them out," I rasp. My voice is raw, like I've been the one screaming for weeks. "I'm taking her. Get the others out."
I don't look back at the mess I've made. I only look at her.