Page 43 of Martyr (Sterling Falls Rogues #3)

“Let go !”

They listen, and I’m tossed rather unceremoniously onto the floor. I take my time picking myself up, my heart hammering.

“There you are, Gabriel,” Ouranos says.

He always says that with a tone of surprise, like he didn’t expect me to turn up.

I didn’t turn up —I was cornered by his goons in South Falls and dragged here.

I run my fingers through my hair, pushing it out of my face, and straighten my clothes.

White graphic t-shirt that says Anarchy .

Jeans. Boots. I had a sweatshirt and jacket, but they got lost somewhere along the way. In the struggle.

My body aches, but the bright prick of pain comes from my cheekbone. Not the side that he ground into the glass, of course. No, now I’ll have matching mismatched wounds. The cuts have scabbed over. This isn’t a gash, its just swollen.

One of them broke the bone, I think.

Stupid sheep. They’ll pay for that one. Over and over. Their faces are imprinted in my mind. Even if I’m not the favorite?—

“You helped Artemis take her club back,” he says idly.

Oh, right. I suppose that puts me on the outs with Ouranos, doesn’t it?

That’s why I didn’t go crawling back to him after giving Saint a little bop.

I went and tried to get onto Isle of Paradise, only for Bobby to basically drive away without me.

He took one look at me coming down the dock and unhooked his mammoth houseboat as fast as possible, which was kind of impressive.

He was out of reach by the time I got to his section.

Dick-face .

All I know is that there’s something wrong on Isle of Paradise, the trauma center has been compromised, and Lyssa…

I don’t know . I felt something was wrong, didn’t I?

I felt it when I was holding the Hell Hounds leader guy’s body under the water and watching him try to gurgle with a punctured lung. It was like?—

What if she’s dead?

What if that feeling was her saying goodbye?

“Are you with me, Gabriel?”

Back to Ouranos. If she is dead, he’d be a good one to go to in order to also get dead. He kind of has a murderous rage about him, but it only appears at random. Like when he has to deal with me and I can’t quite focus on his words.

I blink at him.

I betrayed him, didn’t I? That usually means death. A quick shot to the back of the head—or the front, depending on how pissed he is. Except, he’s not usually the one pulling the trigger. He has guys for that. Cyclopes. And they all went boom .

He’s blissfully unaware of that, too. Even the guys who snatched me were quiet. Confident. There’s got to be more Cyclopes in the city, but who really knows? Kade was in charge of personnel. I doubt he was keeping a literal ledger, though.

The important thing is that they took out a few. Like, thirty. Maybe forty.

That’s a lot of death swinging over the head of sweet Artemis. Kind of like a guillotine of guilt, in a way. Or a pendulum. Guillotines don’t swing.

A sharp pendulum on a fraying rope, sweeping closer and closer to her delicate neck.

Poor bird.

Speaking of?—

“I want to see Lyssa,” I say.

He scoffs. “You won’t be seeing her any time soon. Of that, I’m sure.”

“Why?”

“Because as soon as you double-crossed me, I had her moved.”

My eye twitches. “Where?”

He laughs. He’s dressed impeccably, like always. Like the city hasn’t begun to burn around him in ways he cannot control. He reminds me of the men who used to frequent Terror. I’m surprised it took me this long…

No, wait.

The men who came to Terror, who paid for me, were in charge. I learned that early on, and no form of therapy— trust me, I tried it —would shake that. So when I came upon Ouranos, it was natural that I bent my neck for him.

But the one thing that always straightened my spine?

Lyssa .

I simply forgot, with her being asleep. But now he’s denying me again— you cannot go —and my spine is straightening. It’s about time I grew a fucking backbone.

“You knew I betrayed you, so you moved her,” I echo him. “And you won’t tell me where she is. The love of my life. The one thread keeping me from insanity. You think the best idea is to hide her from me?”

“I will give her to you once you help me,” Ouranos amends. “Kill Kade. Extinguish the hope that Artemis Madden and her family have ignited around this city, and you can go be with Lyssa.”

You’re a rabid dog on a chain . Kade once said that to me.

In passing. When we first got to Sterling Falls and the rest of my mask chipped and fell off.

Or maybe he mumbled it when I put the needle through the man’s eye.

Or as I hung another from the outside of Bow & Arrow.

Or when he found my room full of bomb-making material.

Alas, I focused too much on the rabid part. The frenzy, the chaos, the inability to control myself when I really got going.

I failed to acknowledge the chain.

And who held the other end of it.

“Do you think you control me?” I cock my head. I brush my hands down my shirt. “Truly? Order me to bark?—”

“And you’ll bark,” Ouranos finishes without hesitation.

He does think he controls me.

A laugh trickles out of me, the lightness in my chest akin to slurping a cold fizzy drink. Bubbles everywhere. Up my nose, in my throat. It’s delightfully painful. The kind of discomfort that comes with joy.

Until right this moment, he was probably right. He did control me. But there was someone else, too. Someone with a deeper hold driving my motivation.

And right now, Ouranos is trying to use her against me.

“What does Artemis have to do with your plans?” My curiosity has gotten the better of me.

He tenses, and that gives him away.

He lunges forward, his arm swinging. I watch it coming, but I don’t move.

His palm collides with my cheek at a startlingly fast rate, and my head whips to the side.

The explosion of pain is more severe than I expected, and my vision flickers.

I lose touch with my body for a split second.

When it comes back, I’m on the floor. On my hands and knees.

I forgot about my broken cheekbone.

He hauls me up by the back of my shirt. He catches sight of the gun holster hidden in the small of my back— empty —and he tuts. He shoves me away and slowly undoes his cufflinks. I watch him, blinking fast, while he rolls up his sleeves.

“This is all to teach me a lesson, isn’t it?” I laugh, bleeding effervescence. “I forgot about lessons.”

“You’ll remember,” he promises.

I straighten just as he comes at me again. He punches me in the gut. My stomach heaves, my breath comes out in a whoosh of forced air. Everything in me seizes up when I can’t immediately draw in another breath.

Relax . I fight against the panic. This is natural. I’ve been here before. I used to relish it, and I catch the feeling with both hands. Metaphorically speaking.

I let the absence of air sharpen me. His elbow comes down on my back, knocking me back to my knees.

A familiar place.

I rock back on my heels and look up at him, choking on air. I draw in a ragged inhale, then another. “You want me to suck your cock? You didn’t have to go through so much trouble?—”

He strikes again, this time his fist on my mouth. Blood spills across my tongue. I spit it out and cackle. The metallic taste is sharp. It’s all I can smell.

Idiot .

For once, he is disheveled. There’s blood on his knuckles— mine —and his hair has fallen out of its gelled obedience. His chest heaves, the effort of teaching me this very important lesson weighing on him. The physical exertion of inflicting pain should not be taken for granted.

I laugh and shove myself to my feet, hollow chest and bones be damned.

I stagger, and he allows it. He lets me put my hand on the bar, slide my palm along the smooth wood, and catch a pint glass. It has the barest amount of liquid in the bottom, and I overturn it. The pale-yellow ale splatters across the floor.

“You forget yourself, old man.” I smile, then widen it. Wider. Lips and cheeks stretching, straining, until he can see every tooth. My cheek screams at me. I slam the glass against the edge of the bar, and it fractures. Another hit, and the pieces tumble to the floor to join the beer.

He is not wary—he’s mad. “Do not destroy my things, Gabriel. We’ve talked about this. Your lashing out has come to an end.”

“Perhaps.”

He comes at me again, and I don’t stop him. I want to be at the brink of death. To see my shallow grave. Just because.

He hits and kicks, striking until I’m hunched on the floor, curled in to protect myself. My fingers grasp on the concrete, sorting through the mess, shifting the pieces of glass that bite my skin.

He comes around to my front, his polished black loafers gleaming. He lifts his foot and kicks at my stomach.

I grab his ankle. My body jerks. He tries to free himself, but I’ve always prided myself on my grip.

One hand to secure it, my fingers digging into his skin just above his loafer, the other hand with the broken shard of glass.

Before he can dislodge me, I cut the back of his ankle as deeply as I can. Through muscle and tendon.

Release.

Roll.

He howls, but I’m out of his blast radius.

Speaking of that …

I force myself to my feet and round the bar. Behind me, Ouranos crashes into the stools. He yells, his anger directed at me, but I ignore it. He stays even with me, dragging his leg. He can’t put weight on it anymore. Perhaps he could, actually, but it would hurt.

“Does that hurt more than finding out your brother was killed by being shot in the face?”

He spits curses and threats, but there’s the width of the bar between us.

He’s easy to block out. I pause at the bucket of ice, then take two quick steps to the left. I duck down and retrieve the flip phone I had dropped the last time I was here. It was gently toed under the bar, out of sight…

When I stand, Ouranos is swinging for me again.