Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
-Xander-
The roads twist and turn, merging into a single crooked vein on the map, illuminated only by the glowing red of taillights mingling with a sense of impending doom.
My mind is a fog, and I can’t recall the last stoplight I sat at or the last breath I took that didn’t feel like a blade slicing through my chest. All that haunts me are her desperate calls, the ones I couldn’t bring myself to answer.
I find myself replaying the voicemail in my mind, just four agonizing seconds, a ghostly echo of her voice pleading, “Xander, please.” I have to silence it before it consumes me.
I grip the steering wheel so tight that the leather squeaks in protest, as if sensing my desperation. I know that if I let go, if I allow myself to relax, I might shatter into a thousand pieces. I grip the wheel harder, knuckles whitening.
“I won’t lose her,” I whisper into the dark cab.
This isn’t heroism.
This is instinct.
Primal. Violent.
Thalia isn’t someone I want to save.
She’s someone I refuse to live without.
Focus. Track. Hunt. Each mile stretches before me like a dark highway, and I’m piecing together the remnants of hopes and clues.
There was the gas station along Highway 7.
The night clerk remembered a guy with a tight smile and bruised knuckles who purchased nothing but beer and duct tape.
Then, two exits later, I stumbled upon a storage yard.
The gate’s rusted chain had been cut open and dropped on the floor.
A farmer at the last turnoff gestured with two fingers, indicating the barren flats, muttering that he’d heard a car engine idling in the dead of night where it shouldn’t be.
It’s enough. It has to be enough for me to take action.
I kill the truck’s headlights two hundred yards from my destination, slowing the vehicle to a creeping crawl.
The night stretches out before me, a desolate expanse filled with the crisp sound of wind and the incessant hum of crickets.
The silhouette of a blocky structure looms ahead, an old canning warehouse that’s long fallen into disrepair, a scar on the landscape.
Only one sodium bulb sputters weakly above a side door, casting a faint, sickly light that seems almost ashamed to emerge from the darkness.
I cut the engine, and the sudden silence rushes in like an overwhelming tide.
Her name sits heavy on my tongue, a bitter reminder of my drive, but I swallow it down hard and strain to listen.
There it is: a metallic clatter, distant yet sharp, like a coin falling in another room. Following it is the faintest scrape of metal against concrete, succeeded by a low, sickening chuckle that sends a chill down my spine. It belongs to a man I would never allow to draw breath in my presence.
My heartbeat turns cold and calculated, each pulse cautious.
I pop open the glove box, retrieving my flashlight and knife.
I tuck everything securely into my jacket.
My phone in my pocket vibrates once—Isla, again—but I can’t answer.
Not until I have Thalia safely in my arms and Damian is nothing more than a face from a fading memory.
The air inside the warehouse is stale, smelling of dust, decaying mice, and the oily residue of forgotten machinery.
I melt into the shadows, gliding along the outer wall until I reach the side door, its rusted hinge creaking ominously at my approach.
Up close, the dying hum of the bulb above sounds like a tired insect, struggling against its own inevitability.
A padlock dangles from the door, its shackle cut cleanly through, carelessly discarded.
He doesn’t even bother to hide it; he craves an audience for whatever dark intentions lie within. Not tonight.
I ease the door open a fraction, and it groans in protest, causing me to freeze in place.
I count silently to five, breathing as carefully as I would when wrestling with a stubborn bolt, knowing that impatience could lead to a stripped thread.
Inside, the darkness seems to inhale deeply in response, a waiting predator.
I angle the flashlight downward, clicking it on to reveal a slender beam of light that spills over the floor, illuminating a thick layer of dust. There are footprints, one set large and careless, pacing with a reckless abandon, and another set, smaller, starkly contrasting, leaving dragged arcs in the dust, as if someone had been forced along.
My chest constricts painfully, but I force myself to breathe deeply, stealing my resolve.
My body shakes uncontrollably, but it’s the survival kind of tremor, not fear.
“I’m here,” I whisper into the void, speaking to nobody, to her, to the god I refuse to believe in unless her life hangs in the balance. And then, with my heart pounding in my ears, I move forward into the darkness. I catalog every sound. Metal shifting. A chair sliding. Her gasp.
I breathe through the terror, counting heartbeats instead of seconds.
One.
Two.
Three.
Every muscle in my body aligns with one truth: I am not here to negotiate. I am here to end him.
Each step brings me closer. Closer to her. Closer to the moment everything ends.
The first bay stretches out in desolation, an emptiness broken only by the sight of sheet-metal tables flipped on their sides and a forklift lying dormant beneath a tattered tarp.
As I step into the second bay, I am met with a ghostly landscape of pallets stacked haphazardly like forgotten tombstones, looming shadows forming a corridor that swallows sound.
That laugh returns, louder now, dripping with a sinister satisfaction that sends a shiver up my spine.
Muffled words follow, edged in a dark rhythm, a nursery rhyme resonating through the air, twisted and whispered by something predatory.
I keep the beam of my flashlight focused on my boots, determined to navigate this labyrinth of metal and decay.
My free hand brushes against cold steel, grazing the nick of a rusty bolt head and the jagged edge of torn plastic wrap left in disarray.
The concrete floor drops abruptly beneath me, a lip I sense before I see.
Stairs leading downward. My pulse shifts from a steady beat to a frantic siren, and my mind slips.
-Thalia-
The basement fades, replaced by that dreaded night from my past. His breath on my neck. The weight of him pressing down. The moment I realized I couldn’t escape. The helplessness that clawed into my ribs and stayed there.
Back then, the world narrowed to one instinct: freeze.
He trained silence into me.
Damian steps closer, his boots echoing off concrete, and the old reflex returns, cold and automatic. My stomach clenches. My vision tunnels. My body remembers even when I don’t want it to.
I’m not there anymore.
He’s not allowed to touch me anymore.
I repeat it like a mantra.
Yet, my muscles lock, betraying me.
I’m shaking and furious that he can still do this.
No.
Not again.
Not anymore.
The cuffs bite in deeper, metal scraping skin until it burns.
If I stop pulling, it means I’ve accepted there’s no escape.
Damian always waited for that moment, the surrender. I won’t give it to him.
Even if my wrists bleed.
Even if the metal tears open skin.
Even if the pain becomes unbearable.
I’d rather bleed than bend.
I count my breaths the way the trauma therapist taught me.
In for four.
Hold for four.
Out for six.
Focus.
I’m not powerless.
I’m not trapped forever.
Xander is coming.
I’m not dying here.
“You really think he’s coming for you?” Damian asks.
The casual amusement in his voice makes bile climb my throat.
“He will,” I say.
He smiles. “Maybe. But if he walks through that door—” He taps his knife against the chain. “—I will make him watch.”
My vision goes white-hot.
“You won’t touch him.”
Damian laughs under his breath. “Oh, sweetheart. I already have.”
He rises slowly, savoring the theatrics, an audience of one. Up close, I can see the damage etched into his knuckles, old blood intertwined with fresh cracks, remnants of battles fought. His eyes, small and bright yet void of humanity, lock onto mine as he grins, relishing the twisted reunion.
-Xander-
I count the steps with deliberate pressure beneath my soles.
Six, then eight, and onward to twelve. At the bottom, a dim sliver of light pools, a weak glare emanating from a single, flickering bulb.
The muffled voices grow clearer here; his voice permeates the air like a malignant mold creeping across every surface, invasive and unnatural.
“You’ll remember,” he purrs, and I can almost taste the malice in the atmosphere. I close my eyes for a moment, summoning every ounce of focus, and pull the knife free from its sheath. The handle fits comfortably in my palm, as if it has always belonged there.
Once I breach the boundary of light, the world snaps into harsh focus.
My gaze freezes on the scene unfolding before me—concrete walls weeping moisture, a central support beam casting foreboding shadows, and a chain looped around it, descending to cuffs that bite mercilessly into delicate wrists I know all too well.
Thalia’s hands are cuffed, her head bowed with hair obscuring her face. Blood stains her sleeve, a dark and glossy reminder of the pain she endures.
A surge of white-hot fury floods my vision, then fades back to clarity.
He stands a mere three strides away, his back half-turned, crouched with a nonchalant swagger that makes my skin crawl, a knife poised casually on his thigh, as if he’s struck a pose for a macabre photograph.
His beard is thicker, his shoulders broader, inflated with the kind of bravado born from a life fueled by cheap beer and reckless arrogance.
He caresses the blade with his thumb, a sickening grin creeping across his face as if he relishes the unfolding drama.
I could easily end him in two quick steps.
I imagine sinking this knife deep, where his spine meets his skull, delivering a merciful death.
But then I notice the gun nestled at the small of his back, its handle glimmering in the bulb’s weak light.
If I lunge, he could pivot, bringing that barrel to bear on Thalia before I can find his throat.
So, I inhale deeply, steadying myself, mapping the room with precision.
I calculate every variable. Distance. The angle of attack.
The give of my boots on the concrete. The reach of his arm if he spins.
I mark every exit.
Every shadow.
Every potential weapon.
I don’t need to win a fight.
I need to win this moment.
And I will.
In a voice low and steady, I speak as though addressing a coiled snake ready to strike.
“Damian.”
He doesn’t flinch; instead, he freezes.
“Mechanic,” he drawls, the word dripping with condescension. “Took you long enough.”
My gaze remains fixed on his gun. “Step away from her.”
“Or what?” He spreads his arms wide, knife dangling precariously. “You’ll fix me?”
“Or I’ll break you in ways nobody can fix.”
His laughter echoes, distorted and wrong, a sound without joy. “You want her. I get it. She’s sweet when she cries. But she came here for me.”
At that, Thalia lifts her head enough for her eyes to find mine, shimmering with defiance but glazed with fear. Something in my chest snaps open.
Not fear. Not desperation.
Hope.
Her lips form my name, though no sound accompanies the motion.
“I’m here,” I tell her, my calmness a strange animal within me, fierce and protective. “I’ve got you, baby.” She swallows hard, nods once, and the handcuffs whisper, rattling against the beam. Damian’s smile broadens, a predator relishing the thrill of the hunt.
“Say it again,” he softly instructs her, as though I’m invisible. “Tell him you’re mine.”
The bulb buzzes ominously. The knife in my grasp feels as integral to me as my very arm. I take a single step to my left, shallow and silent, shifting the line between his gun and her vulnerable ribs. His gaze flickers there. Good, keep your eyes on me, not on her.
“Last chance,” I say, my voice like ice.
“For who?” he sneers, lifting the blade in a mocking test of the air. “You? Or her?”
I let silence drape over us like a heavy blanket, stretching until it creaks ominously. Within that silence, I hear everything: the choked hitch of Thalia’s breath, the metallic kiss of her cuffs as she trembles, the soft scrape of leather against skin as he shifts.
I root my feet firmly, gathering myself for what’s to come.
I’m going to tear him out of this world. But I’ll do it on a count that I can live with.
One breath for the woman chained to the beam, fighting through fear.
Two for every call I missed, every time I hesitated.
Three, and I move.
And in this moment, the world snaps toward the inevitable collision we’ve been edging toward since the night he laid hands on her.