It was over. She was so fucking tired.
The silence was deafening.
A moment passed. Another . . .
The crowd roared.
Matias offered her his hand. She gripped it and rose to her feet.
Matias stepped toward Varden. The fallen secare was still alive, clamping his throat.
“Nicola convoy. Eight years ago.”
Varden’s eyes bulged.
“Kurt Sommers and his crew are waiting for you on the other side. Tell them I said hello.”
He slashed Varden’s throat. His head and severed fingers rolled clear.
Fifteen meters away the line of Vandals stared at their beheaded commander.
“Kill!” a voice roared from the balcony.
Ramona jerked her shields up a fraction of a second before the energy fire from the Vandals hit them.
“Ramona?” Matias asked, blocking the barrage next to her.
“How bad?”
“I’m fine. You?”
She gritted her teeth against the pain vibrating in her arm. “Never better.”
“Good. Let’s fucking end this.”
They moved in unison, carving into the Vandal line in front of them, shielded from the crossfire by the mass of the soldiers’ bodies. They worked their way through, turned, took out the group by the other wall, doubled back, and sliced through the front doors. They cut their way up the stairs and burst onto the balcony.
Varden’s two officers and a third soldier to their left, Gabriel and Cassida all the way to the back, on their right.
The huge Vandal soldier hauled a massive cannon to his chest. The plasma launcher fired with a telltale twang. She dashed right, Matias sprinted left. The plasma load landed between them in a brilliant burst of white.
She raced forward, veering in a zigzag. On the right, Matias tore past the group and doubled back. They fell on the three remaining Vandals like blades of shears closing. All three had combat implants. None put up a decent fight, and when she sliced the last of them in half, watching him fall to the ground was almost an afterthought.
Matias dismissed his seco and straightened. His shoulder hurt like hell. The seco had only lightly kissed his skin, but it had left behind a ten-centimeter-long gash that burned like fire. A few millimeters to the side and he would have bled to death by now.
Ramona stabbed the first aid syringe into his arm. He saw her coming and let her do it. A cool current flowed through his veins, soothing the pain.
“Ow,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. Blood drenched her right forearm and caked the back of her hand. Anger punched him the same way it had during the fight, when he’d first realized they’d hurt her. He would not let anyone hurt her again.
She saw him looking at her arm and shrugged. “It happens.”
“Let me see.”
She raised her arm. It didn’t look good.
“You need a medic.”
She made a fist. “It’s fine. I pumped it full of coagulant and painkillers. Same thing I gave you. Stop staring at my arm, Matias. We have unfinished business.”
What?
Oh.
He pivoted toward his wife. The bodyguard next to her held his firearm by the barrel with two fingers and gently lowered it to the ground. “I’m out.”
Matias looked at the remaining guard. “You?”
“Out.” The bodyguard took off nearly running, skirting the bloody bodies. His buddy followed.
Cassida stared at him, her face white as a sheet.
“Hello, dear.”
Her gaze flickered to the bodies. “You . . . you killed all of them. You’re a butcher.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t kill me, Matias. My father—”
“Has left the system by now, I would imagine. In disgrace. Or don’t you watch the news?”
“It was you,” she whispered. “You ruined everything.”
“Yes.” He felt a lot of cold satisfaction from uttering that one word.
She stared at him. “How are you still alive? So many people tried to kill you.”
Her tone was bewildered, as if she truly couldn’t understand why he was standing in front of her. There was no frustration, no anger, just stunned surprise. She was in shock, he realized.
His wife wanted him dead. A week ago, he would have felt something, some splash of bitter emotion, but today it no longer mattered.
“You were supposed to die. Why aren’t you dead?”
He nodded at the plaza below painted red with blood. “Because I killed everyone.”
Slowly she turned to the plaza, then flinched.
“Look very carefully,” he told her.
“I don’t want to,” she whispered.
“This is what secare are. This is what we do. You and your family never understood that.”
She took a step back. Horror twisted her face. Compared to the people she’d gotten in bed with for this deal, he was a saint. But now wasn’t the time to explain it to her.
“The files.” He held out his hand.
She offered no resistance. “I gave them to Varden.”
He stepped to the balcony’s rail. Below, his people and Ramona’s were moving through the bodies strewn over the plaza. He called to Solei’s implant. “Our data banks are on Varden’s body.”
Solei walked out of the crowd and headed for Varden’s corpse. From the other side, Karion did the same.