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A beat of rage pulses through me. Kill him. The words chime inside my head.

As if he can hear them, he lowers himself beside Céleste, knife in hand, and the moment the blade rests at her throat, I shift the gun on him.

“You so much as nick her, and I’ll blow a hole right through your fucking skull.” As I take aim at her son’s forehead, Jude steps in front of him, shielding him.

“I won’t let you hurt my baby boy!” Screaming, she rushes toward me, and on instinct, I shoot a bullet straight into her heart, but not before her errant shot whizzes through the air and hits my arm just above the elbow.

I drop the extra gun I swiped up earlier. As if my nerves have been severed on contact, a cold numbing sensation tingles across my arm, dousing the white-hot burn of the bullet. Ignoring the pain, I keep the gun I swiped from Luc aimed toward the crowd that shifts, as if restless. I skim the barrel over them with the threat to shoot.

Eyes wide, Jude falls to her knees just short of where I stand, gasping like a fish, and grapples for my shot arm. A frown creeps across her face as she pushes the sleeve of my shirt back for the scar on my forearm.

A spray of blood expels from her lips on a wet cough, and she falls backward, still frowning, her gaze seeming to study me. “You,” she rasps, choking on the gurgling fluids in her throat. “The mark on your arm. No, it can’t be you. It can’t be you!” In a seizing fit, she digs her nails into me. “You’re not the one!”

Someone in the crowd moves toward us, and I aim my gun, sweeping it back and forth to keep them away. Jude gags and coughs out her last breath, and I swing my gun back to Adolph, still crouched alongside Céleste, petting the top of her head while smiling and taunting me.

Pain rips through my leg and arm, where the bullets still fester and bleed, while I snatch up Jude’s fallen gun that I tuck into my pants. Gritting my teeth, I gather up the third gun, struggling against the weakness of my arm to keep it steady. Holding one aimed at the crowd, I loosely train the other on Adolph, as much as my arm will bend with the swelling of scorched flesh. Wounded and weakening, I’m losing my foothold on the only escape.

Kicking out the weak beam, as I planned, means giving Adolph a chance to get out with Céleste. Or without her.

Either way, I can’t risk losing sight of him.

With my stronger shooting arm weak, taking him out with a bullet to the skull isn’t going to be so easy. If I miss, all it’ll take is one slip of that blade, and she’ll be dead.

For the first time, my hands shake. Whether with rage, or uncertainty, I can’t discern. This is what I feared more than anything. The moment I’d fucking freeze up. Turn weak. Mindless.

I will not walk out of here without her alive.

Distant words echo in my head. My father’s voice.

“I want you to look for that white rabbit, son. Look all over the yard for him. And when you see him? I want you to shoot. Don’t even think. Just shoot.”

Black, beady eyes crinkle with amusement as Adolph stares back at me. “Don’t be scared, Thierry. Shoot.” His words send a shudder down my spine, their intuition catching me off guard. “Do it.” The amusement in his voice hits my senses like the scratch of steel across bone. “Kill me. You’re well within shooting distance.”

The sudden paralysis sends an alarming rush of adrenaline through me. It’s been years since I last hesitated to kill someone.

“Don’t be afraid. Clear your mind and shoot.” The words of my father morph into the voice of Julio, urging me to commit my first kill. The one that turned me into a monster.

But one fucking slip could end Céleste.

“You get the hell away from my granddaughter!” From the crowd, Jo throws her skull to the ground and rushes toward me.

Using my less steady left hand, I drop her with a bullet to the chest and the stomach. She stumbles backward against the faulty beam, shaking loose dust and an unhealthy creak of the damaged wood. The masculine outcry that follows must belong to Hal, as another masked figure falls beside her, cradling her head in his lap. The beam seems to tremble beneath its overbearing arch.

The crowd beyond shifts, as if restless. My view blurs and widens, dizziness sweeping over me, and I shake my head.

I aim my gun just to the left of them and shoot out the mid-section of the post.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight bullets fired in rapid succession. I empty the cartridge and toss the weapon aside, swapping to the second gun to fire two more shots. The crowd backs further into the room, not seeming to realize what I’ve done until the beam finally buckles, cracking like a bent twig. Screams echo around the sound of wood and rubble collapsing, trapping them behind a mound of fallen debris.

It’s almost incredulous, the way the archway comes down, the walls at either side crumbling along with it, up to the next archway that, somehow, holds steady. Solid. Defying calculations of physics that I can’t begin to understand.

Deux ex fucking machina.

The three other archways keep the chamber from caving in on top of the three of us standing in the middle of it. A cloud of dust floats on the air, and when the last splinter of wood falls to the pile of debris, I notice half of Jo’s legs, from the knees down, sticking out from amid the mess.

“Looks like it’s just the two of us. And her.” Adolph presses his cheek to Céleste’s, his forehead too damn close to hers.

It’s then I catch the twitch of her hand that’s hidden from him, where it rests against the table.