CHAPTER 17 - Madeline #4
The door shudders under a fresh barrage. I can hear Deimos screaming my name again, the sound raw and stripped of all his usual elegance. He sounds like he is burning alive on the other side of that titanium.
"Why now?"
I ask, taking a brave step closer, my mind racing to scan the features of the man who broke his own son.
"If you wanted him gone, you’ve had plenty of time. Why use me as the catalyst?"
He stops, leaning against the archive shelves. He looks at me as if I am a fascinating specimen under a microscope.
"Because killing him is simple, Madeline. Shattering his will is an art form," he whispers, his eyes shimmering with ancient malice.
"He has spent a very long time trying to hurt my legacy. I wanted to see the face of the woman who finally made him stop running and start kneeling,” he continues.
"He never told you the truth about the night I ended his mother's life, did he?"
He asks, his voice dropping to a lethal, intimate level.
"He never told you that he was the one who handed me the weapon. He was just a boy who trusted his father. I want to see if he’ll make the same choice tonight when I tell him the only way to open this door is to surrender the ledger you're holding."
Outside, the gunfire stops. There is a heavy, terrifying silence that feels even more dangerous than the noise.
Then, a low, guttural roar from Deimos, the sound of a man who has run out of patience and is about to tear the world apart to get to what’s inside.
"His mother?"
I whisper, the curiosity I felt moments ago turning into a cold, hollow ache. My mind, usually so fast at diagnosing a problem, is stumbling.
"Deimos never... he never mentioned her."
He lets out a dry, rattling laugh, moving even closer.
"Of course he didn't. To speak of her is to admit he is human. To admit he failed. He lives in a world of calculations because he cannot handle the messy, unpredictable nature of grief."
"What do you mean he handed you the weapon?"
I ask, my voice trembling. I need the truth, even if it burns.
"He was a child. How could he be responsible for what you did?"
"Children are the perfect tools, Madeline," he pauses, letting out a long, almost annoyed sigh.
"They want to please. They want to be useful. I told him we were playing a game of trust. I told him to bring me the silver box from her vanity. He didn't know the blade was inside. He didn't know what I intended to do with it."
He leans in, his face inches from mine. I can smell the expensive whiskey on his breath.
"He carries that guilt in every breath he takes. Every person he kills, every 'cleanup' he performs, is just an attempt to wash that phantom blood off his hands. And now, look at him."
He gestures toward the door, which is starting to warp under the heat of a thermal charge.
"He is about to commit a massacre just to save a woman he met barely a few weeks ago. He is repeating the same cycle of blind, desperate devotion."
I look at the door, then back at the man who broke the boy I am slowly beginning to understand. The fear is still there, but it is being replaced by a fierce, protective anger.
"You're wrong," I say, my voice steadying.
"He isn't repeating a cycle. He’s trying to end one. He isn't out there for you. He’s out there for me."
He reaches for the intercom button, his dark eyes shimmering with a sick kind of anticipation.
"Let’s put that theory to the test. Let’s see if he’ll choose your life over the ledger that could finally destroy my empire."
With a deafening, metallic groan, the heavy door swings wide, releasing a cloud of white smoke and the acrid scent of burnt steel.
His father doesn't flinch. Instead, he reaches into the archive shelf and pulls out a porcelain mask. Featureless, bone-white, and cold. He slides it over his face, turning from a man into a haunting, nameless specter of the Elite.
"The face of the father is a burden he isn't ready for," he muffles behind the silk-lined porcelain.
Deimos storms into the room like a physical manifestation of a hurricane.
His suit is shredded, his knuckles are split, and his eyes are wild with a terrifying, fractured light.
But before he can take two steps toward me, four of the Elite guards, men built like stone walls, swarm him from the shadows of the corridor.
It takes all of them. He fights with a primal desperation, a guttural roar ripping from his throat as he tries to claw his way to the desk.
They pin his arms, forcing him on the ground, his forehead pressing against the cold marble floor as he gasps for air, his gaze locked onto mine with a frantic, agonizing intensity.
"Madeline!"
He chokes out, the name sounding like a prayer and a death rattle all at once.
His father moves with sickening slowness. He steps behind me, his hand winding into my hair to yank my head back, exposing the pulse point of my throat. I feel the freezing bore of a suppressed gun press firmly against my temple.
"Look at him, Madeline," he commands through the mask, his voice distorted and ghostly.
"Look at ‘The Arbiter’, reduced to a lying beggar."
Deimos flinches at the sight of the gun against my skin. The fight drains out of him instantly, replaced by a paralyzing, suffocating horror. He stops struggling against the guards, his body going limp as he stares at the masked man holding his only weakness.
"Let her go, Charles," Deimos whispers, his voice trembling with a vulnerability I’ve never heard.
"Take the ledger. Take the city. Just... let her walk out of here."
"The city isn't enough anymore, Son," the masked man says, his finger tightening on the trigger. I can feel the mechanical click of the safety being disengaged against my skull.
"The Elite require a guarantee. You have become too efficient, too curious. If you ever breathe a word of what is in these files, if you ever lift a finger against a single member of the High Council again, I will paint this vault with her brilliance."
I look down at Deimos, my eyes swimming with tears I refuse to let fall. He looks broken. The man who feared nothing is now terrified of a single heart stopping.
"Don't listen to him, Deimos," I gasp, the cold metal of the barrel biting into my skin.
"Don't give them what they want."
"Silence, Doctor," the mask whispers into my ear.
He looks back at him, the porcelain face mocking his son’s despair.
"Choose, Deimos. Your crusade for the truth, or the girl’s life. You have five seconds before I close the case on Dr. Emerson forever."
The pressure of the cold steel against my temple is a constant, icy reminder of how little my life weighs in this room of power and secrets. I look down at the man I suddenly want to protect.
He is still pinned to the marble, his face a mask of raw, unfiltered agony. ‘The Arbiter’ has vanished; in his place is a man watching his entire world narrow down to the tip of a firing pin.
"Five," the masked voice whispers behind me.
Deimos's fingers claw at the floor, his knuckles white, his breath coming in shallow, broken hitches.
"Stop. Please. I’ll do it. I’ll burn the ledger. I’ll be whatever you want."
"Four."
I feel the hand in my hair tighten, pulling my head back further. There is nothing he can say. His father didn't actually give him a choice of saving me. He's just enjoying the absolute terror in his son's eyes.
My eyes lock onto them. I see the surrender in them, the willingness to become everything they want just to keep me breathing. He is ready to throw away his soul to save mine.
I won't let him. He protected me once. I’m returning the favor. I’m still not ready to admit there’s more to it.
"Three."
I don't wait for two.
With a sudden, violent surge of adrenaline, I don't pull away from the gun. Instead, I throw myself toward it. I twist my body, lunging sideways with a strength I didn't know I possessed.
The goal isn't to escape; it's to disrupt the line of sight, to create the one-second window of chaos Deimos needs to turn from a captive back into a feral predator.
"No!"
Deimos screams, the sound tearing through the vault like a physical blade.
The movement catches Charles off guard. The porcelain mask tilts as I wrench my head to the side, my shoulder slamming into his chest. The suppressed pistol huffs.
A dull, metallic phut, and I feel a searing, white-hot line of fire graze my upper arm.
The pain is instant, blinding, but it’s the catalyst.
The moment the guards' focus flickers toward me, Deimos explodes. The paralysis of fear is gone, replaced by a cold, murderous vacuum. He snaps his head back, shattering the nose of the man behind him, and wrenches his arm free with a sickening pop of a shoulder joint.
He doesn't reach for a gun. He reaches for the nearest guard's throat, his fingers turning into iron talons.
"Madeline!"
I hit the floor hard, the blue silk tearing against the cold stone.
I roll, clutching my arm, my vision swimming.
Through the haze of pain and red emergency lights, I see Deimos moving like a blur of lethal shadows.
He isn't fighting to defend himself anymore; he is fighting to erase everything that touched me.
Charles stumbles back, his mask slipping as he tries to realign his weapon, but his son is already there. The only guard left standing shoots one last time, right into his shoulder. He doesn’t even flinch, his sole focus is on the man in the mask.
He slams into him with the force of a high-speed collision, sending them both crashing into the mahogany desk.
Deimos has his hands around his father’s throat, pinning him against the desk as the remaining guard hesitates, terrified of the demonic energy radiating from the man they thought they had broken.
"You touched her," Deimos hisses, his voice a low, terrifying promise of extinction.
"You hurt her. Now, I’m going to show you exactly what kind of monster you spent years creating."
The red emergency strobes pulse like a dying heart, staining the white porcelain of the fallen mask in shades of crimson. Deimos has his fingers buried in the fabric of his father’s collar, his muscles coiled to deliver a final, crushing blow.
The rage radiating from him is absolute. A dark, suffocating heat that fills the entire vault.
Suddenly, a high-pitched, piercing alarm shrieks through the vents, vibrating in the very marrow of my bones. The heavy, rhythmic thud of dozens of boots echoes from the corridor. It’s not just Charles’s guards anymore; The High Council’s private hitters are closing in.
"Deimos!"
I scream, clutching my bleeding arm as I struggle to find my footing among the scattered ledgers.
"They're coming! There are too many of them!"
He freezes. His chest heaves, his gaze darting from the masked man, who lies gasping and broken against the mahogany desk, to the jagged hole in the door.
He is trapped between the vengeance he has craved for years and the woman bleeding on the floor.
"Go!"
I yell again, my voice raw.
"We have to move now or neither of us leave this building!"
The hesitation in his eyes flickers and dies, replaced by a sharp, tactical clarity. He lets go of Charles, the older man slumping to the floor like a discarded rag. He leans down, his face inches from his face, his voice a lethal, frozen whisper.
"Enjoy the air while you still have it," Deimos warns.
"Because I am coming back. And next time, there won't be a single place left for you to hide behind."
He doesn't waste another second. He pivots, his movements a blur of controlled power. Before I can even protest, he reaches down and sweeps me off my feet, lifting me bride-style against his chest. His grip is iron, but his touch is surprisingly careful of my wounded arm.
"Hold on to me, Mali," he commands, his voice dropping into that protective growl.
I wrap my good arm around his neck, burying my face into the soot-stained crook of his shoulder as he charges out of the vault.
The corridor is a gauntlet of smoke and shadows.
We almost fly past the first wave of guards, Deimos using his momentum to shoulder-check a man into the stone wall without slowing down.
Bullets whistle past us, sparking off the marble pillars, but he moves with a desperate, superhuman speed. He tilts his head over me, as a human shield, not risking any other bullet touching me. The sapphire silk of my dress flutters behind us like a tattered flag of a war we barely survived.
"I've got you," he mutters against my hair, his heart hammering a frantic, violent rhythm against mine.
"I've got you baby. Just stay with me."