Chapter 34
The world didn't end with a sigh. It ended with a bang.
I was huddled in the farthest corner of the room, behind an overturned metal table I used as a useless barricade. In my hands, I clutched a piece of rusted metal I'd torn from the chair leg—an improvised blade, dull and pathetic, but it was all I had.
Ivanov was near the door, screaming into the radio, his voice rising an octave with each passing second, bordering on hysteria. He knew something was coming. The entire building shook with the sound of distant gunfire, drawing closer like an electrical storm.
Then the universe split in half.
I didn't see the explosion. I felt it. A wave of pressure slammed into my chest, driving the air from my lungs.
The sound was physical—a monumental CRACK that rattled my teeth and turned my hearing into a high-pitched, continuous ringing.
Dust, concrete, and smoke filled the air instantly, creating a white, suffocating fog.
I coughed, covering my mouth with my arm, eyes burning. This is it, I thought, my heart skipping a beat. The ceiling's going to collapse. We're going to be buried alive.
But through the smoke, I saw movement. The steel door was gone. In its place was a black, jagged hole in the wall, framed by twisted, glowing metal.
And in the middle of the hole, a shadow. Enormous. Wide. Dark. It didn't look like a man. It looked like an urban legend made flesh. An entity forged from kevlar, soot, and hatred.
“Kill him!” Ivanov screamed, his voice distorted by the ringing in my ears.
Ivanov didn't run to fight. He ran to me. He leaped over the overturned table and grabbed me by the hair. I screamed, but the sound was lost in the chaos. He yanked me up violently, twisting my arm behind my back. I felt cold steel at my throat. The same knife he'd used to clean his nails.
“Stop!” Ivanov bellowed into the smoke. “One more step and I slit her throat!”
The shadow stopped. The smoke began to clear, revealing the intruder.
Cassian.
But this wasn't the Cassian who'd given me oil pastels.
Not the man in a suit who drank espresso.
This man was covered in blood. A deep gash split his cheek, bleeding freely.
His tactical gear was torn at the shoulder.
He held a black shotgun in one hand, a rifle slung across his body.
He was breathing hard, his chest heaving in spasms of pure adrenaline.
His eyes met mine. They were black holes. No humanity in them. No recognition. Only laser focus—a targeting system locked on. For a second, I was afraid he didn't know who I was. Afraid he'd shoot anything that moved.
“Let her go.” Cassian's voice didn't sound human. It was the sound of stones grinding together. A low, vibrating growl.
“Drop the weapon!” Ivanov pressed the knife into my skin. I felt a sharp sting, and a warm thread of blood trickled down my neck. “Drop it now or she dies!”
I wanted to tell Ivanov he was an idiot. That Cassian Varro never negotiated. That he never dropped a weapon. I looked at Cassian, tried to send a message with my eyes. Do it. Don't hesitate.
Cassian's gaze dropped to the thread of blood on my neck. His face contorted. A nervous tic in his eyelid. The vein in his temple pulsed. He saw my blood. And that tripped the last circuit breaker of control he had.
“Get down, Solaia,” he whispered.
I didn't wait. I didn't think. The command hit my body before my brain caught up.
I let my dead weight drop, bent my knees, pulled myself down, forcing Ivanov to support my sudden weight.
Caught off guard, he lost his balance for a fraction of a second.
The knife shifted millimeters away from my throat.
It was enough.
BOOM.
Cassian's shotgun roared. I didn't see it hit. I only felt the impact. Something hot and wet splattered across my face and in my hair. Ivanov's grip on my hair released instantly. His body was thrown backward as if kicked by a horse, slamming into the concrete wall with a dull, wet thud.
I fell to the floor, crawling away, wiping the viscous mess from my eyes. I looked back. Ivanov was sitting against the wall. Or what was left of him. Where his shoulder and part of his neck should have been, there was only red ruin. He was dead before he knew he'd lost.
But it wasn't over. Cassian advanced. He dropped the shotgun—it clattered to the floor—and drew a pistol from the holster on his thigh. He didn't run to me. He walked to Ivanov's body.
“No…” I whispered, seeing his expression.
Cassian stood over the corpse. He wasn't satisfied. Death wasn't enough. That man had touched me. That man had made me bleed. Cassian aimed the pistol at Ivanov's ruined face. BANG. BANG. BANG.
He fired with mechanical, brutal rhythm. The dead body jerked with each impact. Cassian was screaming something, but they weren't words. They were guttural sounds of fury. He kicked the body. Then stomped on it. He was destroying the threat down to a molecular level.
It was terrifying. I was seeing the monster without the mask. The raw, naked violence he'd kept hidden from me for months. He would keep going until he ran out of ammunition. Until there was nothing left of Ivanov and nothing left of himself.
I needed to bring him back. If I didn't stop him, he'd never return from that dark place.
I stood up, my legs trembling, slipping on the filthy floor. “Cassian!” I shouted. My voice came out hoarse and weak.
He didn't hear me. He cocked the gun again, even though the slide was locked back—empty. Click. Click. He kept pulling the trigger.
I ran to him. I ignored the blood on the floor. I ignored the smell of death. I grabbed his arm. The arm holding the gun. The muscle was hard as stone, thrumming with tension.
“Cassian! Stop! It's me!”
He spun toward me. The movement was so fast I recoiled. The empty gun pointed at my chest for a split second before he registered it was me. His eyes were glazed, wild. He was breathing like a dying animal, his chest heaving in violent spasms. Sweat and blood ran down his face, mingling.
“Caz…” I used the nickname I'd never spoken aloud. “It's over. He's dead. Look at me.”
I touched his face with both hands. My dirty, trembling hands. “It's me. Solaia.”
He blinked. Once. Twice. Focus started coming back. The absolute black of his pupils receded, revealing the stormy gray of his irises. He looked at the gun in his hand. Then at the body on the floor. And finally, at me.
He saw the blood on my neck. The blood on my face—not mine. The cut on my lip. The gun slipped from his hand, clattering against the concrete.
“Solaia…” His voice broke. It was a sound of such deep pain that it made me cry.
He fell to his knees in front of me. Not like a defeated man, but like a man who had found his religion. His hands—those lethal hands covered in gunpowder and death—hovered over my body, trembling violently. He wanted to touch me but was afraid I would break. Afraid he'd taint me.
“You're hurt…” he stammered, his eyes sweeping every inch of me, checking my limbs, searching for bullet holes. “The blood… so much blood…”
“It's not mine,” I assured him, dropping to my knees beside him so we were at the same height. “Most of it isn't mine. I'm fine. Cassian, I'm whole.”
He let out a dry sob. He pulled me to him. The collision of our bodies was desperate. He held me with a force that should have hurt, but it only felt like the only real thing in the world. He buried his face in my neck, right where the knife had cut, and inhaled shakily, choking on my scent.
“I thought I'd lost you,” he said against my skin, his voice muffled and wet. “I saw the video… the blood… I thought I wouldn't make it in time.”
“You made it,” I whispered, gripping his shoulders, feeling the hard tactical vest beneath my fingers. “You always make it.”
He pulled back slightly, cupping my face in both hands, smearing my cheeks with the blood from his gloves.
He didn't care. I didn't care. He looked into my eyes, and the vulnerability there was devastating.
The Great Consigliere, the Ice, was crying.
Silent tears tracing clean paths through the dirt on his face.
“I would kill the entire world,” he said, with the gravity of a death vow. “I would burn everything to ashes if they had taken you from me.”
“I know,” I replied. And I did. I'd seen the massacre in the corridor.
“Forgive me,” he begged. “Forgive me for not being there. Forgive me for this.”
“There's nothing to forgive. You came.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. Our breaths mingled, fast and hot. “I love you,” he said. The words came out fast, raw, unfiltered. It wasn't an “I love you” from a romantic movie. It was an “I love you” born of survival. A confession of absolute dependence.
My heart stopped for a second, then started beating twice as fast. “I know,” I repeated, smiling through the tears. “I love you too, you paranoid idiot.”
He closed his eyes, as if my words were the absolution he didn't deserve. He kissed me. A kiss salty with tears and blood, desperate, reaffirming that we were alive, that we were together, that the nightmare was over.
When he pulled away, he lifted me into his arms. I was exhausted.
The adrenaline had evaporated, leaving my body heavy and aching.
I buried my head in his shoulder, closing my eyes.
The smell of cordite still lingered, but beneath it, Cassian's scent—sweat and sandalwood—was the only thing that mattered.
He walked out of the room, stepping over Ivanov's body without looking down. Outside, in the corridor, I heard voices. Running footsteps. “Varro! Area clear!” A mercenary's voice.
Cassian didn't stop. He kept walking, carrying me as if I were the most precious and fragile thing in the universe. “We're going home,” he whispered into my hair.
I didn't respond. I was already half asleep, safe in my monster's arms, knowing that as long as he was the one holding the gun, nothing in the world could touch me.