Page 94 of Yours on the Canvas

“Clear left!” CJ shouted over the ringing in our ears.

From the kitchen, Ray comes barreling out with a pistol in hand, his eyes wild and desperate.

He fires blindly, a bullet catching Deck across the shoulder. Deck doesn’t even flinch, returning fire and puts a round straight through Ray’s right knee. Ray screams, dropping his weapon and collapsing into a heap on the floor, clutching his shattered leg as blood pooled beneath him.

He walks up to Ray gun trained on his chest, and kicks the pistol away leaving Ray completely unarmed, and completely at my mercy. Deck turns, looking at me, a small, predatory smile touches his lips, “He’s all yours, rook.”

I step up to Ray slowly. Calculated.

I have now become the predator, and this sniveling little rat is my fucking prey.

I take my time watching him writhe in pain from Deck’s bullet, Ray glaring at me like he’s still got a chance.

“Where is he?” I snarl, reaching out so quickly he flinches from me. I grab Ray by the collar of his shirt and haul him off the floor.

“Go to hell,” Ray spits, blood dripping from his chin.

A sudden movement by the back patio doors catches my eye, and I watch Peter Sale bolt through the glass sliding door into the backyard, sprinting toward the tree line in a desperate bid to save his own skin.

“Callan! Take him!” I roared.

Callan doesn’t hesitate. He vaults over the ruined living room sofa, burst through the shattered glass door, and pursues Sale into the wet grass. Two sharp cracks echo through the pines outside, and then silence falls.

A moment later, Callan stepped back inside, wiping his wet face with the back of his hand.

“He’s done,” Callan said flatly, moving to stand behind me.

“I won’t ask again, Raymond.”

My hand moves instantly to his neck, my fingers locking around his throat. I squeeze until I felt Ray starts to struggle for air, his face flushing dark and his eyes bulging as I maintain my grip.

He doesn’t speak, still clinging to that pathetic arrogance, thinking he could talk his way out of this, thinking he still has the control.

But I can see the sudden panic flickering behind his eyes, the cold realisation that these were his final moments on earth. And I was going to be the one to strip it away, because his life had belonged to me the second he touched my dove.

He can’t speak, but I watched as his eyes darted slightly toward the dark hallway behind him.

A cold, smug smile touches my lips just before I let go, dropping Ray back onto the floor like a piece of trash, my chest heaving with adrenaline.

Ray groans against the floor, clutching his shattered, bleeding knee. He spits a mixture of dark blood and saliva onto the wood, a twisted, wretched grin stretching across his pale face as he looks up at me.

He thinks he can still bite.

He thinks he can still sink his teeth into the one thing keeping my chest from caving in.

“You think you won?” Ray wheezes, a wet, rattling laugh bubbling up through the blood in his throat. He forces his chin up, his eyes locking onto mine with a venomous, triumphant gleam. “You think you’re walking out of here with your precious boy? Look at what’s left of him, hacker. You think he’s ever going to be okay again? I made damn sure he wouldn’t be. You can stitch his skin back together, but his mind? His soul? He’s hollowed out. He will never be your sweet little dove again. He’s damaged goods, Silas. And every time you look at him, you’ll remember who broke him first.”

I don’t flinch. I don’t let his venom touch a single nerve. Instead, a cold, lethal calm settled over me, sharper than any blade.

“You don’t know a damn thing about him,” I whisper, my voice slicing through the room like ice. “You think you’ve broken him, but all you’ve done is show him how hard he can fight back. He’s stronger than you could ever comprehend, Ray. He survived your hell because he’s built of something you’ll never understand, and I love him enough to drag him back through the fire and hold every single piece of him together until he heals.”

I don’t blink or raise my voice as I speak.

The cold metal of my sidearm felt heavy and steady in my palm, the gold ring on my pinkie finger branding my skin as it taps out a short beat against the gun grip.

Every word he spoke about my boy was a nail driving into his own coffin, a reminder of the suffocating hell he had put my dove through.

“You spent your whole life trying to break something you never had the right to touch,” I growl, stepping closer until the barrel of my gun rested right between his eyes. “You taught him how to survive the dark, Ray. But you forgot one simple rule.”