Page 117 of Ruin
That's how long he holds his mouth against my forehead.
Three seconds of warmth and steadiness and the smell of him, sandalwood and gunmetal and the faint sharp edge of adrenaline.
Then he steps back. The softness vanishes.
The man in front of me is the one who runs an empire and ends lives and has never once lost a war.
"Let's go get your girl," he says.
I look at myself in the reflection of the glass cabinet by the door.
Black gear. Blade on my thigh.
Diamond collar at my throat, peeking above the neckline of the vest because I didn't tuck it in and I'm not going to.
I look like exactly what I am.
A woman going to war with the man she loves. The man she hates. The man who ruined her so thoroughly that the wreckage became a foundation, and whatever's being built on it is something neither of us has a name for yet.
17
CASSIUS
The sewer tunnel smells like rust and standing water and decades of the city's forgotten waste.
We move through it single file—Lionel on point, then me, then Selene, then Paul covering our backs.
The flashlight beams cut narrow paths through the dark, catching the wet gleam of pipes overhead and the occasional scatter of rats along the concrete ledge.
Selene hasn't spoken since we entered the tunnel.
I can hear her breathing behind me, steady and measured, trying to keep her body from outrunning her mind.
Her footsteps are light.
She moves well in the dark, better than I expected, placing her feet where I place mine without being told.
The service tunnel entrance is exactly where Alexei said it would be.
A steel plate welded over a rectangular opening in the tunnel wall, the welds sloppy and uneven, the work of someone who was told to seal it and didn't care enough to do it properly.
Lionel examines it with his flashlight, runs his fingers along the seam, then looks back at me and nods.
He wedges the crowbar into the gap where the weld is thinnest.
One pull, and the metal groans but holds.
Two pulls, and a seam splits along the bottom edge, rust flaking off in dark orange chips.
By the third pull, the plate bows inward with a sound like a car door being pried open.
We all go still and listen.
The building above us breathes—the hum of electrical systems, the distant clang of a pipe expanding in the heat, the muffled sound of a radio playing something with a heavy bass line.
No footsteps. No voices close enough to mean we've been heard.
Lionel peels the plate back far enough for a body to pass through.
