Chapter 9 - The Final Verdict
Julian struck Damian across the face with the heavy metal grip of a tactical knife, drawing a deep line of crimson across his cheek. Damian didn't even flinch. He caught Julian’s wrist, twisting it with brutal, calculated force until the bone snapped with a sickening pop.
Julian screamed, thrashing wildly on the concrete, the rain starting to fall from the blackened sky above, turning the ash on their faces into streaks of black mud.
"You ruined everything!" Julian sobbed, clutching his broken wrist, his pristine sweater torn and soaked in blood. "We could have owned the world, Damian! Together!"
"You killed our father," Damian said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion, cold as the steel in his hand. "And you terrified a child who had nothing to do with our war."
"Dad was a tyrant!" Julian screamed, tears mixing with the soot on his cheeks. "And you're just a hypocrite playing house!"
Damian raised his pistol, the barrel hovering inches from Julian’s forehead. The rain hissed as it hit the hot metal of the slide. For a second—a fraction of a heartbeat—the ghost of their childhood flashed behind Damian’s eyes. Summers by the lake. Laughter in the long grass before the blood and the bullets took over.
Then he saw the crayon drawing in his mind. Can you make the bad man disappear?
Damian lowered the gun an inch, gripped Julian by the collar of his ruined sweater, and dragged him right to the very edge of the helipad, looking down at the jagged rocks three meters below.
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"I’m not going to kill you, Julian," Damian whispered, his voice like grinding ice. "Prisons in this country are too soft for what you are. But you're going to disappear. Exactly the way you wanted everyone else to."
Before Julian could scream, Damian released his grip.
