Chapter 29
The Suburban’s headlights cut through pre-dawn darkness as I drive, and I force my thoughts away from Daphne. I’ll go and claim her soon, but not yet. First, I end the man who put that bruise on her jaw.
While I drive toward Hallstein, Logan and Wren will pull Camille from that house of horrors. Another woman saved while I go to destroy the man who's hurt too many.
The two-hour drive south becomes torture.
Her vanilla scent clings to the truck's interior, making my chest tight.
I crack the window but the humid Florida air just makes it worse, reminds me of her skin after dancing, that sheen of sweat I wanted to taste.
My body screams its deficit: twenty hours awake since yesterday morning, hands trembling slightly on the wheel, vision threatening to gray at the edges.
The headache behind my right eye pulses with each heartbeat.
I override it all. For her.
Hallstein's warehouse appears in the industrial corridor at five thirty-five, and all I see is Daphne tied to that chair, bruised because I let her go home. Because I thought distance would protect her. My jaw clenches until my teeth ache.
I find the cut in the fence that Peytone left for me, wide enough for a man my size.
Still, I have to squeeze through the gap before sprinting across the cracked asphalt.
The gate operator never sees death coming.
My suppressed shot drops him at forty feet.
I drag his body into shadows and keep moving.
The roving patrol's flashlight beam swings through darkness, advertising his position.
I ghost through blind spots I mapped out last night, moving in dead zones between cameras, apart from one brief stretch I can't avoid.
When my knife opens his throat at the receiving dock, arterial spray hitting concrete, I see Daphne's face in that basement.
The security room operator watches feeds showing nothing.
I've been a ghost in his cameras, even with the stretch of live footage—Emilio Rosetti made sure of that, hacking into the system from New York.
The side door opens without a sound. My arm slides around the guard's throat, and he's unconscious in six seconds.
I lower him carefully. No need for excess.
Save the rage for the one who deserves it.
Three men down in eight minutes.
The metal stairs don't echo under my weight as I climb toward Hallstein's office. My hand finds the knife again, fingers tracing the blade. This is the one that matters.
Inside Hallstein's warehouse, I watch the office from the shadow of a stairwell, blood cooling on my sleeve.
The man is exactly as I left him a decade ago: perfectly groomed, one of those jawlines that was supposed to mean authority, but always looked better suited for a mugshot.
He pours bourbon and stares at his phone, waiting for the call he thinks will save his kingdom. He has no idea the war is already over.
I fixate on the details. The way he rolls the glass in his palm, like a gambler with dice. The tiny tremor in his left hand. The phone screen, cracked at the corner, showing a family photo.
He's reading something on the laptop when I push open the office door.
The hydraulic hinges let it whisper wide as I step into the fluorescent light.
He glances up, eyes glassy and sleep-deprived, and it takes two full seconds for his brain to register my face.
He blinks, then flicks his gaze to the desk drawer on his right.
It's the only move he's ever been capable of—the lunge for hardware, the desperate try at control. I almost want to let him reach the gun, just to give him the illusion. But I cross the distance in three strides, the rage in me so clean that every motion feels weightless, already rehearsed.
"You," he says, and the word is part accusation, part plea.
I slam him back in the rolling chair and pin his elbow, my left hand flattening the arm against the cheap laminate. My right has the knife, pressed to his carotid in a heartbeat. He goes rigid, pupils blown to pins, all that old confidence draining out like bad oil.
"You're not dead," he manages, trying to smirk.
I lean in, breathing his cologne and this other note—stale sweat, the kind that sheets off a man who knows he's prey. "Not for lack of trying," I say, and smile so he can see all my teeth.
He grits his jaw, and with an almost comical flash of bravado, jerks his chin up. "You can kill me, but one of my men will—"
"Not interested in your speech," I cut him off. "You know why I'm here?"
He works his mouth. "You want money? I can give you more than you ever dreamed of. You can take the car—"
I almost laugh. I want to tell him what I really want is for Daphne never to have stepped foot in this town. But that's not how revenge works. It's always about past debts, never future wishes.
"Try again," I say, and tap the knife gently against his throat. A line of red blooms under the blade.
His breath catches. "The women? This is all about those damn women? Their husbands and sons killed our men, our brothers, and you want to avenge them? They were wartime enemies. Our fucking enemies."
"Wrong. They were women."
I press the knife deeper into his fleshy throat, and a fat bubble of blood slides down his neck.
"That girl, that Gilles girl, I can let her free if you—"
"That girl," I echo, low. "The one you had tied to a chair. The one you ordered to be hurt."
He tries to bluster, but I see the calculation flare in his eyes. Even now, he's looking for an out, a trick, some angle he missed on the first pass. He tilts his head and tries the old condescension. "If you think this scares me—"
"I don't," I say, and open his cheek with a quick cut, just enough to bleed but not to kill. "But I want you to know I'm not here for the money, or power. I'm here for all the women you've hurt. I'm here for Daphne."
He sputters, the blood running salty down his jaw. "They're whores! You're risking your life for—"
The next motion is pure instinct. My hand clamps his mouth, and I pull him forward, forcing him to look at me, dead on.
"She's the only thing in this world that's ever mattered," I say, and my voice is so soft I almost don't recognize it.
"You hurt her. And now, you get to find out what that costs. "
For a moment, he's silent. There's something almost like understanding in his eyes now, as if he's finally seeing the real end.
The hand with the knife moves so fast it's a blur in the air.
The blade slips in behind his jaw, up under the chin.
He gurgles, and I cut sideways, severing the carotid.
Blood splashes across the desk, soaking the bourbon, the laptop, the photo of his family.
He tries to talk, but only bubbles come out. I lean close, watching the life fade, and say: "You could have had a better death. But you picked the wrong woman."
He dies sloppy and scared, slumped in the chair as his blood pools on the tile.
I wipe the blade on his shirt, then pocket it.
I grab the phone, the laptop, anything that might matter to Logan, and toss the rest. I don't linger.
There's no point. The place is already crawling with the rot of his legacy.
Outside, the sky is still dark gray. My hands shake as I text Logan: Done. The reply comes in under a minute.
Logan's response: Camille secured. At the recovery facility. Stable. Dossier will release on schedule.
Nine years ended, but all I want is her.
The drive back to La Sirena becomes a battle against my own body.
Without the rage to fuel me, everything crashes at once, and I know there's no chance I'd make it all the way to Pristine.
Vision graying on the Turnpike, making me grip the wheel to stay centered.
Her phantom hand on my thigh is the only thing keeping me conscious.
That touch she gave me, that permission I ran from.
My throat's so dry it hurts to swallow. The headache spreads from my eye across my skull.
Her vanilla scent in the truck becomes torture.
Every breath reminds me she's not here, that I left her with bruises and trauma and a father who almost died because of me.
My body's been running on adrenaline and obsession for a week, and now that Hallstein's dead, there's nothing left to override the deficit.
The loading dock materializes at six fifty-eight. I sit for ten seconds after killing the engine, gathering strength I don't have. Step out. I manage three steps toward the stairs.
The ground tilts. My knees buckle. I reach for a wall that isn't where walls should be, vision tunneling to gray.
Marisol catches me, or at least slows my fall—she isn't big enough to hold my weight.
"We've got you," she says, and I look around to find Isa and Juliet on my other side, their small hands surprisingly strong as they get my weight against their shoulders.
"Jesus, Gunner," Marisol scolds, "when did you last eat? When did you last sleep?"
I try to answer but words won't form. She and Isa and Juliet walk me to the back office, muscles straining.
The leather couch against the wall becomes my whole world.
Between them, they pull off my blood-spattered plate carrier without flinching.
They've seen worse. My boots next. Marisol's fingers find my pulse at the wrist, looking for solid evidence I'll be okay.
"Daphne," I manage before unconsciousness takes me.
"She's safe," Marisol says. "I told the guards on her cottage to check in every ten minutes, because I knew you'd be an old grandmother goose about it. Now, sleep."
But Marisol knows me too well. She sees the intent in my bones, the way my hands clench and unclench, the way my eyes keep darting to the door like I might sprint for it on instinct.
She cuts me off before I even start, channeling the drill sergeant energy she reserves for emergencies and idiots. I'm definitely the latter.