Ture scoffed. “You hit like a girl. Who taught you to fight? Your decrepit grandmother?”
Shrieking, the League soldier kicked his chair, knocking him over. Ture groaned as pain slammed through his entire body.
“I’m sick of this.” The other assassin opened the door and spoke to someone in the hallway. “Bring his brother in here.”
While they waited, the assassins set him back up in the chair. Blood suffused his mouth as his vision dimmed. They’d been at this for hours. It was like being held with Zarya all over again, except this time he did know the answer they wanted.
But he’d die before he gave them Maris.
The first round of torture had been water and electrocution. Then they’d moved to drugs and purges. Choking.
Now, an old-fashioned beating.
None of it mattered as he finally understood how Zarya had managed to go through everything without speaking. And to think he’d criticized her for it.
He’d laugh at the irony if it didn’t hurt so much to breathe.
Another League soldier brought Bristol into the cell and forced him on his knees in front of Ture. His hands were cuffed behind his back and someone had gagged him. Eyes wide with fear, he tried to say something to Ture, but he couldn’t understand a single word.
The soldier who’d done most of the beating, pulled his blaster out and angled it at Bristol’s head. “Now answer the question or I’m going to paint the wall with your brother’s brain matter.”
Bristol screamed against his gag.
Ture’s stomach heaved at the threat. Time stopped as he stared into the same eyes his sister had held, and he remembered holding her hand while she took her last breath. The shrill sound of the monitors flat-lining was forever engraved in his heart. Bristol had just been a boy and Ture had held him for hours as he cried.
The assassin removed Bristol’s gag.
Tears fell down his cheeks as he sobbed. “P-p-please, Ture. Don’t let them hurt me!”
It was the same plea Anachelle had made.
Completely unsympathetic, Bristol had curled his lip at her. “Shut that bitch up.”
They had shot her a heartbeat later. The horror of seeing her die for no reason sickened him. The fact that his own brother had told them to silence her. . . .
Unforgivable.
“I love you, Bristol,” Ture whispered.
Bristol smiled. “Then tell them where Sulle is. We can split the reward. You and me! It’s a fortune, Ture. We can both retire. We’ll never have to work again.”
Hot tears stung the cuts on his face as they fell. Ture drew a ragged breath and shook his head. “Sorry. I love Mari more.”
“I’m your brother!”
And Maris was his heart.
The League soldier sank his hand into Bristol’s hair and pressed the tip of the blaster to his temple. “I will do this.”
Ture had no doubt. Killing people was their specialty. “I know.”
“Ture . . . you can’t let me die.”
“I didn’t do this, Bristol. You did.” Had Bristol not called the League, wanting to claim the bounty on Maris’s life, they wouldn’t be here now.
“They’re going to kill me, big brother! Please help me!”
Ture screamed out as agony ripped him apart. He didn’t want to do this. What kind of monster consigned his own brother to death?
“One last time, cock-jockey. Where’s Sulle?”
Before he could even draw his breath, the door behind the soldier blew apart.
“I’m right here, asshole.” Maris opened fire on him and then swung his blaster to the other two in the room. Before Ture could blink, they were dead.
Ignoring Bristol, Maris ran to Ture and knelt beside his chair. His hand shaking, he brushed the hair back from Ture’s battered face. “Baby?”
“I knew you’d find me.”
Maris cut his restraints and pulled him into his arms as Darling joined them in the room. “Thank the gods you’re alive.”
“What about this one?” Hauk asked as he covered Bristol with his blaster. “Friend or foe?”
Maris helped Ture to his feet. “Ture?”
“He’s my brother.”
Hauk cut Bristol free while Maris leaned Ture against the wall and inspected his wounds.
Darling checked the corridor for more League soldiers.
Maris clicked on his link. “Caillen? Report?”
“I think we got them all on the way in. You should be free to the shuttle.”
Maris held his hand out to Ture. To his complete shock, Ture grabbed the reserve blaster from his hip and angled it up. Stunned, he couldn’t move to defend himself as the barrel pointed to his head.
Then Ture jerked it and shot behind him.
He turned to see Bristol sinking to the floor as a blaster fell from his hands.
Ture collapsed against him. “He was going to shoot you in the back with the blaster Hauk handed him to defend himself with.”
Slack-jawed, Hauk looked at Darling then Maris and finally Ture. “You said brother.”
Ture swallowed hard. “He was.”