Majeston
The drive felt longer than it actually was.
My hands rested firmly against the steering wheel while mile after mile disappeared beneath the headlights, yet my mind never once focused on the road in front of me.
It remained trapped inside that house I’d just left behind, replaying every expression that crossed Yuki’s face after I’d told her the truth she’d spent years avoiding.
I prayed she’d stay. Lord knew I prayed she finally understood what I’d been trying to tell her before I walked away.
Because if she didn’t, tonight wouldn’t simply mark the end of another war between old enemies.
It would become the night our family finally broke beyond repair, leaving behind wounds neither revenge nor regret would ever be able to heal.
I tightened my grip around the steering wheel before forcing my attention back to the road. I couldn’t afford distractions now. Too many lives had already been lost getting us to this point, and if my instincts were right, I wasn’t the only one racing toward Marius tonight.
The location hadn’t come from luck, surveillance, or some miracle that suddenly tipped the scales in our favor.
It came at the cost of a man’s life. More accurately, it came from Elias death.
The moment Cazmir told me he’d been executed and the burner phone was nowhere to be found, I knew the location hadn’t died with him.
Somebody had reached Elias first, and whoever it was understood exactly what that phone was worth.
By the time I made it over there, the house had already been swarming with local law enforcement. I had learned his wife had found him where he’d fallen, and Cazmir had been damn near impossible to restrain upon arrival of the scene.
I’d known Elias for years. Long before I learned just how deeply he’d buried himself inside Marius world, he’d been my friend.
We’d hunted together, celebrated birthdays together, watched Cazmir grow up, and because of who he was I’d convinced myself the badge on his chest still meant something.
I was wrong. The badge Elias once wore with pride had become nothing more than another business investment, another disguise that allowed him to move children through the very system that was supposed to protect them.
Learning he’d aligned himself with Marius had been one betrayal, but discovering just how many innocent lives he’d sacrificed to keep that secret buried was something else entirely. Whatever friendship we’d once shared had died long before Elias ever did.
It was no less twenty minutes ago that Emory called to tell me Masina had confronted Yuki, and suddenly every loose thread I’d been trying to untangle finally wove itself together.
Yuki had found Elias, extracted Marius location, killed the only man capable of confirming it, and walked away knowing Marius would believe his secret had died alongside him.
It was a brilliant move. Cold, calculated, and exactly the kind of decision the woman I married would’ve made before revenge consumed every part of her.
Unfortunately for Marius, his greatest mistake wasn’t trusting Elias to keep his location hidden.
It was believing Elias died before someone else managed to piece the puzzle together.
The gravel beneath my tires crunched as I turned off the main road and followed the narrow drive leading toward the property hidden deep inside the tree line.
The place looked abandoned from a distance, the kind of safe house a man like Marius would’ve chosen after spending years perfecting the art of disappearing.
I killed the engine and stepped out into a silence that put every instinct I possessed on edge.
A safe house like this should’ve been alive with armed guards, rotating patrols, or at the very least some indication that someone was watching the perimeter.
Instead, there was nothing. No movement behind the windows.
No voices drifting through the trees. No lights burning inside the house.
Just an eerie stillness that washed over the property like whoever had been here had vanished without a trace.
My hand instinctively rested against the Glock secured beneath my jacket as I made my way toward the front porch.
The front door was still closed, but the lock had already been forced, splintered wood hanging from the frame just enough to tell me someone else had come through before I did.
Whoever they were, they hadn’t bothered hiding it.
Weapon drawn, I slipped inside and cleared the house the same way I’d been trained decades ago, moving methodically from room to room without allowing emotion to cloud instinct.
The kitchen was empty. So was the living room.
The office had been abandoned in a hurry, drawers hanging open and papers scattered across the floor, while every bedroom sat vacant with no sign of the man I’d come looking for.
Even the basement offered nothing but stale air and unanswered questions.
By the time I cleared the final room, the knot that had been forming in my stomach loosened into the unmistakable feeling of disappointment.
Marius was gone.
I started toward the staircase before something made me stop. Years of training had taught me to trust instinct long before evidence, and every instinct I possessed told me this house was still hiding something.
My eyes swept the basement again until they landed on a section of shelving that didn’t quite match the rest of the concrete wall.
Dust had settled everywhere except along the floor directly beneath it, where faint scrape marks cut through the grime as though the shelves had been moved more than the rest of the room.
I holstered my weapon long enough to brace both hands against the metal frame before shoving with everything I had.
The shelving groaned, sliding several inches to the side, revealing a narrow steel door concealed behind it.
A keypad hung uselessly beside the frame, it's casing shattered by what looked like the butt of a rifle.
I eased the door open and stepped in a narrow concrete corridor lit by a single flickering bulb.
The farther I walked, the quieter the world became until all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing and the steady rhythm of my shoes against the floor.
At the end of the narrow corridor sat a small room furnished with nothing more than a desk, a cot, and an old wooden chair.
The house was quieter than it should have been—not empty, just quiet.
There was a difference. Men who had lived long enough with enemies learned to recognize it before they crossed the threshold.
Empty had a certain looseness to it. A settling of wood, the faint hum of appliances nobody had bothered to turn off, dust collecting in places untouched by human hands.
Quiet was deliberate. It meant somebody was waiting.
Listening for the sound of an approaching car, a shifting floorboard, the click of a weapon being readied in another room.
I pushed the door behind me without taking my eyes off the narrow hallway stretching toward the back of the house. The place wasn’t much to look at from the outside, just another aging property sitting far enough beyond the Memphis city limits to keep neighbors from asking questions.
Faded siding. Overgrown weeds. A mailbox leaning toward the road like it had grown tired of standing upright. Anybody passing would’ve assumed the house had been abandoned years ago. That was probably the point.
Marius had spent his entire life building monuments to himself.
Mansions with too many rooms. Offices designed to make grown men feel small.
Clubs, businesses, compounds, and properties positioned like trophies across a map.
Yet this was where all that power had brought him in the end.
A forgotten house surrounded by dying grass and trees stripped bare by the season, hiding in rooms that smelled faintly of dust, old wood, and the stale remnants of cigar smoke.
There was something poetic about a man who had once believed the whole city belonged to him now reduced to keeping the lights low so nobody noticed he was home.
I moved deeper into the house with my gun resting against my thigh, finger straight along the frame.
I didn’t need to wave it around to prove I was dangerous.
Men like Marius understood weapons, but they respected composure more.
Anybody could pull a trigger while angry. The real threat was the man who could hold one steady while thinking clearly.
The hallway opened into a small sitting room with furniture that looked like it had been purchased decades ago and forgotten along with the house.
A brown leather chair sat angled toward the doorway.
Beside it, a lamp cast a dull amber glow across a scarred wooden table holding a half-empty bottle of whiskey, one glass, and a pistol positioned within easy reach.
Marius had one ankle resting across the opposite knee, his broad shoulders relaxed beneath a dark button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms. Age had settled into him since the last time I saw him this close.
Silver threaded through his beard now, and deeper lines framed his mouth and eyes.
He looked thinner too. Not weak, but worn down in a way money and tailored clothing couldn’t hide.
The kind of wear that came from sleeping lightly, trusting nobody, and turning every sound outside your window into a possible consequence arriving ahead of schedule.
Still, the arrogance remained.
That had survived everything.
His gaze traveled from my face to the weapon in my hand before returning upward.
He didn’t reach for the gun beside him. Instead, one corner of his mouth lifted in the same slow, irritating smirk I remembered from years ago, when we were younger and both foolish enough to believe we had time to correct whatever mistakes we made.
“Majeston.”