Page 100 of Infamous
Pain detonates. It’s bright, blinding, holy in its purity. My breath snaps in half. My legs buckle. Warmth floods down my front in a hot, slick rush. My body shakes, fighting and failing.
Kellerman’s roar is animal, furious. “You stupid girl!” Hegrabs me, the force rattling my teeth. His hand swings and cracks across my cheek, sharp enough to send stars into my vision. The scalpel slips from my fingers, clinking harmlessly to the floor.
Then his tone turns to panic. Pressure slams against my wound - as he presses a cloth to it, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood. He holds me tight against him, pinning me with shaking hands. “Don’t you fucking die on me,” he mutters. “Not yet. Not yet.” The frantic beat in his throat presses against my temple. He needs me alive for some reason. For whatever twisted game he’s playing.
I am nothing in his arms. A limp rag doll, bleeding out, breath stuttering. My eyelids flutter. The edges of the room dissolve.
A laugh bubbles out of me - high-pitched, broken, hysterical. It shakes in my chest and spills out raw. “I win,” I whisper, my voice wet and cracked. “I got to the finish line first.” I sound unhinged. I am unhinged.
Death feels close, warm as the blood soaking my shirt. Close enough to breathe into. Close enough to touch. Maybe then… I can be with him again. With Lucian. With the ghost I never stopped loving, even when loving him was poison.
But the face that rises behind my eyelids isn’t Lucian’s.
It’s Jude’s.
Jude - with his dark gaze and that quiet storm always brewing in his chest. Jude, who looks at me like I’m a life he never thought he could have.
Jude, who echoes Lucian so much it hurts - in the tilt of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, the danger threaded through devotion. Two men carved from the same brutal stone. Two ghosts, one living, one past. Faces blurring, overlapping. Lucian. Jude. Lucian. Jude.
My mind frowns, slow and slipping, as reality wavers.
Maybe they're not just similar.
Maybe they could be mirrors. Reflections. The same storm wearing two names. Twin shadows carved by fate or cruelty - and I never saw it until the blood came.
Jude…
His name whispers through me, fragile and fierce all at once.
My vision fades, the world narrowing to pain and breath and the violent press of Kellerman’s hands trying to keep me here.
I don’t know if I’m dying.
I only know the face I cling to in the dark isn't the ghost of my past.
It's the man waiting for me in the light - if I can crawl back to him.
Jude.
59
LUCIAN
The engine’s drone sits under my skin, a steady pressure that matches the drum in my chest. It won’t slow. Every mile eats away at me like hunger. We move in a line of black cars through the dark, all of us heading for an address the senator gave us - an address I need to be real.
My stomach knots into something cold and hard. I run the address the senator gave us over and over in my head until it tastes like rust on my tongue. If it’s a lie, Graves has given us a map to nothing. If it’s true, Nadia could be back in my arms soon - or she could already be dead. Both thoughts churn in my gut, sending a fresh spike of panic through me. I’ve been shut away for so long I forgot what it meant to care about anyone - and now I’m out in a world that’s cruel and sharp, and feeling that care is like a wound.
I ride shotgun in Jayson’s truck because I can’t trust myself to sit in the back and be calm. The city slips by in orange streaks and neon lights; everything narrows to the highway and that one small hope that the senator isn’t lying. Or worse, setting us a trap.
My mind runs through every plan at the same speed theroad moves: if she’s sedated, get her out fast; if she’s restrained, cut her loose; if they try to fight, we hit them hard and fast. I picture safe rooms, routes out, men with guns covering doors. I picture Nadia’s face, fragile and fierce, and the fear turns into something hard and sharp. I tell myself to breathe, to think in steps. I remind myself I’m not allowed to lose my head.
Time stretches. Each second is heavy and loud. I count landmarks, breaths, the way the tires whisper on the asphalt. Every tick of the clock reminds me that I am running out of time - and that I will not stop until I have her back.
Jayson drives like a man who has slept with his conscience and found it missing - hands steady, jaw hard, eyes fixed on the road. He wears a hoodie under his jacket; the collar hugs his ink stained neck like armor. There’s a new scar along his knuckle I haven’t asked about because I don’t need another thing to catalog. Every so often, he glances over at me — a flicker of fierce, protective fire in his eyes, as if he’s making sure I haven’t fallen apart yet.
“You okay?” he asks now.
I force a laugh that fractures. “I have to wonder if the senator didn’t give us an address so far away merely to buy himself time,” I say.
