NATHAN CROSS STRIKE BACK..

Chapter 3

At that moment it was as if a strange energy entered his body, and hid eyes widened immediately.

Nathan Cross could feel his leg.

That was the strange thing.

He shouldn't have been feeling it. It was broken and damaged.

 He had heard it break, felt the pain. He had screamed when it happened. But now — lying in the garbage in the dark — there was nothing. No pain from the leg. No pain from his face. No pain from his ribs either.

Nothing at all.

Like someone had reached inside him and switched everything off.

His mind was still working though.

And his mind had one single thought in it.

"Get out."

"Get out before six in the morning."

He did not know what time it was. He did not know how long he had been lying there. But he remembered what the men had said before they drove away.

Workers at six. Machines at six thirty, and his heart will stop in ten minutes.

If he was still here when that happened  broken or not, alive or not — they would crush everything. The garbage. The waste. Him. All of it together. And nobody would ever find a single piece of him.

Derek and Serena would go shopping tomorrow and he would simply stop existing.

“No.”

The word formed in his mind like iron cooling into shape.

“No. That is not how this ends.”

At that moment he pressed his hand to his chest where the mark was burning.

Something was happening inside him. Something he had no words for. A strange energy moving through his body slowly and steadily  pushing into his broken places, filling them, changing them. He could feel his ribs settling. He could feel the swelling in his face pulling back. He could feel things inside him knitting back together at a speed that made no medical sense.

The pain was gone because the damage was being repaired.

Not completely. Not quickly enough. His body was exhausted and the energy was powerful but his body was not used to carrying it yet. Like a pipe that was too narrow for the water being pushed through it.

But it was enough, It was enough to stand.

Immediately he pushed himself up.

He stood on his broken leg and felt nothing from it and looked at the fence at the far end of the yard and the faint glow of street lights beyond it.

“Walk, I need to move”

He walked.

Unsteady. Slow. Grabbing onto garbage piles when he needed to stay upright. His whole body trembling with the effort of carrying itself.

But moving forward.

He reached the fence. He climbed it — slowly, painfully, arms shaking the whole way, and came down the other side and did not fall.

He started toward the main road, two hundred meters of dark narrow road.

He covered it one step at a time.

When he finally stepped off the side road onto the proper pavement and saw the street lights stretching in both directions he allowed himself one single moment.

“I made it out.”

Then his body gave its final notice.

The energy from the mark dropped to almost nothing. His legs stopped working. He went down onto the road and lay still.

The mark kept pulsing on his chest. Still working. Still healing him slowly.

But he was done moving for now.

His eyes closed.

“Not dead,” he thought. 

“Just not done yet.”

**

**Vivienne Sterling** had been sitting in her parked car for almost an hour before she started driving.

She had needed the wine first.

Not because she was a drinker. She rarely drank. But tonight she needed something to sit between her and the conversation she had just had with her grandfather. Something to keep the fury at a manageable distance so it did not eat her alive.

She had called him with evidence.

Three weeks of careful quiet research. A full file. Seven women she had personally spoken to. Signed statements. Photographs. Financial records that showed payments made after relationships ended — payments that looked very much like silence money. A timeline connecting Marcus Hale to more than twenty women over eight years.

Every story the same.

He chose them. He pursued them completely. He made them feel special and safe and chosen.

And then when he was finished he destroyed them on the way out.

Reputations. Careers. Lives. He left nothing standing behind him.

Two women had needed to leave the country entirely.

One had been hospitalized.

And one — one woman whose name Vivienne had spent two weeks trying to trace had simply disappeared eighteen months ago. Not moved away. Not gone quiet.

Gone.

Vivienne had built the file carefully and completely and she had called her grandfather tonight because she believed — she genuinely believed that if he saw the evidence he would listen.

At that moment her grandfather came in again, and she answered slowly.

“Grandfather.” She had kept her voice steady. 

“I have done three weeks of research on Marcus Hale. I have spoken to seven women personally. I have signed statements, photographs, financial records—”

“Vivienne.” His voice was already patient in the way that meant he had stopped listening before she started. 

“You are different. You are a Sterling. He knows—”

“Please let me finish this time around.” She pressed on. "More than twenty women. All of them the same story. He uses them and he destroys them. Two had to leave the country. One was hospitalized. And one woman — I cannot find her anywhere. I have tried every way I know how and she simply does not exist anymore after she got involved with him.” She paused. 

“I think he kills people, Grandfather. I have evidence that suggests—”

“Stop.” His voice went hard. 

“Stop right there. You are frightened and you are making up stories. You are sitting somewhere building nonsense out of rumors because you do not want to face reality.”

“I am not making up stories. I have a file—”

“The decision has been made,” he said. Cold. Flat. Final. 

“It is not open for discussion. This marriage is happening. You cannot escape it. The sooner you accept your reality the better.”