Chapter 17 - The King’s Wrath
Time seemed to dilate into slow motion.
I was on my knees by the edge of the pit, clutching the heavy rim of the crucible. Orson was five feet to my left, his weapon pointed at Castiglione, but Castiglione had the drop on me. A twitch of the Viper's finger, and I would be dead before Orson’s bullet could leave the barrel.
"Drop the gun, Orson," Castiglione laughed hysterically, his eyes wide with madness. "Drop it, or your little savior dies right here! Drop it, you crippled bastard!"
Orson’s face didn't betray a flicker of panic. His features were carved from arctic granite.
"You really believe I am still crippled, Vincent?" Orson asked quietly.
"Drop it!" Castiglione screamed, his gun barrel trembling against the air, aimed squarely between my eyes.
Orson opened his left hand. His customized sidearm fell to the concrete floor with a dull thud.
"Good," Castiglione grinned, his teeth stained with blood. "Now kick it away. And you, girl, lift that crucible and carry it to the cable! Move, or I swear to God I’ll—"
Castiglione never finished the sentence.
He had forgotten about Orson’s right hand.
In a move so blindingly fast it defied human sight, Orson didn't reach for a gun. From the sleeve of his tailored suit, his right hand flicked forward. A six-inch surgical scalpel—the very silver-alloy scalpel I had forged to reconstruct his severed nerves—shot through the air like a streak of lightning.
The silver blade buried itself with sickening precision straight through the meat of Castiglione’s right wrist.
"AAAAAAAGH!"
Castiglione’s fingers involuntarily seized, the gold-plated revolver discharging into the ceiling as it was torn from his grasp by the force of the impact.
Before the Viper could even register the agony, Orson closed the distance between them.
A devastating right cross—powered by newly fused titanium bone and reconstructed muscle—shattered Castiglione’s jaw with the force of a battering ram. Castiglione flew backward through the air, crashing into the steel drilling rig, his head rebounding off the iron frame before he crumpled into a heap of broken bones on the floor.
He was alive, but barely. His jaw was splintered, his arm pinned by the silver scalpel, his reign of terror reduced to pitiful, choking groans.
Orson stood over him, chest heaving slightly, his reconstructed hand pristine, completely unharmed by the impact.
Then, Orson turned his back on the fallen boss, walking back to the edge of the vault pit where I was still kneeling, my heart pounding like a trapped bird.
He knelt down beside me in the mud and shattered glass. He didn't look at the priceless master crucible. He didn't look at the fallen enemy behind him.
His hands—both of them—cupped my face with an overwhelming, desperate tenderness.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice shaking with a rare, raw emotion I had never heard in him before. "Rosie. Did he touch you?"
"No," I choked out, a sudden rush of tears stinging my eyes as the adrenaline crashed through my system. "No, Orson. I’m okay. You got him."
He pulled me into his arms, burying his face in my hair, holding me with a crushing, protective ferocity that took the breath from my lungs. I buried my face in the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent of rain, gunpowder, and cedarwood, feeling the steady, powerful rhythm of his heart beating against mine.
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"You're safe," he whispered against my ear, his voice rough and thick with devotion. "No one will ever point a gun at you again. I swear it on my soul."
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