Brutal Prince (Brutal Birthright)

We plunge into the filthy, icy water.

The current is swift, dragging us along.

It’s dark, so dark that it makes no difference if my eyes are open or shut. Keeping an iron-clad grip on Aida, I reach up with one hand to see if there’s air above our heads. My hand swipes the pipe, without any space between water and metal

That means we need to get through as quickly as possible. The current is moving us along, but I kick with my feet, propelling us faster.

We’ve probably been down here thirty seconds so far. I can hold my breath for more than two and a half minutes. I can’t expect Aida to manage more than a minute or so.

She’s not struggling in my arms, not fighting me. But I can feel how rigid and terrified she is. She trusts me. God, I hope I didn’t make the worst kind of mistake.

We rocket along, me kicking all the harder. And then we shoot out an outlet pipe, falling down about five feet right into the Chicago River.

The current drags us out to the center of the river, about twenty feet from either bank. That’s not where I want to be, in case any boats come along, but I’m not sure which way I should be taking us. I look around, trying to figure out exactly where we are.

Aida clings to my neck, only paddling with one hand. She isn’t a very strong swimmer, and the current is powerful. She’s shivering. So am I.

“How’d you know we could get out there?” she asks me, teeth chattering.

“I didn’t,” I say. “How in the fuck did you come find me?”

“Oh, I was with you the whole time!” Aida says gleefully. “That backstabbing bitch Jada drugged our drinks, but I didn’t actually drink mine cause it looked weird.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I was going to!” she says. “You had already slugged it down. I don’t want to make this a cultural critique, but you Irish could learn to sip a drink once in a while. Not everything is a shot.”

I roll my eyes.

“Anyway,” she says, “I tried to get you out to the car, but you were stumbling and slurring, and the bouncers closed me in. So when you passed out, I pretended like I was passed out too. I was so floppy, you would have been amazed by my acting. Even when the big one slammed my hand in the trunk, I didn’t break character.”

I’m staring at her in amazement. While I was knocked out, apparently, she was plotting and planning.

“So they brought us to the warehouse. Then they carried us inside. They took you away, and they put me in some kind of office room. The guy hadn’t tied me up cause he thought I was still out cold. He left me alone for just a second. Locked the door, though. And I didn’t have a phone—he took my purse and Dante’s gun. So instead, I went up into the air vent—”

“You what?”

“Yeah.” She grins. “I used my fingernail to turn the screw, got the cover off. Climbed right out. Remembered to put the cover back on, too. I wish I coulda stayed to see the guard’s face when he came back—he probably thought I pulled some kind of Houdini move. I lost my shoes along the way, cause they were making too much noise in the vent. Then I dropped down in a little kitchen—it had a fridge, freezer, full liquor cabinet. That’s how I made the Molotovs. There was all kinds of stuff in there—Zajac must work out of this building a lot, not just when he’s torturing people.”

She pauses, eyebrows pinching with concern.

“Did he cut you? You were bleeding . . .”

“I’m fine,” I assure her. “He just poked me a little.”

“Anyway,” she says. “I heard the guards freaking out. They didn’t want to tell him I escaped, cause they’re all terrified of him. So that gave me some extra time to run around raising a ruckus. I stole a gun and shot one of them. Then a different one grabbed me from behind, shoved my head into the wall, and I had to shoot down at his foot like nine times before I hit it. Then I didn’t have any more bullets. But I found you right after!”

I’m staring at her in absolute astonishment. Her eyes are bright with excitement, her face alight with the thrill of what she accomplished.

It’s crazy and hectic and we could have been killed.

But I’ve never felt more alive. The freezing water. The night air. The stars overhead. The light reflected in Aida’s gray eyes. I feel it all with painful acuity. It’s absolutely fucking beautiful.

I kiss grab Aida’s face and I kiss her. I kiss her so long and so hard that we sink down under the water, then rise to the surface again, our mouths still locked together.

“You’re incredible,” I tell her. “Also, completely insane. You should have just run!”

Aida fixes me with her most serious expression.