Chapter 10: Touch Her and You Die

The rain did not cushion the silence.

It beat a frantic, uneven rhythm against the iron skin of the shipping containers, but to Sebastian, the world had gone perfectly mute.

The only reality that existed was the cold millimeter of steel indenting the delicate skin of Alexandra’s throat.

The assassin holding her was breathing in ragged, wet gasps, his chest heaving against her back.

"I said back the fuck up, Vance!" the man screamed, his voice cracking under the pressure of his own escalating terror.

"I’ll do it! I’ll open her up right here!"

Sebastian did not back up.

He did not step forward either. He stood perfectly rooted in the slick mud, his bare hands raised to his shoulders, his fingers slightly curved.

The split skin of his knuckles wept thin ribbons of crimson that the rain immediately diluted, washing them down his wrists.

His ice-blue eyes were deadpan, frozen into a glacial stare that held no trace of human reason.

"Look at me," Sebastian whispered.

The baritone was low, scraping through the downpour like stone over a grave. It wasn't a negotiation.

It was a command that bypassed the ears and settled directly into the marrow of the man's bones.

"Look at my eyes."

The assassin instinctively flicked his gaze toward Sebastian's face.

That single fraction of a microsecond—that minute lapse in the guard's spatial awareness—was the only window the machine required.

Sebastian vanished from his baseline coordinates.

He crossed the ten feet of separation in a blur of kinetic force so swift, so terrifyingly silent, it defied the limitations of his massive six-foot-three frame.

Before the assassin’s brain could signal his hand to flex, Sebastian’s left hand shot through the rain like a piston, his palm clamping over the cylinder of the knife blade.

He didn't care about the edge. He didn't care that the steel sliced cleanly into his own flesh, the hot blood bursting across his palm.

With a brutal, downward twist of his wrist, Sebastian sheared the blade away from Alex’s throat.

At the same instant, his right hand snapped upward, his calloused fingers locking around the man’s throat in a vice grip that instantly crushed his larynx.

A choked, wet rattle emerged from the mercenary’s mouth.

Alex stumbled back as the pressure vanished, her boots skidding through the mud. She hit the iron wall of the container, her breath hitching as she watched the sheer speed of the retraction.

Sebastian didn't use a weapon. He didn't fire a round.

He lifted the full-weight, heavily armored mercenary entirely off his feet by the throat using a single, terrifying exertion of his right arm.

The man’s legs kicked uselessly in the air, his fingers clawing at Sebastian’s iron wrist, but Sebastian's frame didn't sway by a single millimeter.

His face remained completely vacant of emotion—a mask of chiseled marble, beautiful and entirely unhinged.

With his left hand still dripping blood from the blade, Sebastian grabbed the man by the chest plate.

He didn't execute him in the lane. He dragged him backward.

He kicked open the heavy, rusted iron latch of an empty shipping container beside them, hauling the choking, thrashing body inside into the pitch-black void of the steel box.

The heavy door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the glare of Lev’s overhead drone.

The lock clicked into place from the inside.

Alex stood alone in the driving rain, her hands pressed flat against the cold, corrugated iron of the container.

Her chest heaved, her wild caramel-chestnut curls plastered to her forehead, a mixture of rainwater and the thin smear of blood from her cheek dripping down her chin.

She didn't run to her terminal. She didn't check the data mirror.

She leaned her head against the iron skin of the box, her amber eyes wide, staring into the dark metal.

From within the container, the sounds began.

It wasn't a tactical interrogation. It was a systematic, bone-breaking private execution.

There were no questions asked. There were no demands for intelligence.

There was only the heavy, rhythmic thud of raw flesh striking solid iron, the sharp, wet snap of limbs being violently detached from their joints, and the muffled, agonizing screams of a man being dismantled by hand.

Alex didn't look away. She listened to every single vibration echoing through the iron paneling beneath her palms.

A dangerous, suffocating intoxication flared to life in her veins, her pulse running at a frantic, erratic frequency that had nothing to do with survival.

She had spent her entire life cleaning up the aftermath of monsters, scrubbing away the evidence of their clinical cruelty.

But she had never seen a monster turn itself into a shield solely to protect her existence.

It was a sick, beautiful devotion. An unhinged possessiveness that completely destroyed his loyalty to the high board.

Inside the dark container, the wet thuds finally ceased.

The mercenary was slumped against the iron corner, his face unrecognizable, his chest bubbling with a dying, shallow breath.

Sebastian stood over him, his black button-down shirt torn open at the collar, his chest heaving silently in the dark.

His bare hands were completely painted in the man's hot blood, his fingers twitching with a residual, predatory tremor.

The dying hitman raised a single, swollen eyelid, spitting blood onto his own shattered chest.

"You're... you're a dead man, Vance," the mercenary gasped, his voice a bubbling, wet rattle.

"You think... you think you're hiding her? Viktor... Viktor already has the telemetry logs from the gallery. He knows. He knows you're harboring the rogue variable."

Sebastian didn't blink. He leaned down, his face inches from the dying man's ear, his ice-blue eyes twin lasers in the blackness.

"Let him know," Sebastian whispered.

The baritone was a absolute, terrifying promise.

"Let him bring the entire board. I will clean them all from my grid."

He didn't wait for the final breath. He turned his back on the corpse, unlatching the heavy iron door and stepping back out into the freezing Madrid rain.

The door groaned as he shoved it wide.

Alex didn't retreat. She stood exactly where he had left her, her amber-hazel gaze locking onto his silhouette through the mist.

Sebastian emerged like a demon stepping out from the mouth of hell. His bespoke tuxedo jacket was gone, his black shirt soaked through, clinging to the heavy muscle of his shoulders and chest.

His calloused hands were stained a dark, heavy crimson, the rain trying and failing to wash the copper tang from his skin.

He crossed the distance between them in two silent, purposeful strides.

Alex’s breath caught in her throat as his shadow fell over her once more, his towering frame completely eclipsing the storm.

She expected the cold, deadpan machine. She expected the analytical assessment.

Instead, Sebastian reached out his right hand.

The fingers were split, stained with another man's blood and his own, but as he brought his palm toward her face, his movement was impossibly, excruciatingly gentle.

He cupped her cheek, his thumb gliding over the small, jagged line where the bullet had grazed her skin.

His hand was warm, burning hot against her freezing, wet flesh. He didn't care that he was smearing the blood across her jaw, staining her honeyed skin with the evidence of his violence.

He gripped her face with a heavy, possessive pressure that bordered on cruel, forcing her to look up into his piercing, silver-flecked eyes.

"Nobody touches you, Alexandra," Sebastian murmured, his voice cracking slightly with a raw, un-machine-like desperation that made her core turn to liquid fire.

He leaned down until his forehead pressed directly against hers, his hot breath mixing with the freezing drizzle on her lips. His fingers tightened into her wet curls, anchoring her to his chest until they were a single, seamless mass of silk and iron.

"Nobody."

He looked deep into her amber eyes, his own pupils dilated with an absolute, unhinged devotion that had completely rewritten his neural code.

"Not while I draw breath."

Alex didn't speak. She reached up with her right hand, her fingers locking around his blood-stained wrist, holding his palm flat against her cheek as a massive crack of thunder tore through the sky above Pier 4.

The alignment was finished. The syndicate was gone from his mind.

She had broken the machine, and in its place, she had inherited the demon.