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"You lie," Boris bellows. "And you think you can come here and shit over everything I have built? Not on your fucking life."

"The Suit have grown too big. Too powerful," Leo snarls through a torn, bloodied lip. "We don't need them anymore. Maybe back then, we were all too stupid to make this work, and maybe we needed a little hand-holding, but not anymore! It's about time those who deserve to be on top are finally on top!"

"Are you one of those? You think you are more deserving or more hardworking than anyone else here?" Bradley remains alarmingly calm. "And yet you use an innocent child as a bargaining chip, a child born because you saw fit to rape a child. Tell me, what power does a man like that deserve?"

"Rape?" Leo laughs and chokes on the blood in his mouth. "Children? Do you see?" He turns to the crowd. "They will lie and spin everything and anything and they think you are all dumb enough to eat it up! Enough of this! We shouldn't live under tyrants anymore!"

The crowd is eerily silent, but I barely notice as I reach the railing and Illyana fills my mind. My child. My poor baby. I've no idea where she is or how she is, and I pray the agony I'm in saves her from her own.

"I was fifteen," I croak out, finally finding my voice.

Gasps of horror ripple around the room as I stand there, soaked in sweat and utterly disheveled, leaning against the railing for strength. Leo and Boris spin around to face me and Bradley starts moving up the stairs.

I glare at Leo. "I was fifteen when you raped me. I was sixteen when you ripped my baby from my arms and stole her away from me. I was sixteen when you told the world I was a crazy monster of a woman who abandoned her child in the trash and didn't deserve anyone t-to help me or believe me. I thought I was crazy. How could something so cruel happen to me and no one cared?"

"You listen here," Leo snarls dangerously low.

"And th-then you had to come crawling back because my baby got sick and you needed my help to save her. You needed my kidney. And you took it!" I lift my hand from the incision on my abdomen and droplets of blood leak out from one torn stitch. "You've t-taken everything from me and the only people who ever helped me, who ever cared for me, were the Suit. I w-wasn't part of this world and Cassian helped me. He saved my life. He tried to save my daughter. So how d-dare you…" I gasp as my chest constricts. "How d-dare you stand there and act like the Suit are anything o-other than saviors! All you care about is drugs. All you care about are your stupid drugs and your stupid money and now the m-man I love is dying on the floor and you're standing there spreading⁠—”

I blink and suddenly, I'm in strong, warm arms with Bradley's face above me.

"It's okay," he says gently. "It's okay, Sabina."

"What?" I don't remember him reaching me. I don't even remember falling, but the hole is behind Bradley's head so I must be on the ground.

"Everyone here is a friend," Bradley assures me. "I just wanted them to dig their grave a little deeper. You're okay. We're getting you help. Valentina has Illyana. You're okay."

"Illyana…" I croak, and the heat in my abdomen flares up tenfold. "It hurts…"

"I know. Help is coming…" Bradley's lips keep moving, but I can't hear what he's saying. My world darkens at the edges and it spreads across my vision like soft, rolling clouds.

I try to fight it as another voice cuts through my thoughts from far away.

"He's not breathing!" the voice yells. "I'm starting CPR!"

Oh, no.

Bradley looks away, and my last glimpse of reality before darkness consumes me is a flash of worry carving across Bradley's face.

Cassian…

35

SABINA

"Cass!”

I bolt upright, his name heavy on my lips and my heart pounding like a booming drum in my ears.

He needed CPR.

I remember that.

The sudden jolt awake sends a dull throb through my abdomen and I double over, clutching the blankets closer to me as the throb spreads and pulses in time to my rapid heartbeat.

This isn't the same room I dragged myself from. The blankets are softer, the light is warming, and the scent in the air isn't strictly medicinal. Even the light peach on the walls is easier to stomach than the overtly pristine walls of that… wherever the hell I ended up.

"Careful," murmurs a voice next to me, and a flinch jolts through my body as I lift my head and find an unfamiliar face.