Page 133 of The Devil of Downtown

For a moment, the car doesn’t seem quite so out of control. His foot eases, just slightly, and the engine drops into a lower, steadier hum. His shoulders tense, then sag, as if something inside him has finally buckled.

“You remember the zoo?” he asks suddenly. His voice is quieter now. Frayed. “When we took Elsie.”

The question has tears pooling in my eyes.

“Yes,” I whisper. “Of course I do.”

He keeps his eyes on the road, but they’ve gone unfocused, like he’s no longer seeing what’s in front of him. “She wouldn’t let go of my hand,” he says. “Not even to look at the map. Just dragged me everywhere like she was afraid I’d disappear if she didn’t.”

Tears cloud my vision. “She adored you.”

A breath stutters out of him. “She stood in front of the penguins forever,” he goes on. “Kept saying it wasn’t fair. That they had wings but couldn’t fly—like the world had tricked them.”

I nod, choking on the words. “You bought her the keyring. The little penguin with the blue scarf. She still has it, Brody.”

His fingers tighten around the steering wheel, then loosen. For a heartbeat, the car drifts—enough to make my stomach lurch—before he corrects it.

“I thought,” he says hoarsely, “if I could be that man again... the one she trusted like that... maybe I wouldn’t be such a mess.”

“You can be,” I say, leaning forward, desperation clawing up my throat. “You still can. Please. I don’t want to die.”

The rain lashes harder against the windshield; the wipers struggling to keep up.

Something closes off inside him.

His jaw sets. His grip tightens.

The engine roars as he presses down on the accelerator, the road ahead opening into a long, dark stretch, trees bending violently in the wind.

“No—” I sob, panic crashing over me as I claw at the door handle even though I know it’s locked. “Please, Brody.”

He doesn’t hear me, or he chooses not to.

Rain strikes the windshield in sheets now, turning everything into streaked glass and vibrating shadows. The tires hit a patch of water, and the car fishtails. He yanks the wheel to straighten it, too fast and too hard.

The tires shriek.

The front of the car slams sideways—an explosion of force—my body thrown hard against the door, air ripped from my lungs. Glass shatters. The world turns jagged, white, and violent.

Something hits my head.

Light bursts.

Then—nothing.

Just black.

Chapter thirty

Dane

Power doesn’t look like chaos. It looks like a simple conference room on the forty-second floor, where a few people quietly decide what moves and what doesn’t. Screens line one wall, market curves shifting in real time as numbers update by the second.

“This is a nine-hundred-million-dollar exposure if the appeal fails,” my CFO says, tapping the table to emphasize the point. “Worst case.”

“Worst case assumes we do nothing,” I reply, my voice steady even though my body feels anything but. “We hedge now, we cap the downside at three-twenty and unwind in phases. I’m not interested in paying for panic.”

A murmur of agreement moves around the table.