Page 57 of The Ruling Class (The Fixer #1)

I had one hour left to live. Ivy had one hour to give Kostas what he wanted—whatever that was.

I tried talking to him, even though my throat was like sandpaper, even though he’d stopped replying hours ago. If Kostas was going to kill me, he could do it while I was speaking to him. He could watch the life go out of my body and know that he had no honor.

I’d moved past the denial stage of things. Now I was pissed.

“It’s my life. I’m the one who’s going to die if Ivy doesn’t solve your problem. The least you can do is tell me what it is you need her to do.”

He didn’t say a word. It was like he didn’t even hear me. Like he was steeling himself, already, to do what needed to be done.

I don’t want to die. It was a stupid thought, a cliché one, thought by everyone who was about to die, ever.

“I don’t want to die.” I said it out loud. “I don’t want to—”

“I heard you.” Kostas broke his silence. “For what little it is worth, I don’t want for you to die, either.”

“But you will kill me.”

He didn’t reply. That silence was answer enough. He would kill me.

I’m no good to him dead . I clung to that thought. If he killed me, he lost his leverage.

That was the moment when I started wondering what else was in his bag. I started entertaining the possibility that he might not kill me immediately. He might hurt me first.

A finger. An ear. Would he send pieces of me to Ivy? What was in those syringes? Would he anesthetize me before sending her something to show he was serious? Would he put me down like a dog if it became clear that she couldn’t do the job?

I tensed against the bindings on my wrist. The plastic cut into my skin. I ignored the biting pain and struggled harder. Blood trickled down my wrists, warm and sticky against my skin.

Slick.

I let the pain roll over me. I felt it. I clung to it. I tried to pull out of the bindings, greased up with my own blood. I tried. I tried —

“Stop.” Kostas followed the order up by picking up one of the needles.

“No,” I said. “Please, no . I won’t try anything. I won’t—”

“It’s a sedative,” he told me. “To calm you down.”

I felt panic rising up inside me like bile in the back of my throat. I don’t want to be calm. I don’t want—

Footsteps sounded outside the door. My captor straightened and slipped the sedative into his back pocket, then picked up another syringe. This one was empty.

The sight of an empty syringe shouldn’t have made me shiver, but as he crossed the room to stand next to me, I felt like someone was sliding a shard of ice up my spine.

A female voice called out three words: “I came alone.”

Ivy. My heart jumped into my throat. Ivy’s here. She came. My arms tensed against the bindings. My body lurched forward of its own accord.

Kostas pressed the needle into my neck, into a vein. I hissed slightly. “Do not move,” he told me, his voice low.

I could feel my heart beating in my throat, pulsing against the sharp, uncompromising pressure of the needle.

“I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here,” Ivy kept talking as she came around the corner. She didn’t pause at the door, didn’t hesitate when she saw the man poised with a needle at my neck. “I can get you what you want, Damien.”

“That’s far enough,” Kostas told her.

I couldn’t move my head, couldn’t so much as lean toward her.

“I’m here,” Ivy said, her voice authoritative and calm. “We can all get what we want, but not if you don’t step away from the girl.”

“I get what I want,” Kostas replied, “or I press down on this.” He indicated the needle in his hands. “She will not survive an air bubble to the heart.”

In. Out. In. Out. I forced myself to breathe. He’s going to kill me.

“I’m not armed. No one knows I’m here. I came alone.” Ivy wasn’t looking at me—only at him. “You need to let her go, and then we can talk.”

I felt Kostas tense beside me. “That wasn’t the deal.” The Secret Service agent’s free hand slid to the far side of my neck, then tightened. I couldn’t twist away from the needle. I couldn’t move. “No talking,” he told Ivy. “You get me what I want, and you get your sister back.”

I could feel my heartbeat in my neck, tensing against my skin. I could feel it, pounding back against my captor’s hold.

“I can’t summon up a presidential pardon on a whim, Kostas,” Ivy said.

“You said you had what I wanted.”

Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out. In—

“I said I could get you what you want. And I can. But first you have to let her go.”

A low, inhuman whine reached my ears. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was me.

“If I let her go,” Kostas bit out, “I have nothing to bargain with.”

He wants to let me go. He wants to , I thought, desperation twisting in my gut, but he won’t.

Ivy took a single step forward. “You’ll have me. The president won’t bargain for my sister’s life. But he might bargain for mine.”

I realized then what she was saying. My throat tightened, my arms tensing against the bindings so hard the pain should have brought tears to my eyes. “Ivy,” I said, my voice escaping my throat in a hoarse whisper. “No.”

I could picture her, that day on the tarmac. You’re my kid . Mine, Tess.

“You’re that valuable to him?” Kostas asked Ivy, his grip on my neck tightening slightly.

Don’t, Ivy . My mouth wouldn’t form the words. Don’t do this.

“Keeping me alive is that important to his administration.” Ivy’s voice never wavered.

“In my line of work, it pays to have an insurance policy. I know where the bodies are buried. I know every skeleton in every closet. If I didn’t have some method of ensuring that it was to my clients’ benefit that I stay alive, eventually someone would decide that the only way to make sure their secrets stayed buried was to bury me, too. ”

Stop it, Ivy. Stop talking. I willed her to listen, willed her to stop before it was too late, but she didn’t. She wouldn’t.

“If I go off the grid, a program is initiated, and all those secrets—everything I’ve learned, everything I know, everything I’ve buried—are released. Online. To the media.”

“You worked on the president’s election campaign,” Kostas said. “You’ve worked for him since.”

“I have.”

“You’re saying he has secrets.”

“I am.”

“You’re saying that if I hold you —”

“He might give you what you want,” Ivy supplied. “If you have me .”

I’d spent my whole life as an orphan. I’d mourned the parents I’d never even gotten the chance to know. Now Ivy was here, doing this, and I couldn’t push down the voice inside me that said that I was going to lose her, too.

I felt numb. I felt like I was lying on my back in a dark hole, and there was someone at the top, throwing dirt down on top of me. Burying me.

“You’ll stay,” Kostas ordered, his gaze sharp on Ivy’s. “Contact the president.”

“No,” Ivy replied, her voice taut. “I won’t. Not unless you let Tess go.”

That was the first time she’d said my name. My stomach twisted sharply. Don’t do this, Ivy. You can’t—

“You do not make the rules here.” Kostas removed one hand from my neck. A second later, he had a gun aimed at Ivy. “Come here.”

“No. Me for her,” Ivy said, nodding at me. “That’s the deal.”

You’re my kid . Mine, Tess.

“Ivy,” I rediscovered my voice, my eyes and throat stinging, my whole body fighting against the bindings that held me in place. “No.”

“Yes,” she said fiercely. “ Me for her ,” she told the Secret Service agent again. “Otherwise, you might as well put a bullet in my head right now and say good-bye to that pardon, because without me, you don’t stand a chance.”

She was doing this. There was no talking her out of it, no going back. She was doing this. For me.

Kostas removed the needle from my neck. I could feel a trickle of blood against my skin as he stepped back and aimed the gun at my right knee. “Come here,” he told Ivy. “Do not make me hurt her.”

“Let her go.”

He stared at her. He pulled the trigger. The bullet went into the ground, less than an inch from my foot.

Oh God.

“You come here,” Kostas repeated, his eyes narrowing. “Now. Or the next one goes in her leg, Ms. Kendrick.”

Ivy put herself between him and me. “You don’t need her,” she said. “You need me.”

“I need her to make you cooperate.”

“She’s not my sister.” Ivy looked him straight in the eye as she said those words. “She’s my daughter. I was seventeen. Too young. You know what that’s like.”

Even tied to a chair, even with Kostas aiming a gun at Ivy, even now —I couldn’t keep from reacting to those words. Kostas’s gaze flickered briefly toward mine. I ducked my head, pressing my lips together. What was Ivy doing? Why tell him this? If he thought I was good leverage before …

“Let her go,” Ivy said, her voice wavering. “There’s no trick here. Let her go, and I will call the president. I will tell you exactly what to say, exactly how to handle this situation. But first, you have to let her go.”

Kostas lowered the gun. He knelt down in front of me and took out a knife. My breath caught in my throat. He brought the knife to my legs and cut the bindings between my ankles. As he walked behind me to do the same thing to my wrists, my eyes found Ivy’s.

She has a plan , I told myself. She’s not going to stay here. She’s not going to risk her life …

But as her lips curved slightly upward in a soft, sad smile, I knew—there was no trick. No trap. No plan. This was a trade. Ivy for me.

“ No ,” I said, louder this time. “No, Ivy. You can’t.”

I was four years old again, throwing up at my parents’ funeral. I was lying against Ivy’s chest as she carried me up the stairs. I was patting her wet cheek as she handed me away.

I was walking into the room she’d saved for me in her house. The room she’d never decorated, never used, her favorite room in the house—

Kostas finished cutting my bindings. I lunged from the chair, falling to the ground on limbs that weren’t ready to support my body yet. Ivy was beside me in an instant. She knelt next to me, her hands on my shoulders.

“You’re the kid,” she said. “I’m the adult.”

You’re my kid. She didn’t say it this time, but I heard it all the same. I saw it in her eyes.

“I love you, Tessie. When you get out of here, go to Adam. He’ll take care of you, okay? Bodie, too.”

That sounded too much like good-bye.

“You do what they say,” Ivy told me. “Exactly what they say.”

“I’m not leaving you here.” My eyes stung with tears. My face was warm with them. Breathing hurt. Looking at her hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Ivy told me. “About everything. I’m sorry for never being what you needed. I’m sorry for doing it all wrong. I’m sorry for lying to you, and I’m sorry for telling you the way I did. I’m so sorry, baby, and I love you, and you are leaving .”

She’d never called me baby before.

No. This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t crying. I wasn’t crying. This wasn’t—

She pressed her lips to my forehead, then stood. She glanced at Kostas. “You’ll want to knock her out,” she said.

“Ivy, I—” I was going to tell her that I loved her, that I hated her, that I wasn’t leaving her, that I couldn’t , but for the second time in twenty-four hours, there was a pinch at my neck.

And everything went black.