Seeing him in the daylight, Corday found the Beta to be only a ghost of a person. There was something wrong with the way his eyes tracked their movement, a lifelessness to his face. When he spoke his voice was not only disinterested, it was dead. “It has.”

“Fine.” Leslie nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “Kill these men, and let’s make our way.”

Before the word kill had crossed Svana’s lips, the Beta acted. In a blur he’d shouldered his rifle and showered a spray of bullets on Leslie Kantor’s bodyguards. As the untried rebels fell, only two had squeezed off return fire before their death—a single bullet embedding in the concrete at Jules’ feet.

Lowering his weapon, he scowled at the woman, disgusted by the men’s utter lack of skill when it came to actual combat. “You did not train them well.”

Leslie ignored the taunt. Instead, her focus was on where Corday lay. The impact of a bullet had knocked him down, a growing bloodstain marking his thigh. Rattled breath twisted his groans. One hand to his wound, he scrambled to lift his weapon.

All it took was Leslie’s foot atop his wrist to stop the pathetic attempted attack.

Reaching down to take Corday’s gun for her own, she complained. “He’s still alive.”

Jules’ answer was dry. “Shepherd desires that this one suffer.”

“Poetic.” Pointing his gun at his skull, the woman seemed to debate the benefits of letting Corday meet a cold, lonely death on the roof. Maybe it was the way he cursed her name over and over. Maybe it was because he had been her plaything for so long. Either way, she took a step back. “Fine. I will give Shepherd this one last concession.”

On the edge of the roof, standing confident and free, she cut a glance at the Follower and explained her deeper thinking. “He forced my hand, you know. This wasn’t how I wanted it to be. Shepherd made me do this. You understand that, Jules.”

Jules stared down at the panting man, took a long look at his handiwork, and curled his lip. “I gave you your chance to shoot her. You hesitated.”

The smile Svana wore, the self-assured cocky smirk, diminished to the point where her face was blank, chilling. “You would dare insult me now? Not one of you—”

Jules didn’t acknowledge a word out of her mouth. Before she could make any grand speeches, he unloaded ten bullets into her chest.

Eyes bugging out of his head, Corday struggled to scoot out from under Svana’s collapsing body. “What the fuck?”