Chapter 30
ANNIE
The arena swam in my vision, faces and lights blurring together as Five and Eight guided me toward the exit.
My legs moved mechanically, but I couldn’t feel them beneath me.
The roar of the crowd was still pounding in my ears and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking, no matter how tightly I clasped them together.
Baron Ash was dead. Decapitated in front of tens of thousands of cheering spectators.
I should have felt something more than twisted relief, but all I could see was Cipher’s violence, the way he’d broken Ash. The blood spreading across the arena floor. The sound of Ash’s head hitting the wall.
“This way,” Five murmured, his hand hovering near my elbow without touching me.
I blinked, suddenly registering our surroundings. We weren’t heading toward the post-match area, but toward the private exit tunnels.
“Where are we going?” My voice sounded strange, too high.
Eight cleared his throat. “Back to base.”
I stopped abruptly. “No. I need to see Cipher.”
The two henchmen exchanged uncomfortable glances.
“That won’t be possible,” Five said, his tone carefully neutral.
“Why not?” The trembling in my hands spread to my voice. “I need to see him.”
“Our instructions were clear,” Eight replied, not meeting my eyes. “We’re to take you directly back to base.”
I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “No, you’re not. And I don’t need an escort to find the post-match area.” I turned toward the corridor that would lead to where Cipher would be, but Five stepped into my path.
“Miss, please—”
“Move,” I said, the word somewhere between a command and a plea.
Five shifted uncomfortably, his hand adjusting his earpiece. “I’ll attempt to ask if you can see him.”
I waited, arms crossed to try to hide how hard my hands were shaking, as Five pressed his finger to his ear.
“Comms are down to Cipher,” he announced after a moment. “I can’t reach him.”
“Then you’d better take me to him.” The memory of Cipher’s bloodied hands flashed through my mind, but I pushed it away.
“No.” Eight stepped forward, further blocking my path. “Our orders were explicit.”
I lifted my chin. “I wasn’t asking.”
When I moved to go around him, Eight reached for my arm. I jerked away.
“If you touch me, we’re going to have a serious problem.”
“Miss—,” Five tried again.
“I’m going to the post-match room,” I said, not giving him a chance to speak. Nothing he said would keep me from Cipher. “You’re welcome to accompany me, but you will not stop me.”
I strode forward and after a moment’s hesitation, I heard the henchmen following, their footsteps falling into reluctant sync with mine.
“Miss,” Five called after me, his voice tinged with resignation, “this is inadvisable.”
I didn’t slow down. “Noted.”
The corridor stretched ahead, leading me toward Cipher and whatever version of him I would find waiting for me. When the post-match area loomed, its access panel glowed an accusatory red. I reached for the handle anyway, giving it a futile tug before stepping back with a frustrated sigh.
Badge access only.
Eight crossed his arms over his chest, his posture radiating smug vindication without saying a word.
“Either of you have a badge?” I asked, the tremor in my voice betraying my fraying nerves.
Neither answered. Five studied the floor, while Eight maintained his statue-like stance.
Our silence was broken as the door opened. I jumped, my heart leaping into my throat as a League physician stepped out, his white coat spattered with tiny flecks of red.
Before the door could close I darted past him, slipping through the narrowing gap.
Eight cursed behind me, the sound cutting off as the door sealed.
Ahead, three League officials huddled near a junction, their faces pinched in annoyance.
The tallest one, a woman with silver-streaked hair, spotted me and stepped forward, palm raised.
“Ma’am, everyone’s been ordered to stay out,” she said, her voice clipped.
I brushed past her. The mask hid my expression, giving me a confidence I didn’t truly feel.
“Ma’am-“
“I heard you,” I said over my shoulder, not breaking stride.
The officials exchanged glances but didn’t pursue me. Maybe they assumed my mask granted me authority, or maybe they simply didn’t want to get involved.
When I reached the recovery room door, I hesitated, my fingers hovering over the access panel.
Cipher hadn’t asked me to come to him after the match.
He hadn’t said anything to me at all since the tunnels.
The fear that he saw me as nothing but tainted curled within me.
What if he had only allowed me in his box because he’d been ordered to?
It didn’t matter. I needed to see him. If he didn’t want me, I needed to hear it from him.
I swallowed hard and pushed the door open.
The room was bathed in low blue light, casting everything in midnight shadows. The metallic tang of blood saturated the air.
Cipher stood with his back to me. Blood spattered the black material of his suit in a constellation of dark droplets. His mask dangled from his fingertips, swinging slightly with the movement of his hand. His hair was damp with sweat, clinging to the nape of his neck.
At the sound of my entrance, he turned. Without his mask, his eyes looked illuminated from within by the blue glow, pupils wide and dark. A muscle twitched in his jaw as he stared at me, his expression unreadable.
My skin prickled beneath his gaze, and I suddenly wondered if I had made a grave mistake coming here.
“You’re not supposed to be here.” His voice was low and rough.
I lifted my chin. “Why not?”
“I didn’t want you to see me like this.” His voice sounded wrong somehow, a little too jagged around the edges.
I was trembling, but I planted my feet and stood my ground as Cipher stared at me.
“Like what?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
Cipher didn’t respond at first. He just stalked toward me, the blue light casting harsh shadows across the planes of his face.
His mask hit the floor with a dull thud.
He stopped inches from me, close enough that I could feel the warmth from his body and smell the scent of blood and sweat clinging to him.
“Like this,” he said finally. “With blood on my hands and death in my eyes. This is what I am, Annie. I just executed a man. Broke him apart piece by fucking piece and took his head off while seventy thousand people cheered. I’m not playing at being bad,” he continued, leaning closer.
“I’m the monster they think I am. I enjoyed killing him.
Every bone I broke felt good. When I took his head, I wanted to laugh. ”
I stared up at him, tracking a smear of crimson across his high cheekbone. A drop of sweat cut a path through the drying blood near his jaw, catching the light.
“I didn’t want you to see what I really am,” he said, his fingers flexing at his sides. “The kind of man who fucks you senseless one moment and rips someone apart the next. Who gets hard thinking about both.”
I should be horrified. Disgusted. That’s what normal people feel when confronted with a man who just decapitated someone and admitted to enjoying it. That’s what Annie Bishop, raised by Havoc to uphold rules and order, should absolutely feel.
But all I felt was relief. Pure, uncomplicated relief that Baron Ash would never wrap his hands around my throat again. He would never threaten me or anyone else.
He was gone, and Cipher had made him that way.
“Say something,” Cipher demanded.
I reached up and touched the mask covering my face, a barrier between who I was supposed to be and who I actually was in this moment.
“I’m glad he’s dead,” I whispered. The confession broke something inside me. The tight control I’d been maintaining since the kidnapping, since I walked into this room, it all shattered.
“I thought he was going to kill you,” I gasped, the air sawing in and out of my lungs. “When he walked out there... when I saw him... I thought I was going to have to watch him tear you apart.”
Cipher stood like a statue carved from violence, watching me unravel.
“I could still feel him,” I choked out, my hands flying up to scrub frantically at my arms, my neck.
“Everywhere. I could feel his hands on me. The weight of him. The smell of him.” I was hyperventilating now, the panic rising.
“It didn’t stop. I would close my eyes and he’d be there, squeezing, hurting—“
I looked up at Cipher, my vision blurring. “And then you were there. And you killed him. You ended it.”
I took a shuddering breath, trying to force the air down, trying to stop the room from spinning.
“You saved me,” I whispered.
But the silence from him was deafening. He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. He just watched me with those terrifying, empty eyes. It was the same silence he’d given me in the tunnels. The same silence he’d held while he carried me to safety.
“Why won’t you say anything? Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“Because if I had opened my mouth,” he said, the words sounding like they were being torn out of his throat, “I wouldn’t have been able to stop screaming.
” He took a step toward me, and for the first time, I saw the tremor running through him.
“I kept my mouth shut because I was holding it back, Annie. All of it. If I had spoken to you in that tunnel, if I had let even a fraction of what was inside me out, you would have seen the monster right then and there. You wouldn’t have had to wait for the arena. ”
He looked down at his hands. They were stained crimson up to the wrists. The blood had begun to dry, cracking along the lines of his knuckles like a second, gruesome skin.