Page 82 of Break For Me
Two shots. One-handed. From the hallway doorway to the kitchen—fifteen feet. Through the gap my rolling body created. Rocco fired the moment the path was clear. The shots were not a coin flip. They were precise. They were surgical.
I lie on the floor and look at the dead man who owned me. My breathing does not slow. My heart does not settle. My hands—pressed flat against the hardwood, my fingertips white from the pressure—are shaking. Both of them. The fine, high-frequency tremor that signals systemic adrenaline dump.
I hit him. I drove my elbow into his radial nerve and my thumb into his anatomical snuffbox and my forehead into his face. Each strike was a medical procedure performed with clinical intent on a living patient. The patient is dead. The procedures I performed were the instruments that made his death possible.
I am not just a healer. The line I’ve been standing behind—the line between the scalpel and the weapon, between the man who fixes and the man who breaks—didn't shift. It dissolved. The same knowledge that lets me repair a nerve lets me destroy one. The same hands that suture skin can find the pressure points that make a man scream. The anatomy is neutral. The application is a choice.
I chose violence. I chose it with precision and intent and the same clinical focus I bring to surgery. A man is dead because I know where the radial nerve crosses the lateral epicondyle.
I sit up. The kitchen spins. I press my hand to the floor and wait for the rotation to stop.
Rocco is in the doorway. The Glock hangs at his side—his right hand, the grip steady. He’s looking at me. Not at Dmitri. Not at the body. At me.
Behind him, Elena. Rocco has positioned her in the hallway, his body blocking her view. She’s pressed against the wall, her arms wrapped around herself. Her face is buried in her hands. She’s sobbing—deep, ragged. But she’s alive. Her carotid is intact. Her airway is patent. She is breathing and she is alive.
I stand. I cross the kitchen. I step over Dmitri’s legs. The proximity of his body to mine registers as a clinical fact: the body is an obstacle, the body is inert. The body was a man who ate apples with a folding knife and controlled my life through my sister’s safety. He is dead. I helped kill him. My hands are shaking. My hands need to stop shaking.
I reach Rocco. I put my hands on his chest—over the plate carrier, over the dent where the round hit, over the broken rib. I press. He winces. The intercostal muscles on his left side are rigid, splinting involuntarily.
"How bad?" I ask.
"Manageable."
"That’s not an answer. Rate it."
"Seven." He pauses. "Eight when I breathe."
Eight when he breathes. He’s been functioning at eight for the duration of the fight. Through the drive, through the breach and the plate-carrier impact and the two perfect shots he fired. He’s been functioning at eight because the alternative was nonfunctional. And nonfunctional meant Elena dead and me gone.
I turn to Elena. She lifts her face and sees me. The sobbing intensifies—not with fear but with relief. I pull her against me. I hold her. My arms around her narrow shoulders, her face against my chest. Her tears soak through the shirt.
"I’m here," I say. "It’s over."
It’s not over. The house is compromised. Dmitri’s driver is still in the sedan or has fled. The two men Rocco put down in the hallway are unconscious, not dead. They will wake up. The security detail will return to find a body in their kitchen and bullet holes in their walls. We cannot be here when any of those variables activate.
"We need to leave," I say. I hold Elena at arm’s length. I look at her face. Her eyes are red, swollen. She looks like me—the same jaw, the same cheekbones. The family architecture visible beneath the fear. "Can you walk?"
She nods.
I look at Rocco. He’s leaning against the doorframe. His right hand is pressed against his left ribs. His color is wrong—pale beneath the stubble and the bruises.
"Can you walk?" I ask him.
He pushes off the doorframe. He stands straight. The effort costs him. I can see it in the tightening of his jaw, the vein in his temple. But he stands.
"I can walk."
I take Elena’s hand. I put my other hand on Rocco’s arm—the right arm, the good arm. My fingers close around his bicep.
The three of us move through the hallway. Past the unconscious men. Past the staircase. Through the front door and onto the porch with the wreath.
The street is quiet. The black sedan is still there. The driver’s door is closed now—the driver saw or heard and chose to run. The SUV is two houses down. The engine will start. The road will hold us.
I guide Elena to the SUV. I open the back door. She climbs in. I turn to Rocco. He’s standing on the porch, his hand on his ribs, his face tilted up toward the winter sky. His breath fogs in the cold air.
He is the man who chose me and the choice is permanent.
"Get in the car," I say.
