Something much more dangerous.
—What did you do?
—I came here to cut it off at the root.
The silence was brutal.
Damon blinked several times.
—Cut me?
Elias looked down at the medallion.
—No. Save you… or bury you myself before you become completely like them.
The words sank into the room like knives.
Damon took a step back.
His entire life had been built on strength, dominance, control. But none of that mattered against an old man who spoke as if he knew every wound before it even existed.
“You are not my father,” he murmured.
Elias looked up.
—No. A father protects. I only created the disaster and I arrived too late.
Damon wanted to answer, but the door suddenly opened.
A guard entered, pale.
—We have a problem.
Elias did not turn around.
—They’ve already gone in.
The guard looked at him in horror.
—How did you know?
—Because they weren’t going to let me talk to him.
Damon frowned.
-Who is it?
And then the first explosion was heard.
Not inside the room.
Not near.
Far.
At the entrance to Lockrich.
Then another one.
Then the buzzing of the general alarm.
The lights flickered.
The radios exploded with overlapping voices.
Riot.
Intrusion.
Block down.
Injured personnel.
The guard froze.
Elias stood up with an agility impossible for his age.
“They came to wash away the loose blood,” he said. “From you… and from me.”
Damon looked at him, incredulous.
—Your enemies?
Elias denied it.
—No. Your bosses.
Damon’s face changed completely.
Because at that moment he understood something unbearable.
He had never been the king of the prison.
He had never owned anything.
He had been a tool. A useful heir. An animal trained to bite in the right direction.
And now that the old man had spoken to him, he was no longer of any use alive.
The alarm continued to blare.
Armed footsteps flooded the corridors.
The guard looked up, desperate.
—We have to get them out of here.
Elias took the medallion and handed it to Damon.
—Decide quickly, son.
Damon looked at him.
Then he looked at the door.
Then the emergency lights turned the room red.
All her life she had obeyed invisible men.
All his life he had run without knowing from whom.
And for the first time, the only man who seemed to fear nothing stood before him, awaiting a choice.
“If I go out with you,” Damon said, his voice cracking, “there’s no going back.”
Elias held her gaze.
—No. But perhaps for the first time there will be truth.
The door shook with a brutal bang from the other side.
Then another one.
Then a voice ordered them to open fire.
Damon closed his fist around the medallion.
And when he looked at Elias again, he no longer saw him as the old man he had humiliated in the dining room.
He saw it as the only answer he had left.
“Then don’t leave me behind,” she said.
Elias nodded once.
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