Aimed at my heart - Chapter #6 - by Tessa Kelwyn

POV Mara

Adrian fished a fob from his inner jacket pocket—BMW, matte-black, the logo catching the fluorescent bulb—and waited for my reaction with patience.

The key dangled between us, and I almost asked what game we were playing now, but the question lodged behind my teeth because nothing in this room obeyed logic anymore.

"I believe you don't know anything," he said, and the words hit me like a physical touch, unexpected and too intimate for this gray room that still smelled like fear-sweat and anticipation of pain. "But getting out isn't simple. This building belongs to the syndicate. It's a dead shell topside, and we're in a basement where the walls drink sound."

The casual way he explained it—like discussing restaurant directions—made my skin prickle with fresh dread.

He knew this place. Had probably brought others here, watched them break in rooms just like this one.

"Still," he continued, weight shifting slightly, a tell I'd noticed when we'd danced around each other at dinner, "I think you can make it."

I stared at him, my mind fracturing into competing theories. Maybe this was elaborate foreplay to him—watch the girl run, let her think she's free, then drag her back for whatever came next.

An image flashed unbidden: Adrian opening the door, loosing every house dog while he watched me sprint and laughed at my desperation. The thought made me want to vomit or kill him or both.

He let the pause stretch between us like taffy, reading every micro-expression on my face. Then he answered the accusation I hadn't voiced.

"You think I'm setting you up." Not a question. A statement delivered with the same certainty he'd had when he said we'd meet again. "I'm not. It just won't be easy."

He angled his body slightly, jacket falling open enough for me to see the gun at his hip—deliberate, measured, showing me his cards.

"We stage a fight," he said, voice steady as a surgeon explaining a procedure. "You hurt me. It needs to read like you beat me—believable damage, the kind that shows in bruises and blood. You take the car key and the gun. You'll need both if you're going to reach the street and run away."

The plan was insane. Also my only option besides dying in this chair. The absurdity of it—him standing there proposing I beat him unconscious like we were rehearsing a play—made me want to laugh until I screamed.

"Great," I said, arid as drought. "Let me just free my limbs and I'll get right to breaking your face."

The smile that crossed his features was maddeningly gentle, the same one he'd worn when offering his handkerchief, and I hated how my body responded even now—heat pooling low despite everything.

He stepped close, inside my guard, close enough that I could smell him. Close enough to kill or kiss.

His fingers found the zip ties at my wrists, and the touch sent electricity shooting up my arms. Not fear. Something worse. Something that made me remember the way he'd pulled me against him in the café doorway.

"I can't cut them—it has to look like you worked them yourself," he murmured, and his breath ghosted across my neck as he worked.

The proximity was torture of a different kind. He cinched the plastic, twisted with practiced precision, loosened just enough.

The moment I felt play in the restraints, I wrenched free with violence that surprised us both. No thanks given, no acknowledgment of what he was risking.

I stripped the rest of the ties myself, skin raw and bleeding where the plastic had bitten deep.

He stood within reach the entire time, unflinching, like he trusted me not to immediately go for his throat. The faith in that gesture made something crack in my chest.

We squared off in the gray room, a breath between us heavy with everything—what we'd been, what we were, what we could never be now. Then I moved.

I grabbed the metal chair like it weighed nothing, adrenaline making me stronger than I'd ever been.

The impact when I brought it across his shoulders was brutal, efficient. He went down exactly as he should—controlled but convincing, letting his body crumple in a way that would read as genuine to anyone watching.

I hauled him up by his expensive collar, the fabric bunching in my fists, and turned his face toward mine.

For one insane second, we were close enough to kiss, and I saw recognition of that in his eyes—the same devastating want that was eating me alive.

Then I drove my fist into his cheek, splitting skin, tasting copper in the air. Another shot to his mouth, feeling his lip split against my knuckles, remembering how soft those lips had been against mine.

"Now I know about the blood that day," he said thickly through the damage I'd done, almost amused despite the pain. "You were disciplining someone barehanded. Like now."

The casual observation—like he was filing away information about me for later—made me hit him again, harder this time, putting my whole body behind it.

His jaw snapped to the side and he spat blood onto the concrete, but his eyes never left mine. Even bleeding, even letting me beat him, he looked at me like I was something worth memorizing.

I pulled the fob from his slack fingers. Then the gun came free from his holster, and the weight of it in my hand felt like coming home.

Armed again. Dangerous again. Myself again, except for the traitorous part that wanted to kiss his blood away.

I wheeled to the door and yanked it open, not looking back because if I did, I might do something catastrophic like thank him or kill him or ask him why.

Two men were smoking in the hallway, cigarettes halfway to their mouths when they saw me. One choked on his drag as Adrian's voice erupted from the room behind me, pitched loud for the corridor's benefit.

"She's bolting—took her chance—get her!"

The performance was perfect. They lunged without thinking, and I dropped the first with an elbow to his throat that collapsed his windpipe into a whistle.

The second tried to grab me; I swept his knee and finished with my heel to his temple. He dropped like a stone, cigarette still burning between his fingers.

I glanced back at Adrian, who was pulling himself up against the doorframe, blood painting his face into something unrecognizable.

No thanks would come—we both knew he'd sell me out the moment it kept the syndicate off him. This was a transaction, not salvation.

"Goodbye," I threw at him, not knowing if it was a threat or promise.

Then I ran.

The corridors blurred into a maze of industrial gray, my lungs burning with each turn.

I climbed stairs that groaned under my weight, following the building's hum as it changed frequency—closer to street level, closer to air that didn't taste like basement death.

Footfalls gathered behind me like thunder, echoing in ways that made it impossible to count how many.

At the end of a hallway, a red EXIT sign glowed with the promise of salvation or another trap. The metal door was locked, of course it was.

I hit it hard enough to bruise my shoulder, then caught myself, thinking.

These were soldiers, not thinkers. I knocked again, this time the way a man without keys would—impatient, entitled, irritated at his own forgetfulness.

A voice filtered through the metal, muffled but clear enough: "Gabe, when are you going to stop forgetting your keys?"

A bolt slid free with a sound like benediction. The latch ticked.

For a split second, suspended between the basement and whatever came next, before the world opened wide or collapsed entirely, I thought: today is my second birthday.