Another sound rises from behind him, sharper this time, and something inside me ignites so suddenly that I don’t think before I act. My hand connects with his face in a clean slap that echoes up the stairwell.
For a heartbeat, he simply stares at me.
Then his hand closes around my arm, and he drives me back against the wall with enough force to jar my teeth, his body crowding mine. His fingers dig into my skin. The scent of sweat and metal clings to him when he grips my jaw and forces my mouth open. I struggle, but it’s no use.
His mouth crashes against mine in a violent, invasive kiss, and the metallic tang that floods my tongue makes bile rise in my throat. I shove at his chest, but he only kisses harder, forcing his body against mine. I whimper, clawing at his arms, but he justlaughs before finally releasing me. He wipes at his lip with the back of his hand.
“I just might buy you instead of Vlad,” he says with casual cruelty. “I’ve been denying myself way too long, baby.”
I swallow. “Fuck you.”
“Oh,” he reaches forward, choking me so tightly I can see the goddamn cosmos. “You will. Soon.”
Before I can respond, he steps back into the basement and locks the door, sealing me out again. This motherfucker. I wince at the taste of him and...blood. Jude’s blood. Alexei's screaming at him in Russian, specifically one of two words he's hammered into his skull over and over. I think it meansobey.Desperately, I pound on the door until my hands ache, shouting for them to stop. I am no longer afraid of what they will do to me, because the greater terror is what they are sculpting out of him, blow by fucking blow. He never deserved this. Jude is good. His heart is good.
And we all fucking destroyed him.
“Fuck!” I scream, punching the door so hard that my knuckles bleed. My head is spinning. I can’t take this. I can’t take not knowing what they’re doing to him in there…
Then, without warning, a sound drifts through that stops me completely.
Laughter. Jude's.
It curls up and seeps into my bones, and every hair on my arms rises. My fists fall away from the door, my breath stuttering in my chest as that dark sound continues. It gets louder, becoming hysterical, weaving into the roaring in my ears as I take a step back.
Oh, fuck.
Chapter thirty-six
EMMA EASTON
The cabin smells like coffee and gun oil. Rafe cleaned his weapons at the table before sunrise with Nico and Kieran. Adela has her laptop open with three external drives plugged in. Green and white lines of code flicker across her screen, reflected in her glasses. “I can’t break it,” she says for the third time, frustration oozing from her.
“You said that,” I reply quietly. “Explain it again for me?”
Rafe leans against the counter, arms crossed, watching her instead of me. He hasn’t blinked in what feels like fifteen minutes.
Adela exhales through her nose. “It’s mirrored. Segmented. Think of it like—” She grimaces. “Like a cathedral of servers.Each wing holds a piece. You burn one wing, the others stay standing.”
Micah shifts beside me, his hand brushing mine in an apparent attempt to calm me. “So there’s no…central vault?” he asks.
“There might be,” Adela says. “But it’s not accessible from the outside. And every entry point I find redirects to a dead channel. It’s intentional.Designedfor interference.”
“Dead-man structure,” Rafe mutters.
I look at him. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” he says calmly, “if something happens to Alexei, something else happens automatically.”
I tighten my grip on my mug. “So if we take Jude or kill Alexei,” I say slowly, “he could release everything. I really wanted to get it erased before we rescued him.”
“He could,” Rafe says. “But sometimes, the perfect rescue doesn’t go according to plan. Trust me, I’d know.” He glances at Nico and Kieran, who both nod in agreement.
Micah’s jaw flexes. “What would we do if he did just publish it all?”
Rafe tilts his head slightly. “Then you deal with the fallout. You need to understand that in order to save Jude’s life...he may have to go to prison.”
“Rafe—”