Chapter 36 #2
“Everything you are, everything you have, came from me, Rowan.” His voice dropped lower, rougher, like something was tearing its way through it. “You wouldn’t even be standing here if it wasn’t for me.” And something inside me just fucking snapped.
"Exactly, Zwierek!” It ripped out of me. Tore out of my chest so hard it burned on the way up, left my throat raw as it hit the air between us.
The room went dead still, but inside, it was chaos.
It felt like something had been lit under my skin, like my veins were carrying heat instead of blood, too fast, too much, my pulse slamming so hard I could hear it, this dull rushing in my ears, like something closing in from all sides.
I didn’t look away from him. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
“Exactly,” I said again, but my voice didn’t match what was happening inside of me anymore. It dropped, cold in a way that didn’t feel natural. “That’s exactly what you fucking did.”
I could feel it, that line, and I stepped over it without even thinking about it. “You know what’s funny?” My head tilted, eyes locked on him, watching him properly now, not the version I’d held onto before, not the one I needed him to be, but the real one. “You were never better than me, Zwierek.”
The words came one at a time, heavy enough that I could feel them building.
“I just thought you were.” He didn’t interrupt, but I saw it. The way his eyes narrowed just a fraction, the way something in his jaw tightened, muscles pulling under his skin.
“You were worse, actually,” I continued, my voice steady now.
“Now that I think about it.” The air between us felt thick enough to choke on. “You remember that room?”
I didn’t wait for him to answer.
“Of course you do.” My gaze didn’t break from his.
“Locked away. Every night.” I could see it, not from the memory, but from him. From the way something flickered behind his eyes and tried to bury itself again. “Listening to her.” I let that sit, didn’t feel the need to rush it, if anything, only the need to drag it out.
“Listening to Krystyna cum on my cock, listening to her take what she really wanted.” My chest rose slowly, then fell. “And not you.”
There it was. Ugly and sharp as a blade, but also true.
“You got replaced.” The words landed heavier than anything I’d said so far, and I saw it.
Something cracking beneath the surface of his eyes, something slipping.
The silence that followed, you could feel it.
It pressed into my lungs, into my throat, into the space between us until it felt like breathing through something thick, but I didn’t stop.
“Yeah, I was useful,” I went on. “For what I could give her, for what she wanted from me.”
My head tilted again with the need for him to understand me loud and clear. “But at least I wasn’t replaced.”
That was it, that was the point. The exact second it went too far.
Zwierek moved without warning, one second he was still, the next his hand in the bag.
Metal flashed, a knife came at me fast and with full speed.
For a split second, just one, I wasn’t in that room anymore.
Instead, I was back there, with Bartosz.
The way he had looked the first time he came at me, not as a person but as something that had already decided I was going to break.
That same look, that same violence sitting right under the surface, ready to spill.
And then the second part of that memory, the part where I didn’t fold, where I hit back.
It all came rushing in at once, fast enough to make my vision blur.
It’s strange, really, how much the mind can drag up in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Whole years packed into a fraction of a second, and then I was back.
Zwierek was right in front of me, arm raised, blade catching the light just enough to burn into my eyes, coming straight for my throat, close enough that I could see the way his grip tightened around it.
Knuckles blanching, tendons pulling tight under his skin like wires about to snap.
My body moved before anything lined up properly in my head.
Instead of stepping back, I stepped into him, hard.
My shoulder slammed into his chest just as his arm came down, the knife passing the side of my neck, so close I felt it kiss my skin, a thin, burning line opening up where metal met flesh.
My hand shot up and caught his wrist mid-swing, fingers locking around it so violently I felt something shift under my grip.
He didn’t stop, he never stopped. Zwierek twisted instantly, trying to wrench free, the blade jerking sideways, aiming lower now, aiming for whatever it could reach as I drove my knee up into his stomach.
The impact folded him just enough for me to force his arm upward again, the knife slicing uselessly through the air above us instead of into me.
We crashed into the edge of the table. Wood split under the impact with a dry crack that shot through the room, the whole thing jerking sideways as my ribs slammed into it, and something inside me screamed loud enough to blur my vision for a second, but Zwierek didn’t lose anything. He leaned into it instead, used it.
The knife dropped lower, not aimed anymore, just driven.
I felt it, not a clean stab, but a drag.
Metal catching, biting, ripping across my side like it was trying to open me instead of killing me instantly.
My body reacted before my head did. I snarled, actually fucking snarled, and slammed my forearm into his, knocking the blade off its path just enough that it didn’t sink deeper, but it didn’t miss.
Nothing missed in a fight like this. It would always take something.
My grip shifted, fingers slipping for half a second because of the blood, my blood, slicking everything up, turning control into something unstable, something that could disappear if I wasn’t fast enough.
Too fucking fast, he came again. The knife flashed up and down in the same motion, brutal, messy, aimed for whatever it could take.
I caught his wrist again, but not clean this time.
The blade slammed into my palm as I grabbed him.
A sharp, bright line tore open across my hand, skin splitting under the pressure as I forced his arm away from my throat.
Pain exploded up my arm, white and blinding, but it didn’t fucking matter.
I drove my head forward and smashed it into his face.
The sound was sick, wet, bone meeting bone in a way that didn’t belong.
His head snapped back, blood already spilling from his nose.
His knee came up fast and caught me in the side, right where the blade had torn me open seconds ago.
The air left me in a broken sound, something that wasn’t even a word, and my grip slipped, just slightly, but that’s all it ever takes.
The knife dipped again, lower this time.
I twisted on instinct, felt it sink shallow into my side before ripping free again, heat flooding instantly, too much and way too fast. I saw red. Everywhere. And I snapped.
My hand released his wrist for half a second and then came down on it full force. I hit again, and again, until something gave. A crack, and his fingers faltered.
I tore the knife from his hand so hard it cut deeper into my palm on the way out, metal dragging into flesh, and I didn’t even feel it properly. I just threw it. It hit something, I don’t even know what, as it disappeared out of reach. Gone, but we weren’t.
He came at me again, hands now, teeth bared.
Blood running down his face, mixing with mine, both of us already too far gone to stop now.
We hit the floor. The back of my head slammed into something solid, a dull ringing filling my skull for a second, but he was already on me, already trying to flip to get on top, so I grabbed him.
Anywhere, everywhere. Fingers dug into fabric, into skin, into whatever I could hold onto as we rolled, bodies slamming into the broken table, into the floor, into each other.
My fist hit his jaw once, twice. I felt something under the second hit.
He spat blood in my face and laughed. Low, broken, fucked up, and then his hand was at my throat, squeezing hard.
My airway closed instantly, pressure cutting off everything at once, panic hitting as my lungs tried to pull in air that wasn’t there.
My vision tunneled, edges darkening. No, no.
I drove my knee up between us, slamming it into his ribs again and again until his grip faltered just enough for me to rip his hand off and shove him back.
I surged forward, on top, straddling him, my weight crashing down into him so hard his head bounced against the floor beneath us.
My hand found his throat, fingers digging in, thumbs pressing, cutting off air, cutting off sound.
His hands clawed at mine, nails tearing into my skin, dragging, trying to break it.
I leaned closer, breathing hard, blood dripping everywhere.
There was nothing left in me that wanted to stop.
I leaned all the way down into it, my weight dropping, my shoulders locking as I pressed harder, until I could feel the fight in him change.
At first it was violent. He thrashed under me, back arching, legs kicking, hands tearing at my wrists, dragging skin open, trying to get anything between my grip and his neck.
His nails went in deep. I felt them, but I didn’t react, I just pressed.
His breath hitched, broken sounds that didn’t even make it all the way out, like his body didn’t know how to work anymore without air.
His face, fuck, his face was right there under me, blood smeared across his mouth, his nose, his cheek where I’d hit him, both of us covered in it.
His eyes started to change, and his grip on my wrists changed then.
I leaned closer, much closer than I needed to.