"I’m choosing myself," I spit, my hand on the edge of the door.
"And I'm choosing a world where you don't exist.”
I slam the door in his face.
I hear him stand there for a long beat. The silence on the other side of the wood is more terrifying than his words. I lean my forehead against the door, listening to my own ragged breathing, waiting for him to kick it in. Instead, I hear his footsteps slowly move away down the hall.
I slide down the back of the door, my knees hitting the floor with a dull thud, and I let out a sound I don't recognize, a high-pitched wail.
I hate him. I hate him for the way he walked into my home like he owned the air I breathe. But most of all, I hate myself. Because even as I scream at him to leave, a part of me, some sick, broken part, wants to reach out and pull him back.
I had felt something for him. In that bed, I thought I saw a man. Not a killer, just a man who had been hurt so deeply that he forgot how to exist without a weapon in his hand.
"God, I'm so stupid," I sob, clutching my hair.
"I'm so pathetic."
The apartment is a graveyard of my sanity. Papers are scattered everywhere, the broken vase lies like diamonds on the floor, and the silence, that horrific, heavy silence, is back.
But then, through the haze of the breakdown, a cold clarity begins to bleed in. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, my breath still hitching.
If Deimos is angry, he is dangerous. If he feels rejected, he is lethal. He called Lucy a liability many times. He called her a shadow that needs to be erased. I can't wait for him to show mercy. Mercy isn't in his design.
I stand up, my legs shaky, and walk over to the sink. I splash cold water on my face, staring at the shattered woman in the mirror. My professional mask is gone, but beneath it is something sharper. Something desperate.
Think, Madeline. Think like he does. I need to stop him for good.
I take a deep, shaky breath, my eyes narrowing. I have to stop reacting and start planning. I have to find the one flaw in his perfect geometry, the one thing ‘The Arbiter’ always overlooks.
He thinks he owns me. He thinks I’m just another piece on his board. He thinks…
Then it hits me.Owns.Obsession. That's the only power I have over him.
"You want a masterpiece, Deimos?"
I whisper to the empty room, my voice finally steadying.
"I'll give you one. But it won't be the one you're expecting."
I don't have a weapon, and I don't have a team. But I have the one thing Deimos doesn't think I possess anymore: a mind that is no longer afraid to break.
CHAPTER 25 - Deimos
My hands, the hands that design empires and dismantle lives, are shaking. It isn't a tremor of fear. It is the vibration of a machine running at a lethal RPM, ready to explode.
I watch the replay of the cafe on a loop. I didn't kidnap Lucy there. I wasn't even in that black car. I was across the street, a ghost among the commuters, watching the woman who still owns my heart and a girl who shares my blood pretend that I don’t exist.
I see Madeline’s desperation. I see Lucy’s arrogant defiance, that chin tilt, that fire in her eyes. It’s my fire. It’s Charles’s fire. And it makes me sick.
Lucy doesn't answer Madeline’s calls because she is done with her. She wants the source. She is hunting for Charles, looking for a father in a graveyard of secrets. She is a variable I can no longer calculate. She is a person that threatens the very foundation of my isolation.
The breakdown hits me in the dead of night. I smash a glass against the concrete wall, watching the shards fly. I am the Architect, and my masterpiece is being defiled by a girl who shares my DNA and a woman who thinks she can cast me out like a common demon.
"You chose her, Madeline," I whisper in the dark.
"Now you get to watch the price of that choice."
I took her at 2:00 AM. It was effortless. Lucy was brave, but she was untrained. I grabbed her before she even reached her front door, a needle to the neck, and the world went dark for the sister I never wanted. When she woke up, she was already in my basement. My real basement.
