Page 154 of Vicious Kingdom

Leo smirked. “You think you can win?”

“Shut up,” Jon snarled and slammed Leo’s head into the rail again.

I ran for it, the knife cold and perfect in my palm.

Jon saw me coming. “You really want to play, Anna?” He let go of Leo and turned, arms spread. “You’re going to kill me? After everything?”

I rushed at him, blade pointed at his heart. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

The wind whipped my hair into my eyes.

Jon shook his head, a terrible, fatherly disappointment in the gesture. “You don’t have the guts.”

I lunged.

The knife caught him just above the kidney, sinking in with a sick, elastic resistance. Jon gasped, eyes wide, and staggered back. “Jeezes, Anna,” he managed, voice cracking.

I didn’t stop. I buried the blade in deeper, twisting with a savage force.

Jon buckled, blood spilling black in the encroaching dusk. He tried to turn and point the gun at me, but Leo batted it out of his hands.

His own were free.

Of course they were. He stood there, indomitable, power leeching from every pore. This was his city, and he was king of it all.

Jon tried to crawl, but he didn’t get far. He looked at me with something like awe, or maybe just the shock of seeing a legacy shattered in its own blood.

“You did it,” he croaked. “You fucking did it.”

I nodded. “Someone had to.”

He laughed, wet and filled with disgust. He rolled onto his side, fingers groping for something—anything. Blood streamed in ribbons from his shirt, but his face was calm, almost serene. A movement caught the corner of my eye: the black steel of the revolver, half-buried in the rooftop gravel.

He lunged.

So did Leo.

The two of them collided in a flurry of limbs and breath, Jon’s teeth gritted, Leo’s face a mask of pure, wild resolve. The gun scraped the tar, skittering to the brink of the roof before Leo’s foot pinned it down.

Jon clawed at Leo’s shirt, desperate, animal-like. Leo bared his teeth and ripped Jon’s hand free, the effort painting new streaks of red across his knuckles.

Leo didn’t stop. He drove his knee into Jon’s gut, then wrenched the revolver free and swung it up in both hands.

Jon didn’t plead. He just glared at us, a world of hate in two blue eyes.

Leo cocked the hammer.

My own expression hardened. “Goodbye, Uncle.”

Leo pulled the trigger.

The shot was muffled, anticlimactic, but Jon’s body jerked like a marionette cut from its strings. He collapsed, deadweight, limbs splayed across the rooftop.

For a heartbeat, nothing moved but the trickle of fresh blood.

Leo straightened, breath coming ragged. He tossed the gun onto the corpse, then staggered toward me.

His eyes found mine, bright and haunted. “I will always protect you.”