Page 64 of Beautiful Savage
I approach silent, reading the geometry through the gap. Kitchen visible and empty. Coffee gone cold on the counter. Hallway leading toward the living room where voices drift. Four male voices, low and professional. Then Nicolas, his accent thick with pain: "I don't know where she is. I don't know where she is."
They're torturing him for Daphne's location.
She's not here. She's at Miss Macie's teaching the morning class. The operators don't know she's gone. They're breaking her father to find her.
Rage floods through me, hot and familiar.
I cross the kitchen in three strides, boots silent on linoleum. Stop at the hallway threshold, reading the room through the archway in two seconds.
Four operators. Two standing over Nicolas, who's on the floor against the couch beneath Daphne's portrait. The painting of her in the summer garden still hanging untouched abovehim. His left arm bent wrong. Blood from his mouth staining the carpet. One operator has his boot on Nicolas's ribs, applying pressure.
The other two watch the front window, backs to me.
I set the silenced secondary on the floor against the wall. The sound would alert the others. This needs to be quiet.
I move.
The first operator never sees me. My arm slides around his throat, finding the carotid. He struggles for three seconds, hands clawing, then goes limp. Eight seconds total. I lower him silent. The boot lifts from Nicolas's ribs as the second one turns.
He reaches for his weapon. My fist connects with his larynx first. Then his temple. He drops in four seconds, pistol hitting the rug with a thump.
The two at the window spin toward me. The third comes with a knife, movement trained but predictable. I flow inside his range, catch his wrist, redirect and twist until bone snaps. The knife transfers to my hand. I drive it into his throat before he can scream.
Three seconds. He drops, blood spreading dark.
The fourth operator bolts for the front door. I'm faster. I catch him at the wall, the knife finding the gap between vest and collar. He drops against the doorframe, eyes going empty.
Two unconscious but breathing. Two dead.
The portrait watches from the wall. Daphne painted in her summer garden, witness to what I've done in her childhood home.
Nicolas breathes shallow on the floor, watching me with eyes that track despite the pain. Wrist broken, maybe the elbow too. Some ribs broken too, from the bruising going purple under his torn shirt. Blood from cuts, not internal. They wanted him to talk, not die.
I kneel beside him, check his pulse. Steady enough. He'll survive if paramedics arrive fast. His eyes hold mine for a moment. He recognizes me. The man who scared him out of the garden in Miami. The monster who took his daughter, now the monster who saved him.
I stand, reaching for my phone to call 911.
The front door opens.
Daphne stands in the doorway holding a brown paper grocery bag.
She's in the wrap skirt over her leotard, the Miss Macie uniform. Hair in that soft teacher's bun. Her face carries that gentle expression from ninety minutes with eight-year-olds.
Her eyes find me first. Standing in the center of her father's living room with blood on my hands, still holding the knife dripping onto carpet. Then the bodies. Two against the front wall. Two on the rug. Then Nicolas against the couch beneath her portrait, arm twisted, ribs broken, breathing but broken.
She doesn't drop the groceries. Sets them down careful on the side table. Her body knowing how to be gentle even as her mind fragments. I see the jar of honey through the bag's top, the baguette she probably picked for lunch.
She crosses to Nicolas, dropping to her knees without touching him. The skirt pulls taut over her thighs. She doesn't touch him right away. Her hand hovers, fingers shaking, uncertain whether pressure or stillness will hurt him less. I see the calculation in her eyes—where the blood is pooling, which side of his chest is higher, how to reach him without breaking him further.
Nicolas tries to sit up, fails, grimaces. He starts to say something in French—"Ma chérie" maybe—but the pain knots the sound. She hushes him with a gentleness you only learn from loving someone your whole life. Her other hand goes to his face, two fingertips against his temple, thumb tracing his hairline. Bythe time she registers the blood on her hands, her face is already wet with tears.
She doesn't make a sound. Not yet.
Only once she's sure he's breathing, eyes closed but responsive, does she look up at me. There is nothing in her face but exhaustion.
I was prepared for rage, or terror, or that quiet dissociation she used in the beginning when she thought to win me over with politeness.
She presses her palm flat to Nicolas's chest, right over his heart. The movement is slow, as if she's trying to memorize the rhythm in case it stops.
