Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
ANGELICA
Smoke still clung to my skin, to my clothes, to the air we breathed as we fled the warehouse. My boots pounded across the blood-slicked pavement, the sharp burn of adrenaline clawing up my throat.
Behind us, the bodies were still warm. The cartel had come fast and hard, but they hadn’t meant to kill us. We all knew it now.
This was never a fight.
But what was it?
“Move!” Silas’s voice rang out, hoarse and ragged, but full of command.
He should have still been down. He could barely stand. But somehow, he was ahead of us, limping with fury and precision as he led us out the back.
Theo was beside him, covering their flank, his jaw tight and his movements sharp. Jude moved with a kind of eerie calm behind them.
Gabe was at my side, his hand on my elbow, guiding me through the shadows like he didn’t trust me to keep up.
Maybe I didn’t.
The warehouse disappeared behind us, swallowed by darkness and smoke. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.
The street was cold and wide and empty. Too empty. Every sound felt too loud. Every breath, every step, every click of a weapon being reloaded—it all felt like it was leading us somewhere we weren’t prepared to go.
Ahead, three black SUVs waited—silent, menacing. Marco stood at the farthest one, his expression grim. Our surviving men were there too, scanning the street, ready for another wave that hadn’t come.
Silas stopped hard, his breath ragged. “We split up,” he said.
Theo turned on him. “We don’t even know what direction they’re coming from.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.” Silas didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to.
There was something in the way he stood, in the way he watched the shadows, that made my blood run cold.
“Take her,” Theo barked at Gabe, jerking his chin toward me. “Get her in the car.”
I wanted to object. To scream that I wasn’t the problem here. That I wasn’t their burden to protect or control. But Gabe was already at my side, ushering me toward the SUV.
I looked back once, just in time to catch Jude slipping into the back seat of the vehicle with Theo. His eyes met mine through the open door.
He didn’t blink. Didn’t look away.
Then the door closed, and that was it.
I slid into the back seat beside Gabe as Marco started the engine.
My heart was still pounding, my hands trembling in my lap. Something was wrong. Something was always wrong.
We were running.
But it didn’t feel like we were getting away.
The SUV jolted forward, the engine growling as Marco floored it down the empty street. Gabe sat beside me in the backseat, silent, jaw clenched, one hand braced on the door like he couldn’t fully relax.
I stared out the window, trying to ignore the tremble still working its way through my limbs. The warehouse was gone now, swallowed by distance and shadow. But the feeling of being watched—that crawling sensation across the back of my neck—hadn’t left.
Something was wrong. I could feel it in my chest. In the way Gabe kept checking the rearview mirror. In the way Marco didn’t speak, his eyes flicking to every alley, every parked car.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked, my voice low.
“Safe house,” Marco answered without looking back. “One of ours, off-grid.”
Gabe’s gaze didn’t leave the road behind us. “We rotate through it every few months. No one should know it exists.”
Should .
The word hit harder than it should have.
I leaned back, heart pounding, my fingers curling into the fabric of my jeans. The silence between us stretched, heavy and taut.
“I don’t get it,” I murmured, mostly to myself. “Why split up?”
Gabe didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his voice was tight.“Because if they can hit us like that, we can’t risk staying together. We’re better spread out.”
“But that makes us easier to pick off.”
His jaw tightened. “Not if we move fast.”
We passed a row of shuttered shops, their windows covered in metal grates. The world outside felt abandoned. Like we were driving through the bones of a city already lost.
I looked down at my hands. The blood under my nails wasn’t mine, but it might as well have been.
“I didn’t see Penn,” I said suddenly. “At the end.”
Gabe looked at me then, really looked. His eyes were tired. Angry. But under that, something softer. Sadder.
“They took him and he messaged me. Did you know that?” I lifted my gaze meeting Gabe’s stare. “He messaged me days ago and I never responded. This is…” my pulse thundered in my ears. “This is all my fault.”
“No.” Gabe shook his head. “It’s not. You don’t need a fault. You carry the Ares name. That was always more than enough.”
“But they took him, Gabe,” my throat tightened, choking the words. “Why him?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it was about him at all.”
I swallowed hard. The car turned sharply, tires screeching as Marco took a side street. We were moving fast now, too fast. I could feel the tension ramping up again, the sense that we were being chased even if no one was there.
I glanced behind us. Empty road. Nothing.
And yet…
“Something doesn’t feel right,” I whispered.
Gabe didn’t argue. He just nodded once. “I know.”
Up ahead, the city fell away into a stretch of overgrown industrial land—forgotten buildings and cracked pavement swallowed by weeds. It looked empty. Dead. But so had the warehouse.
We were running.
But I still didn’t know if we were getting away.
We didn’t speak for the next five minutes. The silence in the car wasn’t just heavy—it was strangling. My gaze flicked between Marco’s eyes in the mirror and Gabe’s rigid profile beside me.
We were driving deeper into nowhere. The city had long since given way to industrial sprawl, and even that had bled out into long stretches of cracked concrete and rusted fencing. There was nothing here but silence and shadows.
And yet?—
My heart wouldn’t stop pounding.
“Something’s off,” I said.
Gabe looked over at me, a flash of surprise in his eyes like he hadn’t expected me to speak. But then it shifted, and I realized he’d been thinking the same thing.
“I know,” he said. “But we’re too exposed to change routes now.”
I sat forward slightly, eyes scanning the road. The headlights barely cut through the darkness ahead. I tried to ignore the way my gut twisted tighter with every mile.
This was supposed to be safer. Splitting up, moving fast, staying low.
So why did it feel like a trap?
“I feel like we’re being led somewhere,” I whispered.
Marco tensed at the wheel, just for a second. Gabe caught it. I did too.
“Then we’re not stopping,” Gabe said. “We get in, we lock it down. Nobody gets in or out until we clear this.”
I nodded slowly, but the feeling didn’t ease.
Because I wasn’t afraid of who was following us.
I was afraid that someone had already been here.
That this wasn’t just a relocation.
It was a setup.
Gabe shifted, pulling his phone from his pocket, trying to ping the others. Static crackled through the line—no service. No signal.
And still, we kept driving.
“I don’t like this,” I said again, my voice harder this time. “It’s too quiet. Too clean.”
Marco didn’t reply. Gabe just looked out the window like he could feel it now too.
Whatever this place was, it wasn’t a safe house anymore.
It was something else.
We pulled off the road just past a rusted chain-link fence, the tires crunching over gravel and glass. The safe house loomed ahead—if you could even call it that. It looked abandoned. Faded paint peeled from the siding, a sagging porch half swallowed by weeds.
“Here?” I asked, the word catching in my throat.
Marco cut the engine. “It’s secure.”
Gabe opened his door first, scanning the shadows before he moved. I followed him, but every step felt heavier. My boots crunched down, too loud in the silence.
Something was wrong.
Not just off. Not just uneasy.
Wrong .
Marco disappeared around the side of the building to sweep the perimeter. Gabe led me toward the front steps, his hand tight on my arm even though he didn’t say a word.
We stepped inside.
The air was stale. Cold.
Dust floated in thin streams through the moonlight slicing in from broken windows. Furniture was covered with sheets, and the walls looked like they hadn’t seen life in years.
Gabe moved through the rooms like a soldier on a mission, checking corners, clearing sight lines, peering through narrow windows. I stayed near the front, staring at the warped floorboards, at the shapes beneath the covered furniture.
Something in the air crackled. Like static. Like electricity waiting to bite.
I turned slowly, the back of my neck tingling.
Gabe reappeared. “It’s clear.”
“Is it?” I asked, barely recognizing my own voice. “Because it doesn’t feel like it.”
He didn’t argue. He looked at me the same way he had in the warehouse—like he was seeing something he wasn’t ready to believe.
“I need to check in with Silas,” he said. “We’re blind out here. No signal. We’ll try from the second floor.”
I nodded slowly, not trusting myself to speak.
Gabe turned and disappeared up the stairs. Marco hadn’t come back in. The creak of the boards above me faded.
And I was alone.
Alone in a place that didn’t feel abandoned.
It felt like it was waiting.
I backed toward the front door and pressed my hand against it. Not opening it. Just touching it. Like if I kept one part of myself close to escape, I’d be okay.
But deep down, I knew.
We weren’t safe.
We’d never been safe.
Not with me—the liar—at the centre of it all.