#chapter 45

Because the way Lando’s voice cracked, the way his chest heaved at the thought of losing Y/N sounded too familiar. It sounded too close to the nights Alex had sat in the ICU waiting room, whispering to a god he didn’t believe in that if Zoe would just open her eyes again, he’d trade himself in her place without blinking.

He blinked it back. His jaw locked tighter.

And then Lando spoke again.

“Please,” Lando said again, steadier this time, forcing the word through his teeth like it hurt to say. He was pale, something buzzing beneath his skin, but still steady enough to take a half step closer. “Her only mistake… was caring about me. That’s all. That’s all she’s guilty of. Leave her out of this, and then—” His voice caught, but he forced it out anyway. “Then you can do whatever the fuck you want. You can have your revenge.”

Alex didn’t move. So Lando pushed further.

“You want revenge? Fine. You want me dead? Fine.” His voice wavered, then snapped hard, desperate. “Then take it! Take it now. You can put that gun right here—”

He moved, slowly, deliberately. His hands were still raised, but his temple pressed against the muzzle of the gun as he leaned in, forcing the metal flush to his own skull. Cold steel dug into the skin of his forehead. His pulse thudded beneath it.

“—and I won’t stop you.”

“I’m okay with this,” Lando whispered. “I deserve it. You– You want punishment? Then be a man, and take it out on me! I am not a good guy. I’ve done things — so many fucking things — that I can’t take back. So punish me.”

Lando swallowed hard. His voice cracked lower now, more broken than begging.

“Not her.”

Silence stretched. The hum of hospital machinery felt deafening.

Lando took it as hesitation. And he couldn’t afford hesitation. Not now. If Alex thought for even a second that killing Y/N was a viable option, if his mind wandered there again, then it was already too late.

So Lando forced himself to keep talking, to keep pressing the choice exactly where he wanted it. His voice grew firmer, though the panic burned beneath it like fire.

He had to make the choice for him.

“You hear me?” Lando pressed, his temple still firm against the muzzle. His tone was harsher now, more certain than he truly felt. “I said punish me. S’fair, isn’t it?”

He let out a rough breath, eyes flicking toward Y/N for only a second before snapping back to Alex. 

“A life for a life.”

For once, there was no arrogance in Lando Norris’s voice. There was no bravado, no cleverness. There was only the hollow certainty of a man who’d finally run out of moves, out of cards, out of time.

Alex stared at him, chest rising and falling too fast. His knuckles twitched around the grip. He should’ve pulled the trigger. He’d told himself he would.

This is it. This is what you wanted.

The room was silent save for the steady monitor beeps and the ragged breaths of two men—one teetering on the edge of collapse, the other on the edge of pulling a trigger.

But for once, Lando Norris wasn’t bluffing.

He meant every word.

The click of metal was deafening. 

Alex’s finger curled just slightly against the trigger, moving slowly, deliberately – as if every nerve in his hand was straining toward the moment he’d spent years imagining. This was it. This was the culmination of every nightmarish replay of sirens, of twisted steel, of Zoe’s lifeless body laid out under too-bright hospital lights. This was supposed to be justice.

Alex’s finger hovered over the trigger, pressure slowly building as if the motion alone could summon the satisfaction he’d been chasing for years. The familiar click of metal was faint, barely audible beneath the steady beep of Y/N’s monitor, but Lando felt it — every nerve in his body bracing for the inevitable impact.

This was it. The bullet he’d been begging for. The ending Alex had dreamed of.

Do it. Finish this.

But Alex’s hand stalled. His jaw clenched, and for the first time, his gaze faltered. His breathing hitched, shallow and uneven.

He stared at Lando, bloodthirsty gaze practically piercing through this cornered killer, and waited for the rush to come. Alex waited for the poison in his chest to bleed out, for the sharp relief of revenge to finally settle. He searched for it, desperate.

And found nothing.

No. This isn’t how it was supposed to go.

He looked at Lando, temple pressed to the muzzle, eyes steady even in terror. Looking into the eyes of the face he’d memorized as his sister's killer, Alex was almost thrown off kilter when he found nothing waiting for him. There was no swelling of dramatic music, no surge of karmic satisfaction. He searched, and searched desperately, yet he found no righteous release. All he could find instead was just a hollow echo where his vengeance should have lived.

His lips parted, his voice cracking under the weight of years.

“I thought it would make me feel better,” Alex whispered, more to himself than to Lando. “Like I’d– I’d finally have some power. Like I could take this poisonous pain in my chest and shove it into you instead.”

His grip shook. His finger twitched. Still, he didn’t pull. The muscles of his jaw tightened, clenching.

“I thought if I hurt you… humiliated you… maybe it’d feel better, you know? Maybe she’d know I tried. That I didn’t just forget about her.” His voice fractured, trembling with the admission. “I didn’t. She’s my older sister. My protector. My everything. And you—”

His throat worked. His eyes were wet now, furious and broken all at once.

“You took her from me.”

The gun wavered now, just slightly, as though the weight of his confession made it too heavy to hold steady.

Lando stayed still, though his chest rose and fell in tight, shallow pulls. He didn’t move, didn’t speak.

Alex’s hand shook. He blinked hard, his gaze darting from Lando to Y/N’s still body in the hospital bed. A bitter laugh broke free from his throat, unbidden.

“But now…” He started, transfixed on the sight of Y/N, of the tubes and machines and the bloodless pallour of her skin. His voice dropped, ragged.

“If I– If I shoot her… if I kill her just to hurt you…” he whispered, “then what does that make me?”

A killer. Another killer.

His hand trembled harder now, the muzzle barely steady where it pressed against Lando’s temple.

“...Then I’d be no better than you,” Alex whispered, realizing. “Punishing an innocent girl for the sins of someone else.”

The glock was still there, but the weight behind it — the conviction — was slipping through his hands like water.

The barrel dropped a fraction of an inch.

And for the first time that night, Alex looked less like an avenger and more like a man unraveling, finally forced to confront the fact that revenge couldn’t resurrect the dead, couldn’t erase grief, couldn’t fix the ruin left behind.

Just fucking do it.

Alex brought his finger back to the trigger. He wanted it—needed it—to be clean, final. Taking a deep breath, he steadied his shooting hand with his other, taking aim. He thought of Zoe, of her hind face and kinder eyes. His mind produced the fading memory of her laugh, pure and warm. Then the memory twisted, the memory of her smiling face, morphed torturously into the horrified expression as she felt the piercing pain of the wreckage around her like a knife to the chest.

But then he blinked, and the memory of Zoe’s face was replaced with another.

Y/N’s.

Her eyes wide, bright with recognition the moment before they dimmed with betrayal. The way her mouth had parted, almost like she was about to say his name, relief flooding her features when he returned to the shop… only for the knife in his hand to steal the breath from her lungs.

That look. Suddenly, it felt like it had been singed into the back of his eyelids, like a ghost of his actions having returned to haunt him. He couldn’t outrun it. It tore through him now, as violent as the gun trembling in his grip.

“I just–  I just wanted my sister back,” Alex cried, his voice breaking into something desperate, childlike. His arms shook as though the weight of the weapon was too much to bear. He raised the gun with what was supposed to be renewed conviction, but his hand was unsteady, his jaw clenching against that had already slipped out.

Lando didn’t flinch. His own voice came low, tentative, almost grim. “I can’t– I can’t undo what’s happened,” he admitted. “I know that. I’ll carry that blood on my hands a long time.”

Carefully, Lando began to lower his hands. He wanted Alex to know that he was telling the truth. He needed Alex to know that he wasn’t saying all of this out of fear. He looked directly into Alex’s eyes as he spoke again.

“I know it doesn't mean shit, but I’m sorry. I swear, I know I’m an asshole but I woulda never hurt your sister on purpose. I don’t– I’m not that kind of guy. She was just…” Lando stopped, swallowed hard. “If there’s anythin’ I can do, I’ll do it. Let me help. I– I can get her looked at by the best doctors. The best surgeons! Care she’s never had before. We could do that, yeah?”

Alex’s face flickered, the mask slipping, the fury splintering into something raw and disbelieving.

“M’ not an idiot – I know it won’t make us even,” Lando confessed, still too tense to step away from where Alex’s gun still stared into his soul. “It won’t erase what I did. But it could mean she has a chance. Let me give her that much. Let me try to give her a second chance.”

The words landed like alcohol on an open wound. Alex’s jaw worked, eyes glistening, torn between rage and the dangerous pull of hope. He’d come here for blood, not bargains. He’d come to carve grief into vengeance.

But what Lando was offering wasn’t death. It was a chance — however small — at life.

Alex’s knuckles whitened around the gun, his breath ragged. The idea was poison—too good, too cruel to even entertain. He let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “Doctors? Cures? Do you–” he scoffed, the mere idea laughable. “D’you think I’m a fucking idiot?” 

His voice cracked, almost feral. “You—Lando Norris, the Reaper of Monte Carlo—you expect me to believe you’re suddenly, what, a bleeding-heart philanthropist?” He shook his head hard, the gun now loosely aimed at Lando’s heart. “No. No. I’m not stupid enough to believe that.”

Lando stayed still, the only movement the faint rise and fall of his chest. “I don’t expect you to believe me,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t either.”

Alex sneered, but his grip wavered.

“And if you choose not to believe me…” Lando pressed, his words sharper now, deliberate, “–then deny me, deny the offer, and walk away. Let her rot in a hospital bed while you chase a revenge that will never bring her back to you. Or—” He tipped his head further to the side, almost daring Alex. “Or? Let me try. Because if you’re wrong—if I’m telling the truth—you’ve condemned her twice.”

That sank in like a knife between Alex’s ribs. He wanted to laugh, to scream, to deny it. But the thought clawed its way up, poisonous and undeniable: what if? What if this criminal, what if Lando was the only path left? What if Zoe could wake up?

Alex’s jaw clenched. His whole body shook with the effort of holding onto his rage. “If you’re lying to me…” He brought the gun lower, pointing it right at Lando’s heart, his voice low and trembling. “If you’re lying, Norris, I swear to god—”

“I know.” Lando’s voice was soft, resigned. “And I’ll deserve it.”

For a long, terrible moment, neither moved. Then Alex’s arm slowly, shakily lowered. The gun slipped to his side. He wasn’t agreeing. Not yet. But the seed of doubt—of hope—was there now, and it was eating him alive.

If there was even a chance that Zoe could open her eyes again, could look at him and laugh and scold him like she used to—how could he turn away from that?

He hated the thought, hated himself for it, but it rooted in him anyway. Because for all his grief, for all his rage, for all his spite – there was nothing Alex wanted more than a second chance.

With extensive care, Zoe survived. It wasn’t easy—the surgeries, the endless therapy, the grueling road back to consciousness. It took weeks of surgery after surgery, of painstaking rounds of therapy. There were nights Alex thought he’d lose her all over again. But then one morning, Zoe’s eyes opened, and she stayed awake long enough to say his name.

The light that returned to Alex’s face was something he’d thought he’d lost forever.

Zoe, ever gentle, ever forgiving, never once cursed Lando’s name. When she was told what had happened after hearing a long and tearful explanation for her younger brother, she simply shook her head. “It’s done. What good would blame do me now?” she murmured, her hand closing over Alex’s trembling one. “I’m alive. Isn’t that enough.”

It gutted Lando to hear it. He knew he didn’t deserve her grace, but he carried it like a weight anyway—proof that forgiveness could exist, even where it shouldn’t. Proof of what he’d never be able to ask of Y/N.

Still, every month on the 23rd, without fail, an anonymous check arrived in Alex’s dropbox. On the line bearing the sender’s name, all that was written was a name that meant nothing to anyone but himself: Liam.

Alex never said anything about it, never cashed them without suspicion first. But deep down, he had a feeling he knew what it was: not absolution. Not payment. Just a man who’d done wrong, trying in his own broken way to make something right.

And for all his bitterness, Alex let it happen. Alex never spent a dime without remembering the cost, and Lando never stopped writing them, a penance that could never quite be paid in full.

a/n: hey... hey... how y'all doin?

i'm so sorry for all the waiting for this chapter. i was busy with the lsat and then writer's block kidnapped me and held me hostage in an abandoned warehouse. but hopefully this chapter isn't too bad? not edited, but i'd still love to hear what y'all think!