what they wouldn't do | DAREDEVIL

twenty-six

SARAH HELD HER BREATH and silently prayed that Ronan wouldn't be able to recognize Matt in the shadows, that without the dark suit and glasses of his lawyer visage, perhaps the image wouldn't register as familiar in Ronan's eyes.

But yet again she was reminded of why she so rarely prayed.

"You've got to be kidding me," Ronan said, and to Sarah's dismay he sounded thrilled by the revelation. "I recognize you. The lawyer. Matthew Murdock. Oh, this is great."

Matt didn't respond, but his mouth was pressed into a tight line, and Sarah couldn't even begin to imagine what was running through his mind. Did he have a plan? Did he regret what he'd just done? Was he panicking? Or did he feel strangely distant, like she did, almost as though she wasn't really there?

"The—the one who's supposed to uphold the law is the one who's running around causing the cops so much trouble," Ronan crowed in amusement. "How did that happen?"

"Wasn't satisfied with letting scum like you slip through the cracks in the system," Matt replied harshly.

"So you put on a mask and do it at night, too," Ronan mused. "Well, let's take care of that." He roughly propelled Sarah forward a few steps, not loosening his hold on her neck at all. "Be a good girl and kick that mask into the storm drain for me. He won't be needing it for now."

Sarah flicked her gaze downward, being careful not to move her head, and saw the storm drain he was referring to just a foot or two away. The mask was directly in front of them, and she grudgingly scuffed her shoe against it a few times until it slid into the dark concrete opening and disappeared from both sight and reach.

"Excellent. See, if you had been this good at following instructions when you worked for me, maybe we wouldn't have ended up here," Ronan said, satisfied that the offending mask had been disposed of. He pressed her to his chest a little closer so that she could feel something in his jacket against her back. "I brought my tranquilizer gun just in case I needed to calm you down, but look how cooperative you're being. All you needed was to be treated correctly," he sneered.

Sarah didn't say anything, her mind racing as she tried to figure out if there was any way she could reach the tranquilizer gun in his jacket before he could slit her throat—the chances seemed to be slim to none.

When he was met with silence on Sarah's end, Ronan addressed Matt once more. "Now, what I don't understand is how you managed to talk a timid mouse like this one into working with you. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen partnering up with St-St-Stuttering Sarah Corrigan."

There was no point anymore in denying that she had been working with Daredevil. They were far past the point of Ronan ever believing that.

"He didn't talk me into anything," Sarah corrected him, breathing out a laugh that bordered on hysterical as she realized how true that was. She could feel her voice vibrating against the knife as she spoke. "It was...it was my idea."

His surprised pause was an immediate reward. If Ronan was going to cut her throat tonight, she was glad that at least she could prove he didn't know her, that this pathetic image he had of her in his head wasn't who she was.

"Well, I hope it was worth it. Because once I get word to Fisk about what the two of you have done, he'll destroy you both and anyone you've ever cared about, starting with your brain dead father. And then he'll reward me beyond what you could even imagine," Ronan said, his excitement over the prospect clear in his voice. "Just think how he'll react when he hears that the sanctimonious asshole that put him in prison is the very same masked asshole that got him arrested."

As he spoke, Sarah truly started to understand that Ronan couldn't be allowed to leave that alleyway in any shape that would allow him to do what he was threatening.