She walked back down the stairs, out the building’s service exit, and into the rain. Elias Voss would live tonight. Not because he deserved to, but because Lena no longer trusted herself to decide who deserved to die.
Unforgivable.
The Antidote had won.
She slammed her palm against the bathroom tile. The crack echoed like a gunshot.
The face of the man in Cairo—his last word wasn’t a curse or a plea. It was a name. Yasmin. His daughter. Lena had read about the funeral three days later. A small grave. A single shoe left on the dirt. The Killing Antidote
She stopped on the landing.
She pulled out the Catalyst syringe. The liquid inside looked like crushed pearls. One injection, and the Antidote would be overridden. She’d walk into that penthouse cold and clean, put a round through Voss’s left eye, and feel nothing but professional satisfaction. She walked back down the stairs, out the
She took the stairs instead of the elevator, counting steps to quiet her mind. By floor twelve, her hands were trembling. Not from fear—from the absence of it. For the first time, she imagined Voss not as a silhouette on a dossier but as a person. A man who might have a daughter. Who might cry.
Shame.
She pocketed the booster.
Somewhere above, Voss poured a drink, unaware that mercy had just passed him by. And somewhere in Lena’s chest, a quiet voice that had been dead since Cairo whispered: Unforgivable