Page 70 of Psychotic Faith
"You're okay. I've got you. You're okay." The words pour out without thought, a prayer to no god I believe in, just to the universe that gave her back.
She tries to speak but only manages a wheeze. The bruises are already forming on her throat, perfect purple impressions of Neumann's fingers, the same pattern her mother wore to the grave.
"Don't talk. Just breathe. Just keep breathing."
But I'm the one hyperventilating now. The shaking gets worse, my whole body convulsing with something I don't recognize. Terror. This is what terror feels like. Not when my father died across the room. Not during the massacre. This is worse because she chose this. Chose to be bait. Chose to die for revenge.
"I can't… If you…" The words won't form right. How do I explain that she's become necessary as breathing? That I'm just meat and violence without her? "You can't die. I don't work without you anymore."
The pressure builds behind my eyes, foreign, wrong. My body fights it, a decade of trained numbness battling against this new fracture. But watching her chest stay still, feeling her pulse fade under my fingers… something breaks. The tears come like arterial spray from a wound that won't stop bleeding.
Crying like I haven't in ten years. Hot salt streaming down my face, snot running, body shaking with sobs that come from somewhere deep and broken. The crying gets worse when she's alive in my arms, when I realize how close I came to holding her corpse instead. Not since Mikhail. Not since I became what I am. But she's broken through all of it, cracked me open to the child who could still cry.
Faith lifts one trembling hand to my face, fingers barely able to move but trying to wipe away tears.
"Lu-ca." My name comes out destroyed, barely a whisper through her damaged throat, but it breaks me completely.
"I can't… If you… Faith, you can't die." The words tumble out between sobs, my hands shake as I hold her, feeling her alive, breathing, here. "I don't exist without you."
"How touching." Neumann's voice cuts through my breakdown as he pulls himself to his feet, adjusting his tie like we're in a board meeting. "The Rosetti psycho crying like a child."
Her breathing steadies against my chest, alive but damaged. The tears stop as suddenly as they started, leaving something colder in their wake. Not the empty cold from before. Purpose. Crystal clear purpose. She's alive, which means Neumann gets to suffer for what he almost took from me.
I set Faith down with infinite gentleness, making sure she's stable, still breathing. Then I turn. Not fast. Not rushed. The slow pivot of someone who's found their purpose.
Neuman was trying to escape, to get out the ruined door, but he is caught in his own trap. His eyes dart around the room desperately.
"You touched her." Simple statement of fact.
"You tried to kill her." Another fact, noted.
"Like you killed her mother."
Neumann backs toward the gap in the doorframe, but I'm already moving. Not running, just stalking.
"You're right though. I am crying." My voice sounds wrong. Broken. Raw. "Because I love her."
The word sits just right in my mouth. Love. Not obsession, not possession, though those are there too. Something worse. Something that makes me breakable. She's turned me into something that can feel loss, and that's more dangerous than any psychopath.
I catch Neumann at the destroyed door.
"And you tried to take her."
The carotid hold is textbook. My arm snakes around his throat, hand gripping my own bicep, pressure applied to both arteries. His hands claw at my arm for exactly three seconds before his brain shuts down from lack of blood flow. He goes limp.
The zip ties are already in my pocket. I never go anywhere without them. His wrists first, then ankles. Quick, efficient, no wasted motion. Old Luca would make it theatrical, draw it out. But Faith needs medical attention. Her breathing is still ragged, each inhale a struggle.
Nico and the team burst through the destroyed doorway just as I'm securing the last tie.
"Medical. Now." My voice carries the kind of authority that makes them move without questions.
One of Nico's men drops beside Faith, checking vitals while others haul Neumann's unconscious form up. "Hospital?" the medic asks.
"No.Home. Marco has a medical team standing by."
Faith tries to protest, but I cut her off with a look. "You were unconscious for over thirty seconds. You don't get to make decisions right now."
I gather her in my arms, her weight nothing against the relief of her being alive to carry. She feels too light, too fragile, too close to gone. The elevator ride feels endless even though it's only seconds. Her hand finds mine, squeezes with what little strength she has left.
