Chapter 49
Bloodline
THE MAESTRO | Past
Find her!” I roar. “Block the exits! Lock down every exit, every elevator, every damn window! If she leaves this building, I will slaughter every single person on security detail tonight!”
“Zagreus, wait—” Massimo starts, but I don’t give him the chance to finish.
I pull my Beretta from its holster and chamber a round.
I don’t look back at my brother. I don’t look at the operating room where my Mother’s body lies cold. I run.
My lungs burn as I sprint through the emergency wing, my eyes scanning every door, every shadow, every empty hallway. Please, God. Please. I’ve never prayed a day in my life. I’ve only ever taken what I wanted by force. But now, my mind is a bleeding wreck of bargaining and terror.
Not her. Take everything else. Take the empire, take my life, take my blood—just not her.
I will follow her into whatever hell she escapes into.
I will burn the world to ash just to find the ground she walks on.
She doesn’t understand. She thinks she’s a monster; she thinks she’s broken, but she is mine.
Mine. Mine. Even if she hates me, even if she never speaks my name again without spitting venom, she belongs next to my heart.
I burst through the glass sliding doors of the emergency entrance, hitting the freezing, torrential rain of the city night. The wind howls, tearing the breath straight out of my chest.
“Don Vitale! The gate camera caught her running toward the main road!”
I run straight out onto the asphalt of the four-lane highway wrapping around the hospital. The rain slashes against my face, washing away the dried blood on my jaw, but the cold doesn’t register. Nothing registers except the terrifying vacuum in my chest.
Through the heavy curtain of grey mist and downpour, I see her.
Selene is standing directly in the middle of the highway.
The hospital gown is soaked through, clinging to her fragile frame, stained with patches of fading crimson. Her wild curls are plastered to her back. She looks so small.
“Selene!” I scream, my voice cracking, completely stripped of the monster. Just a man begging for his life.
I sprint toward her.
At the sound of my voice, she slowly looks over her shoulder. The unhinged glaze has evaporated, leaving behind a devastating woman I no longer recognize.
She places a single, trembling hand over her stomach, protecting the secret life we built in the dark. Tears stream down her pale cheeks, glittering like diamonds in the rain as they mix with the storm.
She looks straight at me, her wide, sorrowful eyes locking onto mine from yards away.
“Goodbye, Zagreus,” she whispers. “I hope we never meet again.”
“No! Selene, stay still!”
A deafening shriek of tires splinters the night.
To my left, I see a pair of blinding headlights traveling too fast. A heavy sedan rounds the blind curve of the highway, and the vehicle swerves violently, skidding sideways across the slick asphalt.
“Selene!”
I lunge forward, throwing my entire weight as my fingertips stretch through the empty air, trying to catch the hem of her white gown.
The impact is instantaneous.
The car slams into her, and the sheer force throws her body through the air like a broken doll, tossing her yards down the highway before she hits the cold asphalt.
“NO!” A scream tears from my throat.
Before I can even scramble to my feet, the swerving vehicle loses complete control, crashing violently into the fuel barrier at the edge of the road. The fuel tank ruptures, flooding the rain-slicked pavement.
A single spark ignites the dark.
BOOM.
The massive wall of violent orange fire erupts into the sky, expanding across the lanes in a fraction of a second. The heat is sudden, and the flames dance merrily, taking her into their embrace.
“Selene! Selene!”
I drag my bleeding knees, desperately trying to throw myself into the blinding wall of fire to pull her out, to burn with her if I have to.
“No! Hold him!”
Multiple pairs of arms wrap around my torso from behind.
Massimo and three guards tackle me to the ground.
“Let me go! Let me go, damn you! She’s in there! She’s in there!” I roar, my fists striking blindly at the asphalt, my fingers clawing at the stone until my nails crack and bleed.
They hold me tight, dragging me backward as the intense heat singes my skin. I am forced to watch the orange flames swallow the road, swallow the rain, and cremate the only beautiful thing I have ever truly possessed.
I stop fighting. My arms go limp against the wet asphalt. I stare into the bright, dancing inferno, the reflection of the fire burning in my deadened eyes. The ghost has finally escaped the cage.
The inferno paints the night red, a beautiful, screaming hell that grants her final wish.
We will never meet again.