Page 109 of The Pawn

He does, his eyes searching my face, landing on all theplaces that are bruised or cut. He’s so gentle when he touches me that for a moment, it feels like it’s just us. Just us up here at the top of this decrepit, abandoned house, a graveyard around us.

But it’s not. It’s not just us.

Because it’s not over.

How could we have thought it was over?

40

CASSIAN

“Touching,” a voice says.

My back stiffens.

Allegra gasps.

She looks first. She turns and looks first. And I am a fucking idiot.

I turn to face Malek, who is standing with a gun at Jet’s head, a half-dozen soldiers behind him.

Malek glances at Enzo’s dead body. “Thanks for handling that for me.”

He shifts his gaze to me, and I begin to rise to my feet.

“No. As you were.” He grins “I like you on your knees.”

I glance at Jet who is standing perfectly still. His hands are empty, a soldier having relieved him of his weapon. His expression is unreadable, his eyes locked on me. He glances downward, then back up and I think I understand the signal.

But it won’t work.

There are too many of them. And there’s a gun to his head and I won’t risk his life.

“Bring me my wife,” Malek commands.

His soldiers fan out, one taking hold of Allegra to drag her to her feet and toward Malek who lowers his weapon to his side as another solider sets the barrel of his to Jet’s temple.

Malek looks at Allegra, naked and bloody. She doesn’t look away. She refuses to be afraid.

“Look at this mess,” he says.

“It was me, you know,” she tells him, raising her hands to show him the blood on her palms. She shrugs off the soldier who tries to keep her from doing it. “I killed him. Me. Just like I’m going to kill you.”

There’s a moment, a split second, where I think I see fear cross Malek’s eyes. It almost makes me laugh. Does he know what he’s in for with her? Except I can’t laugh, not now. Not as I kneel here and Jet stands with a gun to his head, not a single one of my soldiers in sight.

As if on cue, footsteps come charging up the stairs.

Malek grips Allegra by her hair and, like the coward Enzo, uses her as his human shield when my men come charging up.

“Weapons down!” Malek screams the order, but my men don’t take orders from him. “Tell them. Tell them or I fucking shoot her in the stomach!”

“Stop!” I call out. “Lower your weapons! Now!”

They do it.

“Drop them. I want weapons on the fucking ground!” Malek calls out.

“Do it,” I tell my men who look like they’re ready to fight to the death. I shake my head because it would be herdeath.