Chapter 12: Knife-Edge Reckoning
The world shrank to the pressure of the blade—a thin, cruel line of cold against her pulse. Cynna’s breath hitched, trapped in her throat. Maya’s other arm was a vice around her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. The darkness was absolute, broken only by the jagged outline of the shattered door against the hallway light.
“You’ll never be his only.” Maya’s whisper was a fever-dream rasp, hot and damp against Cynna’s ear.
Then a shape filled the broken doorway, blocking the light.
“Maya!”
Pedro’s voice wasn’t a shout. It was a low, gut-punch of a sound, stripped of all charm, all ease. It was pure terror.
He moved. Cynna didn’t so much see him as feel the air displace, a sudden turbulence in the stagnant dark. Maya flinched, her grip tightening instinctively. The knife bit deeper. A searing line of fire bloomed on Cynna’s neck.
A warm trickle, immediate and shocking, traced a path down her collarbone. Pedro saw it—the dark liquid welling against the pale skin in the sliver of light from the hall.
“Let her go.” His voice was a wire, stretched taut. “Maya, look at me. Let her go right now.”
He took a slow step into the apartment, glass crunching under his boot. His hands were open, held low and wide, but every muscle in his body was coiled for a spring he didn’t want to make. The math was terrible and simple: one wrong move, and the blade would slip deeper.
“She was always there,” Maya sobbed, the knife trembling. “With her quiet looks and her sad scripts. You felt sorry for her. You pitied her into your life.”
“That’s not true.” Cynna’s voice was a strangled thread of sound. The metallic smell of her own blood filled her nose.
“It is!” Maya screamed, shaking her, the blade kissing the wound again. Pedro flinched as if struck. “We were the plan, Pedro. You and me. Before her. Before any of this. We talked about it, drunk on that cheap wine in your first shitty apartment. We could have been everything.”
Pedro’s eyes never left the knife. He remembered that night, the vague, tipsy fantasy of two friends saving each other from loneliness. It had been a throwaway line, a comfort. He saw now how it had festered in her, twisting into this alternate reality.
“That was a different life, Maya.” He took another careful step. The gap was closing. “This is now. Put the knife down.”
“She took it. She made you small. She made you choose her little world over our family.” Spittle landed on Cynna’s cheek. “I was going to have your baby. We were going to be a family, all of us. She couldn’t stand that. She had to get sick, she had to almost die, to make you forget.”
The cruelty of it, woven from her illness, stole Pedro’s breath. He saw the glint of the blade, the wild whites of Maya’s eyes. He saw Cynna’s face, pale and accepting, as if this was just the final, logical tragedy.
He didn’t think about Maya’s pain, her breakdown, her years as his best friend. All he saw was the woman he loved, bleeding in the dark because of the woman holding her.
He chose.
In one fluid motion, he lunged, not for the knife hand, but for Maya’s forearm. He grabbed it just above the wrist, his fingers digging into the tendon, and wrenched it away from Cynna’s throat. The knife flashed, arcing through the air.
It sliced a hot line across the back of his own hand. He ignored the sting.
He drove forward, using his weight to spin Maya, to break her hold. Cynna stumbled free, a gasp tearing from her as she fell against the overturned couch. Pedro and Maya crashed into the bookshelf. Photos and knickknacks rained down around them.
He had her wrist pinned to the floor now, his knee on her arm. The knife was still in her grip, her fingers locked around the handle. She stared up at him, not with hatred, but with a profound, shattered betrayal.
“You chose the ghost,” she whispered, her body going limp beneath him. “You always choose the ghost.”
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer. Chloe must have called. Pedro didn’t loosen his grip. He looked over his shoulder, his eyes finding Cynna in the gloom. She had a hand pressed to her neck, her breathing ragged, her green eyes wide and fixed on him.
He kept his weight on Maya’s arm until the red and blue lights painted the walls.