Chapter 26 #2
“Annie told me about the ultimatum the Syndicate gave you. Don’t do anything idiotic. I’ll handle Valor and the Alliance. You figure out how to fix what you’ve done to Annie.” He straightened his suit jacket.
“But when you can’t and she refuses to have anything else to do with you? When she finally washes her hands of you?” He leaned closer. “I’m going to fucking destroy you.”
He walked away, leaving me alone with the weight of my own fucking stupidity.
I turned back to the room, eyes automatically finding Annie. She stood beside Valor, her posture perfect. Too perfect.
She laughed at something someone said. The sound didn’t match her eyes. Her smile didn’t reach them either.
Every gesture was mechanical. The way she tilted her head when someone spoke. The precise angle of her smile. The careful placement of her hand when Valor touched her lower back.
I cataloged each movement, each expression. That was what I’d done. That was what I’d reduced her to. She was a perfect automaton playing the role of devoted fiancée.
A hospital board member approached Annie and Valor with a PR asshole in tow. They exchanged pleasantries, Annie’s responses coming at precisely timed intervals. Perfect. Hollow.
They ushered the “happy couple” toward a photographer set up near the donor recognition wall. The glass behind them shifted to display the hospital logo in soft gold tones.
I let all the other sounds around me fall away, using my enhanced hearing to focus in on what they were going to demand of her now.
“Just a few more shots for the fundraising materials,” the PR woman said, her smile wide.
Annie’s body was rigid despite her smile.
The photographer adjusted his equipment. “Now, let’s get one with the ring prominently displayed,” he suggested. “And then maybe a kiss to celebrate the engagement?”
The PR woman clapped her hands. “Oh, perfect! The donors would love that.”
The board member nodded enthusiastically. “A kiss from the couple would be wonderful for our campaign materials.”
I wanted to turn away, my stomach twisted into a knot of rage and something worse—something that felt dangerously close to helplessness. I couldn’t fucking watch this. Couldn’t watch his mouth on hers again. Couldn’t watch the violation of Annie when she was so broken she couldn’t even stop it now.
The lights blurred into streaks of color. I needed air. Needed space. Needed to not be Thomas Smith for five fucking minutes before I tore this place apart.
But then I saw it and I couldn’t unsee it.
Something fractured in Annie’s perfect mask. A hairline crack in porcelain. Her smile frozen, her eyes widening slightly.
I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave her.
Annie’s breathing changed. Short, shallow breaths. The beginning of panic.
Enough. Fucking enough.
The Syndicate be damned. I pushed away from the pillar, but Havoc was already there, moving with the preternatural speed of a Trueborn. He stepped between the camera and Annie just as the flash went off.
A small pulse of chaos energy, barely visible as a dark blue ripple, shorted out the camera. The photographer yelped as his equipment crumpled in his hands.
“I believe that’s sufficient for tonight,” Havoc said, his voice pleasant but carrying an undercurrent that made the PR woman take an instinctive step back.
“But we need the kiss shot,” she protested weakly.
“You have what you need.” Havoc’s tone brooked no argument. “Ms. Bishop has fulfilled her obligations for the evening.”
The board member looked between them, confused. “Is there a problem with—”
“No problem at all,” Havoc interrupted smoothly. “Simply a matter of scheduling. Ms. Bishop has other duties to attend to tonight.”
I watched Annie’s face. The careful mask was slipping. Her eyes were too bright. Her breathing too shallow.
She was about to break.
Havoc’s hand landed on her shoulder. “I need you back at the Tower. Now. The car will pick you up out front.”
Annie nodded and turned away, walking toward the exit. Too measured. Too controlled. I knew that walk. It was the walk of someone holding themselves together by sheer fucking willpower.
I calculated the distance to the main entrance. Sixty-three feet. The current crowd density. The increasing rigidity in her posture. The slight tremor in her hands.
She wasn’t going to make it.
She’d break before she reached the valet. Before the car arrived. She’d shatter in front of everyone—her worst fucking nightmare.
I was moving before I finished the thought, cutting diagonally through the crowd. I intercepted her trajectory fifteen feet from where she’d started to unravel.
With a pulse from the Hammer, every light went out. There were too many eyes that would see my interception.
“This way,” I said, my hand finding the small of her back.
She startled, eyes wide and glassy searching for my face in the darkness. “I need—”
“I know. Just a different exit.” I guided her toward a service corridor, using the darkness and the confusion to cover us.
Her breathing was becoming erratic, gasps that would escalate into hyperventilation if I didn’t get her out of there.
The service corridor ended at a set of emergency doors. Locked, with an alarm system that would blare if opened.
I flexed my fingers, sending a silent command to the Hammer. The security system disengaged, circuits rearranging at my command as I had the Hammer turn the lights back on in the main area.
“Almost there,” I murmured, pushing the door open.
The moment we stepped outside, the fog swallowed us whole. It was like walking into a wall of gray nothing, thick enough to muffle the sounds from the gala. The Prism Pavilion’s color-shifting glass was barely visible through the haze, just vague pulses of light bleeding through the mist.
Annie pulled away from me, her hands flexing open and closed, open and closed, like she was trying to grab onto something that wasn’t there.
“Havoc broke code,” she said, her voice hollow. “He broke—” She stumbled over the words, forehead creasing as she tried to remember. “Protocol 17-B? No, that’s not right. 16-C? When a Keeper is on assignment, a Hero can’t interfere without—“
Her breathing accelerated, each inhale shorter than the last.
“Annie.” I reached for her, but she jerked away.
“I can’t feel my fingers.” She stared down at her hands, panic blooming across her face. “They’re right here. I can see them. Why can’t I feel them?” Her voice rose, edging toward hysteria.
Fuck.
“Annie, look at me.” I carefully took her by the shoulders, forcing her to face me. Her eyes were unfocused, pupils dilated with fear.
“I can’t breathe—“ She gasped, her chest heaving with the effort of drawing air. “Something’s wrong with me. I’m—“
She broke. Not gradually, nor piece by piece, but all at once. Her knees buckled and I caught her, pulling her against my chest as her body convulsed with desperate, ragged sobs.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured into her hair, one arm wrapping around her waist, the other cradling the back of her head. “Just breathe. In and out.”
Her fingers clutched at my jacket, twisting the fabric.
“I can’t—I can’t—“ Each word was punctuated by a gasping sob. Her entire body trembled against mine, like something inside her was tearing itself apart.
I pulled Annie closer, feeling her body shake against mine. Her tears soaked through my shirt, hot against my skin. I wasn’t good at this, comfort, tenderness, whatever the fuck you call it. But for her, I tried.
“Breathe with me. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
Her breathing hitched, uneven and ragged. I exaggerated my own breathing, hoping she’d match it. Slowly, her gasps became less frantic.
Then she shoved against my chest, breaking free of my arms. The fog swirled between us, disturbed by her sudden movement.
“Have you fucked her before?” Annie’s voice cut through the mist, sharp and brittle.
I blinked, momentarily thrown. “What?”
“That woman.” Her eyes were red-rimmed but clear. She was present now. “Have you ever fucked her?”
I could lie. Should lie, probably. But I’d lied to Annie enough.
“Yes,” I said flatly.
I watched her face carefully. The panic was receding, replaced by anger. Anger was better than panic. Anger meant she was fighting, not drowning.
“Was she good?” Annie’s eyes narrowed, challenge written across her face.
This was dangerous territory. But if anger was what she needed right now, if rage was the lifeline that would pull her back from the edge, I’d give it to her.
“She was enthusiastic,” I said, deliberately crude. “Liked it rough. Begged for it.”
Annie flinched but didn’t back down. “And you gave it to her?”
“Of course. She cornered me at a museum fundraiser wearing no panties. Told me she’d been thinking about me for months.”
Annie’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t look away. I’d give her all the rage she could handle.
“She begged me to drag her into a private viewing room. Couldn’t even wait for me to lock the door. She was already wet and ready.” I stepped closer. “I bent her over a display case and made her bite down on her designer scarf to keep quiet while I fucked her.”
I was hurting her with these words, and she was drinking them in like poison she couldn’t resist.
“She got on her knees after I was done fucking her. Took me in her mouth like she was starving for it. No finesse, just desperate hunger.”
I was fabricating every word, crafting the most vulgar scenario I could that wouldn’t actually break her.
“She couldn’t take all of me,” I continued. “Gagged herself trying. Mascara running down her face, lipstick smeared all over my cock.”
Annie’s chest rose and fell rapidly. Her fingers clenched at her sides.
I leaned closer, close enough to see the pulse hammering under her skin. “I came down her throat and she swallowed every drop. Thanked me for it afterward.”
Annie’s eyes flashed with hurt, with rage.
“Is that what you wanted to hear?” I asked, my voice deliberately harsh. “How I fucked her mouth until she couldn’t breathe? How she worshiped my cock like it was a fucking religious experience?”