Page 89 of Skin Trade

“What’ll it be, Seth? Her life or yours?”

“No. Please …”

But Seth backed away, never looking away from her. Never taking his gaze from hers or severing that connection from her.

“You said you’d never leave me.” That much she remembered. He’d said it when she was small, when she was afraid. When he’d given her stuffed monkey to comfort her when he wasn’t around.

“Seth … Please …”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and then he stepped into the chamber.

Chapter Forty-Nine

It was her own scream she heard first. Long and hard and pleading for the man she’d loved her entire life not to take his own. She remembered. She remembered it all.

The moment he stepped into the chamber, stepped in and closed the door, her mind came crashing down like he’d just bulldozed his way through it. Aamon let her go.

The chamber was a big cube, something that could have fitted ten people all together. It was lined with what appeared to be strip lights along the edges of the ceiling.

She beat against the glass, hand thumping the same way she’d beaten at the door to get out of the office just hours before.

“Don’t do this,” she screamed at him. “Please don’t do this.” She beat against the glass so hard that the bone in her wrist gave an almighty crack and had her crying out with pain. It didn’t stop her, though. Didn’t hold her back from the one thing she wanted more than anything in the world. Him.

“Please.”

Inside the machine was a panel like the one outside on the main door. It was supported on a shelf inside. The chamber had one outside it that matched. Dual controls. Payton knew nothing about computers, about the modern world, but she still made a dash for it, tried to push the buttons on it to get the doors opened again. But they were airlocked, just like the rest of the place.

“It’s no use. Only he can open it from the inside,” Alexander said. “And he knows better than to do that.”

With Alexander, Aamon, and his guards, there were seven men in the room. Seven men Seth would have to try and take on if he were to get to Payton first. She was no match for them, vampire blood in her veins or not.

“Please don’t make him do this. I’ll come with you. I’ll do whatever.”

“It isn’t about you anymore. A man does not cross me.” He nodded at Seth inside. Seth was typing something into the machine. Payton raced around the outside of the chamber so she could get herself face to face with him.

“Seth,” she called. “Please …”

This wasn’t just Payton shouting for him now. This was Payton from years ago. The Payton these men had ripped from his arms and taken away.

It was from here. They hadn’t taken her away from her room like she’d remembered all these years. No. Her memories stripped themselves bare, fragmented and knitted themselves back together. There were two versions of the truth in her mind. Like looking out with both eyes at two different things that almost looked the same, seemed the same, but under the surface they weren’t.

That night they’d taken her, when she had a fever, she did have a fever, but she’d been in here. In here with Seth, with him trying to sooth her, trying to figure out why she was sick. That was why she knew Nancy. Nancy had worked with him, worked with her father.

It all came back to her in thick sharp shards of glass that threatened to snap her in two.

She loved him. She’d always loved him. Her heart ached. If he pushed those buttons, turned that machine on, if she had to stand here and watch him go to his true death, she’d never survive it.

She pressed her forehead to the glass, hands either side. “Please, Seth,” she said to him in her head. “Please stay with me.”

On the other side of the glass, inside the chamber, Seth … her Seth, mirrored her and touched the glass at the other side of her hand. “I will never leave you,” he echoed. “I promise.”

“You have two seconds to press that button, Seth, or Aamon is going to have some fun with your girl here. Cut the mark out himself.”

Seth said nothing to Alexander. Just opened his eyes so he could peer right at Payton. “Never,” he mouthed at her as he got up, but he brought the comms machine with him, ground his jaw and pressed the button.

Bright lights broke out from the bulbs in the strip in slow motion. They came on with a stream of white, each one firing a beam of light at Seth.

Payton screamed at him, screamed at the glass, and Aamon got hold of her, dragging her across the room and to the other side where the doors were. Far enough away so they could all watch as the light filled the chamber and began to burn through Seth’s body.

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