Chapter 23 Into The Fire #2
She swung again, my body managing to move out of the way, dodging her swings as best I could while my stab wound bled into my shirt and down the side of my pants.
Until I could find the adrenaline shots, my only strategy was to evade her attacks as best I could until she either tired herself out or the serums wore off.
If she really was pregnant like I had to believe her to be on the likelihood that Jason was lying, then it shouldn’t take very long. But there was a way to speed things up—emotional drainage.
“What happened to Scott, Jaden?” I asked as I sidestepped another swing.
“Sloane killed him for trying to kill me,” she answered bluntly, swinging again through nothing but air.
Scott had tried to kill her? What the actual fuck?!
“Why would Scott try to kill you?”
She actually kind of giggled at the question, pausing for just a breath. “If you haven’t figured it out by now, you can ask him yourself in a few minutes,” she replied, playfully flipping one of the pipes in her hand.
I rolled my eyes at her answer, then immediately gritted my teeth on a wince as the pain in my side started to increase with every move I made.
“And where is Sloane?” Was she dead too?
“She’s long gone with Katherine and Ella,” Jaden growled, a menacing scowl on her face. “You’ll never see them again.”
Fury shook me at Sloane’s betrayal. I had hoped that whatever sense of honor she felt for her job would be enough to overpower Jaden’s manipulations, but apparently, I was wrong.
She let Jaden get to her head and now Scott was dead.
And once I discovered the truth behind it all, there would be consequences. Lethal ones.
“So once again, you stayed behind like a good girl,” I taunted as I focused on regulating the heavy breathing I could hardly control. The agony was everywhere and becoming nearly all-consuming.
Jaden scowled at me as she swung the pipes again. “I stayed to finish the job this time.”
Despite my brutal anguish, I smirked, amused by her tenacious commitment to murdering me. “As opposed to last time,” I added, my grin widening as she narrowed her gaze at me.
“Last time, I didn’t have the resources I do now.”
“You mean, last time you didn’t have Jason,” I countered, a sneer curling in the corner of my mouth as I clenched my burning side.
“I hate to break it to you, princess, but he’s no longer at your disposal.
He’s currently buried in a pile of rubble with an eight-inch blade sticking out of his heart.
Once my men recover his body, I’ll carve out what’s left of it for you.
” My words stopped her in her tracks, the tortured look of disbelief and abject uncertainty glistening in her eyes.
God, she was beautiful like this, those eyes wide and full of desperation.
And now was the perfect time to kick her when she was down.
“He’s gone, Jaden,” I emphasized harshly.
“Matt’s gone, and we both know Kayla can’t help you.
All your little potential saviors are gone, princess. There’s no one left but me.”
Her chest heaved as she stared back at me, hatred glimmering in her gaze as she continued to clench the pipes in her hands until her knuckles were white. And then her posture suddenly relaxed, her arms dropping to let the pipes dangle loosely beside her hips.
“You’re right, Darren,” she agreed, her voice sullen and labored.
“There is no one left but you. Scott’s gone, both of your brothers are gone, your best friend is gone, your company is in ruins, and the bodies of your allies are in pieces all over your office floor.
All that’s left is you, my final domino. ”
I cocked a brow at her statement, my scattered focus lingering between the scorching agony flowing through my entire body and the word domino.
“Domino, huh?”
She nodded. “That’s right. You think all of this was orchestrated overnight?
That all of your misfortunes have been by chance?
” She shook her head, swinging the pipes back and forth again.
“I may not have an army at my back or millions of disposable dollars, but I sure as shit have the gift of influence.”
With that, she lunged forward and swung both pipes low at the ground, kicking up dust, broken glass, and debris in my direction.
The distraction gave her the advantage she was looking for, moving swiftly through the dust cloud to strike the back of my knee with the pipe.
I grimaced as the pain cracked through my bones, but I was able to catch her wrist as she swung the second pipe, my hand throbbing as it held her arm in place.
I shifted to the side as she lifted her foot to kick me in the torso, catching her other wrist and squeezing both of them hard enough until she finally dropped the pipes.
But of course, that wasn’t enough to stop her as she leaped forward, head-butting me in the face with the top of her head.
And the blows kept coming, more body kicks until I finally released her wrists because the pain was both blinding and suffocating.
I could hardly breathe, alarm and sudden desperation clinging to my senses.
Hurting her was the last thing I wanted to do right now, but I was quickly running out of options.
In a last-ditch effort, I bypassed her kicks and tackled her to the floor, using my body weight to trap her fighting body beneath me and pinned her wrists in place beside her head.
“That is enough!” I roared down at her, the volume of my voice causing her to flinch and look to the side. But as she did, I noticed her eyes widen.
Following her line of vision, I could see she had focused on a lone pistol sticking out of a pile of debris.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned her. “It’s over. You’re done.”
Jaden then turned her head back to me, raging hellfire in her eyes as she glared up at me.
“Fuck you!” she spat, then turned her head to latch her teeth deep into my wrist, biting down hard enough to break my skin.
A loud growl ripped up my throat as pain tore into my entire forearm, causing me to lose my grip and giving Jaden her opportunity to then punch my wounded side twice and squirm her upper body out from under me.
An alarm went off inside me when I felt her grab my other hunting knife from my belt.
When I lifted my upper body, Jaden followed my movement, reaching up to swing the knife into my neck.
Catching her wrist again, I stopped her from nearly cutting my throat, squeezing again to force her to drop the knife.
But then an intensely sharp pain and immense pressure suddenly clamped down onto my shoulder, tearing into my skin with the ferocity of a wild animal.
And then I saw Jaden drop the knife into her other hand and plunged it deep into my inner thigh. A shock wave of acid speared its way through me, deafening and blinding all at once.
“Camaro, release!” she shouted.
Camaro?
I didn’t have much time or care to think on it before Jaden’s fist connected with my jaw, sending me over onto my side and allowing her to finally escape from my hold on the floor.
With her one leg now loose, she was able to slam her foot against my ribs, knocking me completely over onto the floor, the pain taking all manner of breath away.
Rolling to an incline, I groaned as I slumped my back against a half-broken wall as blood streamed down my chest from my shoulder, saturating my shirt.
I looked down at my leg where Jaden had stabbed me.
An odd and unfamiliar sense of defeat settled in as I acknowledged the eight inches of steel sticking out of my femoral artery.
Son of a bitch.
I had maybe minutes left before I bled out, seconds if I removed the knife.
When I looked back up at Jaden, she was sitting on the floor, but the gun was in her hands now, pointed directly at me. And oddly enough, somehow, there was Camaro, growling right next to her. How had she survived? Jaden even glanced over at her in disbelief, likely wondering the same thing.
Pondering it was pointless though as reality slowly seeped in. For the first time in a long time, I actually felt cold, even as the warm blood seeped out of my leg like a river to pool beneath my lower body.
Check-fucking-mate.
For what felt like an eternity, we both just stared at each other, time slowing down despite my fading mortality.
Our chests heaved from the exertion, the breath leaving our bodies in synchronized gusts of anguish and undeniable inevitability.
The world around us continued to implode with endless chaos, gunfire still echoing off somewhere in the background.
And still, she refused to lower her aim, clutching the gun so tightly her hands were white, and her rigid arm shook from the strain.
My body radiated nothing but pure agony, but it paled compared to the liquid agony glistening in Jaden’s eyes as it slowly slipped down her bruised cheek.
One look could reveal a thousand words, none of which needed to be spoken since I could easily read every one of them playing in her head through that cold look in her eyes.
I was sure she had pictured this moment several times over, envisioning what she would say and how she would say it. But truthfully, she knew she didn’t have to say anything. I already knew.
Still seeing her now—dirty, bruised, and bloodied—she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.
“Do you remember,” she started, her breath still heavy as she fought against her own exhaustion. “Do you remember, all those years ago, what I told you, the first time you raped me?”
I would have laughed if I had the energy, so instead, I offered her a smirk as I reflected on one of my very first memories of her. Apparently, we were taking a trip down memory lane in my final moments.
“I warned you that this day would come,” she continued, the gun still firmly grasped in her hands.