Page 43 of Ambition

I hold onto it, even though I know it doesn’t matter now. It may not even be what Writhe needs. But maybe it’ll mean something. Maybe…

My vision goes black.

Theo drags the blade across my numb face. It is like tugging floss through my teeth. I feel next to nothing.

“Killing you wouldn’t allow you to send the message. But returning with a target…well, I think your run in Writhe is over now. It will be hard to hide with a scar like this one.”

I want to say my jobs end with me creating corpses, so there’s no need to hide. But I can’t see, let alone fucking speak.

PRESENT

I know now why Theo mentioned my dad, and why Dad didn’t try too hard to stop me from ruining Isa’s assignment. Theo owed something to Dad for saving someone important to the Vipera leader, in another life. It’s why Mads set up Isadora’s assignment there; if things got more dangerous than she could handle, Dad could call it in. Mads was only testing the waters for Isa. In some ways, it was a job with training wheels. And now that I know Cosmo was there, however briefly, she was even more protected.

Of course, she had no idea.

Regardless, the courtesy wasn’t enough to ruin business over; Theo never would have handed Dad any information on the haul coming in next week from this alleged James Mart at Raven River—although Theo must have decided if Writhe was looking so intently into it that they sentmeover, it was best to just give it up or perhaps even give out errant information—I don’t know if it checks out; I think it was more a test of what Isa can do than anything else. Regardless, the favor was enough to save one life.

While it included mine, in this case, it did not cover fucking injuries.

Cain explained all of this to me when I stumbled into the gym, hours before, barely able to stand on my own two feet. Dad called the Unsaint after he got off the phone with me earlier this morning when I called him from my car; Cain was Writhe’s point-of-contact for the 6 and the Unsaints where Isadora was concerned.

I didn’t repeat any of what either Lenox or Theo said about Isa to Dad or to Cain. I can barely stand to fucking think of it without wanting to be sick again, which I was as soon as I came into Nox.

Cain made me mop it up after he stitched my face with a steady hand and advised me I should go to a hospital to check for internal bleeding. I ignored all of that and changed into clothes I brought along in my car, then mopped up my puke and blood.

But Cain didn’t ask what the men of Vipera said, and aside from conveying the facts, I didn’t discuss Isadora at all.

I was stupidly grateful for it.

Cain did ask, however, precisely what happened to Lenox.

I hope I fucking killed him, but I assume if I had, even Theo’s goodwill toward Dad wouldn’t have let me leave the compound alive.

It’s the only regret I have about the entire series of events, that I didn’t murder someone while I was there. Someone who could talk about Isadora that way. Someone who planned to fucking hurt her.

But now, sitting on the mats in Nox after she knocked me to my ass, it doesn’t seem to matter what I did.

“This is mylifeyou are fucking up,” she says, straddling my lap, her hands clawed into the fabric of my hoodie. Even that touch hurts; my sternum is red and purple and something sickening like yellow in places.

There was more than a little blood in the vomit I had to mop up. Something black, too.

I cough now, with Isa in my lap, my hands on her curves. My wrists are bruised, too, my hand is sore, and my grip is weak, but I can’t let her go.

Her dark eyes are locked onto mine. I feel her anger, a warm thing coursing through her body.

My heart aches because I know what she thinks of me. That I’m overbearing and jealous and simply want her to be useless and stay home, and out of the way.

Some of those things are true. But I do want her to thrive, too. If she were the leader of Writhe, if she climbed up to the position Dad is supposed to come into, I would be the first to support her. Fuck, I would be her own personal guard.

But not this way. Not underneath men like Theo Sancte and Lenox Mars.

“I have to do damage control and I have to get them to take me seriously andyou…”

She lifts her hand from my hoodie and hits me again.

The blow reverberates through my body like a gong of echoing fire, and I think I’m going to vomit more blood.

As far as I can tell, Cain doesn’t know about the injuries there on my chest. Neither does Isa, and I don’t want to tell her. I don’t want to look weak. I fucked up her job, and now I get to face the consequences of her anger without causing her to pity me. I certainly won’t show any to her.