Chapter 5 - Concrete Descent
Clara’s scream was torn from her throat by the violent rushing wind. For a terrifying second, the city lights blurred into streaks of gold and blue.
Then came the bone-cracking jolt. Silas’s left hand fired a pneumatic grappling wire toward the steel maintenance crane jutting out ten floors below. The steel cable snapped taut with a screech. The sudden pendulum swing slammed them hard into an industrial glass maintenance platform on the thirty-second floor.
The impact knocked the breath from Clara's lungs. The glass cracked under their weight, but held. Silas released the tether, rolled across the platform, and instantly caught Clara by her coat before she slid off the edge.
"Breathe," he ordered, his chest pressing against her back as he held her pinned against the wall of the service lift.
She wept, shivering uncontrollably from adrenaline and cold rain. "You're insane. You're completely out of your mind."
"You're alive," he countered coldly. He kicked open the maintenance window leading into the building’s utility floor. "That puts you ahead of Marcus's crew by five minutes."
He pulled her through into a labyrinth of humming air vents and yellow utility pipes. In the dim amber light of the service conduits, Silas paused, ripping a strip of cloth from his shirtsleeve to bind a deep cut across his forearm.
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"Why are you helping me?" Clara asked, hugging her shivering arms. "You said my name is in that book. If you're an enforcer, why haven't you killed me?"
Silas looked down at her, his dark eyes devoid of pity, yet carrying something ancient and unresolved. "Because your father didn't just write that ledger, Clara. He was my mentor. And the day he vanished, he gave me one single rule: If his daughter’s name ever appeared in the book, it meant the devil himself had ordered the hit."
