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I tried to dodge, but she had my arm clamped too tightly in those hands that were more powerful than they looked. With an eerie chill in her eyes, she rammed her knee into my stomach hard enough that I buckled. Pain seared through my abdomen.
I regained my balance just enough to shield my face from her next blow, but my elbow throbbed from the impact, which radiated up my arm to wake up my bullet wound too. Gia swung both her fists at my side and knocked me right to the ground, my hip and shoulder smacking into the asphalt.
Scrambling to focus, I rolled away from her. I had to get distance, had to get into a position where I had room to dodge—
She came after me with the force of a Mac truck, her fists flailing. One glanced off my throat, making me choke and sputter. I snatched the paring knife out of my pocket, but an instant later she was smacking it away.
“You couldn’t just let her die?” she screamed. “You didn’t even like her! You just had to act like you’re so much better than me.”
I lashed out at her and managed to land one good kick to her calf, but then she snatched at my hair and yanked me up, my scalp crying out in pain. She clocked me in the temple and the ribs before I managed to twist around, punching her in the jaw as I did.
Gia only recoiled for a second. She whipped her leg around as I tried to retreat and toppled me onto my hands and knees this time.
Springing at me, she shoved me onto my back and slammed her forearm against my throat. My airway constricted, cutting off my breath. Her other hand grasped my jaw, her muscles flexing, ready to snap my neck. “I didn’t get to kill her, so you’ll have to do. Any last words, bitch?”
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t even gasp. One thought swam up through my desperate mind, the first tenet of parkour that the videos I’d watched had drilled into my brain: Make use of your environment to pursue your goal every way you can.
I couldn’t reach anything in my environment except Gia, but why couldn’t I use her?
Instead of resisting her clutching hand, I jerked my head to the side in the direction she’d been braced to twist. Her hand flew aside at the unexpected motion, and I jabbed my elbow at just the right angle to fling her arm back into her own face.
Her grip on my throat loosened for an instant, but that was all I needed. I heaved up, and we tumbled over, rolling several feet while we grappled with each other. I spotted the curb and braced my foot against it to flip myself onto her solidly enough to pin her in place.
She was already squirming with enough strength to break my hold, but as her wrist slipped from my grasp, another figure leapt in beside us. Wylder stared down at Gia, crouching with his gun pointed straight at her head.
“That’s enough,” he said in a cold, fathomless voice.
Gia froze for only an instant. Then she let out a shriek more animal than human. With a renewed surge of strength, she yanked her other arm free, one hand clawing at Wylder, the other closing around a chunk of concrete that’d crumbled off the sidewalk. She thrust it toward my head.
In that instant, I could already feel how my skull would crack with the impact. I recoiled, not sure yet if my reflexes would be fast enough, and in the same moment abangrattled my eardrums.
The side of Gia’s head burst open with a splatter of blood and brains that flecked my body from head to torso. The life went out of her eyes like a flame doused with water. Her body sagged, the concrete chunk only glancing off my shoulder instead of reaching my skull.
I shoved myself off her, my stomach flipping over. The smell of her blood clogged my nose, my shirt sticking to my skin with its dampness.
I’d been around violence and death all of my life, but I’d never seen it come for someone just inches away from me like that. A shiver ran through me from head to toe.
Wylder lowered his gun. I turned to him, lost for words. He nodded as if to say,It’s done.
He might have just saved my life. A few minutes ago, I’d have assumed he didn’t give a shit whether I made it through the day. But then, Anthea would have said the same about me and her, wouldn’t she?
I stared down at Gia’s ruined body, blood pooling under her and staining her pale hair, and a twisted sense of relief washed over me.
Itwasdone. It was over. Titus had been avenged. Kaige’s name was cleared.
Where exactly did that leave us now?
