Page 72 of Fragile Facade
I have no idea if there is a key for the lock on the chains, so I tell him to leave me and get the hell out. He’s Soren Sauder, so of course he doesn’t listen.
“We gotta move,” Krypt shouts from the hall, throwing more daggers. “They overrode the lockdown. Ransom! Left!”
Gang’s all here then, yeah?
Krypt disappears, and the hall fills with more bodies.
“Ghost!” Krypt and Ransom shout at the same time from down the hall.
Ghost spins, watching the door fill with armed men. His back is to me, but I watch his shoulders relax, his body crouch into a fighting stance, and I just fucking know there’s a smile on his face.
“Try not to get hard, baby,” he tells me. “I know I’m sexy when I kill, but you’re naked right now and I don’t need anyone getting jealous of me.”
Baby.I scoff, but it hurts my throat. I have confidence in him, but as the hall and doorway fill with more and more men, fear prickles my nape like it hasn’t in the few days I’ve been in here. I’m self-entitled, so I hold my life above others, but right now, my brother and my… Soren are putting their lives on the line for me. And while I think I’m worth it, I never considered that they did, too.
Beneath all my masks and charming smiles lies an insecure boy who never did anything right. I hate that he’s showing.
Twin blades twirl in Soren’s nimble fingers. No. He’s not Soren right now, he’s Ghost, and he’s about to shine in a spotlight he doesn’t often get to have. I force my eye open, ready to call out his enemies as they come, but faster than my fuzzy head can follow, he moves. As silent as an asp and as fluid as a river, forging his way through men as if they’re ghosts themselves. His knives dance, and blood shoots up like fireworks to paint the walls. Disarming them one by one, he cuts, slashes, and stabs fluently, guns only going off to misfire once they hit the floor.
Adrenaline surges within me, finally giving me the strength to do more than just laugh. When one guy gets by Ghost, I kick off the floor with all my remaining energy. My weak legs wrap around his neck, holding him in place as all my wounds reopen.
“Ghost.”
He throws a dagger, and it embeds in the man’s forehead. When I release my legs, he slumps to the floor, face down, impaling himself deeper. Ghost smirks at me, a subtle glance going down to my naked crotch. Not hard yet, which of course he sees as a challenge.
Good luck, sweetheart. I’m barely coherent enough to even know if I’m pissing myself.
A second wave of Reaper Corp soldiers come in, bringing Krypt and Ransom with them. My Vile House brothers fight like they’ve been trained to for years, and my only regret is that I don’t get to fight alongside them. Krypt breaks bones and stomps on faces. Ransom’s accuracy with a knife is unmatched, and when he runs out of knives, he fires his clip until it’s empty, leaving ten more men on the floor.
But Ghost. He moves from person to person, barely making a sound as he kills one before the previous one even hits the floor. When he’s cut by their blades or grazed by their bullets, he doesn’t react, fuelled only by the blood high he’s soaring in.
“We gotta move! Someone get him down!” Ransom shouts as he rushes another man.
Krypt runs up behind me, swaying my chains to get me out of a knife’s path. “Family bonding?” he asks, pushing down on my head as he rips a gun from his pants to shoot the lock.
“Something like that.” Talking hurts and doesn’t sound right, and a vain part of me wants to close my mouth and hide it from all of them. My looks have always been part of my charm, and without them, I feel as though half my masks have been ripped to shreds.
“Try to stand,” he says just before his gun goes off.
My feet land flat on the floor and my arms drop uselessly to my sides. I manage to get my balance for all of two seconds before my legs give out and I fall forward. Agony tears through me as blood rushes into my bloodless arms, the pain akin to a billion tiny needles hitting every nerve. I can’t even get them out in front of me to brace for my fall. When my knees hit the hard floor, I buckle forward, ready to faceplant.
My face hits a chest instead. Ghost’s arms hold me up. Looking at him, coated in blood and handsome with death all over him, I hate him a little more and a little less simultaneously. Fuck him for being the hero.
He grins, pushing me upright. “Don’t worry. You can hate me for it later. Right now, we gotta get the fuck outta here.”
Ransom comes back, nodding at me. “Hall is clear. Riot, can you walk?”
I want to lie, but it’ll only slow them down. “Not much.”
Ransom looks at Ghost. “You still have the keycard?” Ghost nods. “Then we’re taking the elevator. Glitch, we need evac on the roof.”
Krypt shoves an earpiece into my bloody ear, and I catch the end of Glitch’s response. “—some sort of chaos downtown and at the hospital. No idea what’s going on, but the mayhem might work in our favour.”
Krypt and Ghost get me to my unsteady feet, but I’m smiling because I finally have something to bring to the party. “That might be my doing.”
We’re on our way to the elevator, each of us looking in prisoner rooms and doing nothing about it. “What’d you do?”
I gag, vomiting a little before I answer. “Remember The Harpy wanted poison for Moros? Well, she gave some to Menace, and he gave it to me. I poisoned Reaper Corp.”
