Page 80 of Break For Me
I lower the gun.
The weight of it in my hand is unbearable. The failure is a physical thing, a sickness in my gut.
Dmitri grabs Adrian's arm. He pulls him back toward the kitchen, keeping Elena between them.
They disappear through the doorway.
I hear the kitchen slider open. I hear footsteps on the patio. I hear a car door open and close.
I stand there, listening, the Glock hanging heavy in my hand.
Elena is on the floor, sobbing.
I walk to her. I crouch down. My broken rib screams in protest.
"He's gone," she cries. "He took him."
"I know," I say.
I look at the open kitchen door. I look at the two bodies on the floor. I look at the apple on the counter, half-eaten, the peel curling off the granite edge.
I look at my own shaking hand.
He's gone.
And it's my fault.
Chapter Twenty-Three
ADRIAN
I walktoward the man who owned me.
The hallway is twelve feet long. The distance between Rocco’s gun and Dmitri’s knife is measured in hardwood planks—six, seven, eight. Each one passes under my feet with the slow, counted precision of a man walking into surgery.
My heart rate is elevated. My breathing is controlled. My hands are at my sides, palms open, palms open, the universal signal: not a threat.
I am a threat. Dmitri doesn't know this yet.
"Stop."
Dmitri’s voice when I’m four feet away. The knife is at Elena’s throat. My sister’s eyes are locked on my face—wide, wet, the pupils blown. She’s hyperventilating. The intercostal muscles in her neck are firing visibly. I want to tell her to slow her breathing. I want to tell her the airway compression isn’t sufficient to cause asphyxiation. I want to tell her she will survive this because I will not allow the alternative.
I don’t tell her anything. I stop.
"Hands where I can see them."
My hands are where he can see them. He’s performing a protocol. Ritualized steps. Protocol. He manages assets. Heprocesses bodies. He has done this exchange enough times that the choreography is automatic. The protocol is his strength. It is also his weakness. Protocols are patterns, and patterns have gaps.
"Release her," I say. "I’m here. I’m compliant. The exchange is me for her. Complete the exchange."
Dmitri studies me. The pale eyes measure the distance, the angle, the sincerity. He sees what he expects to see: the Ice Queen. The compliant asset. He sees the performance because the performance is what I’ve given him for two years. The consistency of it is the camouflage that hides everything I’ve become since.
He shoves Elena forward. She stumbles and Rocco catches her with his right arm. He pulls her behind him. His body becomes the wall between my sister and the knife. Elena presses against his back and grabs his shirt and holds on with the desperate grip of a woman who has just learned that the world contains men like Dmitri.
Dmitri’s hand closes on the back of my neck.
The grip is practiced. His thumb on my right carotid. His fingers curled around the left side of my cervical spine. The knife transfers from Elena’s throat to mine in a single motion. The blade is cold against my skin—the flat resting on my sternocleidomastoid, the edge angled toward the carotid triangle. He knows the anatomy. He’s held enough throats to know where the blood is.
