31. The Tasting of Blood
The Tasting of Blood
The hallway stretched before me, dark and cold and silent except for the sound of Nathan's ragged breathing behind me.
I walked slowly, deliberately, my bare feet leaving bloody footprints on the linoleum, my ruined dress stiff with the combined blood of two brothers.
The Institute's walls seemed to press in around me, watching, waiting, bearing witness to the final act of a tragedy that had been decades in the making.
I made it six steps before I heard him move.
The sound was subtle—the scrape of fabric against concrete, the sharp intake of breath that preceded violence.
I'd been trained to hear these things. Nathan had drilled me on auditory cues until I could identify the sound of a weapon being drawn in complete darkness.
Nathan had reinforced the training with months of missions, months of hunting, months of learning to anticipate violence before it arrived.
So when he lunged, I was ready.
He came at me with a knife—a backup piece, probably, something he'd hidden in an ankle holster or a waistband sheath.
The blade caught the moonlight filtering through the shattered windows, a flash of silver in the darkness.
He was wounded, bleeding, his movements slow and clumsy compared to the precise killer I'd hunted beside for months.
But desperation gave him strength, and hatred gave him focus, and he came at me with the fury of a man who'd just watched everything he'd built crumble to ash.
I sidestepped the thrust with a motion Nathan had drilled into me during our first month of training.
My hand caught his wrist, twisted, applied pressure to the nerve cluster at the base of his thumb.
The knife clattered to the floor, and Nathan cried out—a sound of pain and frustration and the dawning horror of a predator who'd just realized he'd become prey.
"You trained me too well," I said, my voice calm and steady. "Every move you're about to make, I've already anticipated. Every counter you're about to try, I've already prepared for. You made me into a weapon, Nathan. Did you really think I'd never turn against you?"
He swung at me with his free hand, a desperate haymaker that would have connected if I'd been the woman he thought I was.
But I wasn't her anymore. I ducked under the blow and swept his legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor.
The impact drove the air from his lungs, and his head cracked against the linoleum with a sound that echoed through the empty halls.
I was on him before he could recover. My knees pinned his arms to the floor, my weight settling onto his chest, the ceramic knife pressed against his throat.
He stared up at me with wild eyes, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps, his blood soaking through the random sheet he had shoved under his shirt, a bandage I knew was inadequate to stop the bleeding.
"You're going to kill me," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes." I adjusted the knife, feeling his pulse hammer against the blade. "But not yet. Not until I'm ready."
"Bunny—"
"Don't." The word came out sharper than I intended. "Don't call me that. Don't pretend this is anything other than what it is."
"What is it, then?" His voice cracked. "Revenge? Justice? What are you going to tell yourself when this is over?"
"I'm going to tell myself the truth." I leaned closer, my face inches from his.
"That I loved you once. That I believed in you.
That you took that love and that belief and twisted them into chains you wrapped around my throat.
" My grip on the knife steadied. "That you made me feel safe while you were poisoning me.
That you made me feel cherished while you were cataloguing me.
That you made me feel like your partner while you were treating me like inventory. "
"I did love you." Tears were streaming down his face now, cutting tracks through the blood and the dirt. "I know you don't believe me. I know you can't believe me. But I did. I do. Even now, even after everything—"
"Even now?" I laughed, and the sound was hollow. "Even now, when you just tried to stab me in the back? Even now, when you're lying on the floor bleeding out from a wound I gave you? That's love?"
"It's all I know how to give." His voice broke completely.
"It's all I was ever taught. My father—the family—the business—love was always about ownership.
About control. About keeping what was yours close and destroying anything that threatened it.
" He swallowed hard, the motion pressing his throat against the blade.
"I wanted to be different. I wanted to be better. But I didn't know how."
I looked down at him, this man who'd saved me and destroyed me in the same breath.
This man who'd held me through nightmares and whispered promises against my skin and slowly, methodically, poisoned me into submission.
This man who was crying now, real tears, real grief, real terror.
This man who'd never learned to love without owning.
"I believe you," I said quietly. "I believe that you loved me in the only way you knew how.
But that doesn't excuse what you did. It doesn't bring Monika back.
It doesn't free the women you sold. It doesn't undo the years of conditioning and chemicals and lies.
" I adjusted my grip on the knife. "Love isn't enough. It was never enough."
"Then what is?"
"Choice." I leaned down and pressed my lips to his.
The kiss was deep and passionate and absolutely devastating.
I tasted blood on his mouth—his own blood, from the wound in his side, from the cracked lip Gabriel had given him before he died.
I tasted salt from his tears. I tasted the ghost of every kiss we'd ever shared, every moment of tenderness that had been real for me even when it was manipulation for him.
This was goodbye. This was closure. This was the final, brutal severing of every bond that had ever connected us.
I pulled back, and his blood was on my lips.
"That was for every time you made me feel safe," I whispered.
"Every time you held me through a nightmare.
Every time you told me I was healing. Every time you made me believe I was choosing you, when really I was just following a script you'd written before we ever met.
" I traced the blade along his jaw, leaving a thin line of red.
"You took the thing Gabriel broke and tried to break it further.
But you failed. I'm not broken anymore. I'm not yours anymore. I'm not anyone's anymore."
"Bunny—"
"I'm going to let you live." I sat back, the knife still in my hand, my weight still pinning him to the floor.
"Not because you deserve it. Not because I forgive you.
Because I want you to know what it feels like to lose everything.
Your network is ash. Your fortune is seized.
Your brother is dead. And the woman you tried to own is walking away, and there's nothing you can do to stop her. "
His face crumpled. "Please—"
"Goodbye, Nathan." I stood up, the knife still ready in my hand, my eyes never leaving his face.
"I hope you survive this. I hope you live a long, long life.
And I hope every day of that life, you remember what you did to me.
What you did to Monika. What you did to all of them.
" I took a step back, then another. "I hope it haunts you when you realize that you lost."