Page 95 of Captive Prize

No. No. No.

I ran. There was no checking other rooms or clearing corners and blind spots. I ran toward that door, and when I wrapped my fingers around the handle, I almost ripped it from the hinges.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Mateo was screaming at her. "I barely fucking hit you."

The sight of her broke something fundamental inside me.

Zoya—my fierce, defiant little warrior—lay crumpled on the concrete like discarded trash.

Her clothes were soaked through with blood, creating a dark halo around her broken body. Her skin was chalk-white, lips blue-tinged and trembling with each shallow breath.

But her eyes...Christ, her eyes were still fire. Even bleeding out, even dying, she looked at me like I was her salvation and her destroyer all at once.

He'd shot her.

He had fucking shot her.

Mateo's eyes were wild. The high had clearly turned bad.

He let out a monstrous scream and then drew his foot back like he was going to kick her.

I didn't aim—didn't need to.

The Glock bucked in my hand, the sound deafening in the confined space. Mateo's head snapped back like he'd been hit by a sledgehammer. Where his face used to be was now a crater of bone and brain matter, his lifeless eyes staring at nothing while blood pooled beneath him.

Good. Not painful enough for what he'd done to her, but it would have to do.

Before his body had even hit the concrete, I was on my knees, reaching for her.

"Roman?" Her voice was barely a whisper, threads of sound that I had to strain to catch.

Blood bubbled at the corners of her mouth when she tried to smile. "I knew you'd come. I told him...told him…my monster would…find me."

My hands shook as I reached for her, afraid that even the gentlest touch would shatter what was left. "Don't talk, my little warrior. Save your strength."

"Couldn't…let him win." Each word cost her, I could see it in the way her chest hitched, the way her eyes fought to stay focused. "Couldn't let him...break me."

The wetness on my cheeks surprised me.

I hadn't cried since I was eight years old, since the day my father taught me that tears were a weakness. But watching the light fade from her eyes, feeling her blood seep through my fingers as I pressed my hands against her wounds—this was a different kind of breaking.

"Stay with me," I commanded, putting every ounce of authority I possessed into my words. "That's an order, Zoya. You don't get to leave me. Not like this. Not ever."

Her smile was heartbreaking in its fragility. "My dangerous man," she rasped.

The silence that followed was deafening.

More terrifying than any gunfight, any torture, any threat I'd ever faced.

This was the sound of my world ending.

“I’m glad you came,” she said. Her words were barely a whisper.

"I will never not come for you." I cupped her jaw, stroking her terrifyingly cool cheek.

Her eyes slid closed, and my world shattered.

I was too late.

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