Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
SILAS
The silence was louder than the gunfire.
Echoing.
Haunting .
Blood still clung to my hands, sticky and warm, but my fingers didn’t shake.
I’d bled so much I could barely feel the wound now.
I should’ve been flat on my back, unconscious.
Instead, I stood at the edge of the street outside the warehouse, every muscle locked in place, watching the shadows stretch across the concrete like they were waiting to swallow us whole.
The others were scrambling—repositioning, regrouping, trying to make sense of the mess. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. My ears rang with more than just the aftermath of gunshots.
I replayed it again.
The attack.
The timing.
The retreat.
Too fast. Too clean. Too simple.
But my brain wouldn’t stop—wouldn’t let it settle as just that. I saw it all unfolding again, not like a memory, but like I was still inside it.
The moment the first shot rang out, slicing the silence like a scream.
The way Lucas’ body jerked.
The way blood hit the wall—sprayed across it like someone had painted with him.
The way one of our men dropped without a sound, just a sudden thud and nothing else, like someone pulled his plug.
I remembered the way Angelica had screamed—not out loud, but with her eyes. Like she knew this wasn’t chaos. Like she recognized it.
That was what stuck with me most.
Not the bullets. Not the fire.
Her expression.
That flicker of realization just before the floor split open beneath us.
Too fast.
Too damn clean.
I’d seen war.
I’d led hits.
I knew what real violence looked like—and this wasn’t it. This was a fucking illusion. A show.
A performance designed to drown out the truth.
And I’d fallen for it like a fucking amateur.
I clenched my jaw, my mind moving faster than my body could keep up.
The cartel had come in like a storm—but they hadn’t stayed, had they?
They took Penn, then hit us hard and vanished. No demand. No message. Just noise.
A fucking distraction. Calculated from the very beginning.
The thought sank its teeth in deep.
We weren’t the targets. Not tonight.
I turned slowly, pain flaring in my ribs as I scanned the bodies littering the concrete. Most of them weren’t ours. A few were. But there were no reinforcements coming. No second wave. Just corpses and smoke.
We’d won.
Bodies littered the ground like discarded warnings. Smoke still hung in the air, sharp and bitter.
And yet?—
So why the hell did it feel like we’d lost?
I shifted my weight, pain burning along my ribs as blood soaked back through my shirt. The world around me had gone quiet, but not in the right way. Not in the relieved way.
In the way that comes before another hit.
Theo stalked past me, barking orders into his comms, jaw tight, gun still drawn like he didn’t believe it was over.
Jude was further back, speaking with what remained of our crew, coordinating cleanup—but his eyes kept flicking to me. Like he was waiting for something I hadn’t said yet.
Gabe had taken Angelica. Marco was driving.
That choice—at the time, it had felt tactical. Clean.
But now?
Now it felt too clean. Too easy. Too fucking neat.
Like someone had offered us an escape route just so we’d take the bait.
My stomach twisted.
I glanced down, watching my blood drip to the pavement. The staples in my side were tugging apart. I could feel the warmth spreading again, soaking through the makeshift dressing.
“Silas!” Theo’s voice cracked through the silence. “You need to sit down, brother. You look like hell.”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Every part of me was hyper-focused—ears pricked for a sound, a movement, anything to explain what we’d missed.
Think.
THINK .
This wasn’t just an attack.
This was the beginning of something else.
Something worse.
The world tilted sideways.
The concrete beneath my boots blurred for a moment—just a second—but it was enough. Enough to send a ripple of something cold through my gut.
I staggered back from the body, blood soaking into the gravel, my breath shallow and burning. My hand brushed my side—sticky warmth already leaking again through the staples. But that wasn’t what stopped me.
It was the weight in my pocket. Something I didn’t remember putting there.
My fingers closed around it—paper. Brittle. Torn.
And then I wasn’t in the warehouse anymore.
I was thirteen again.
Back in the study.
Back in that goddamn room with the smell of cigar smoke and whiskey.
Back in the place where my father shoved me against the wall and spat the words never say that name again with a kind of terror I didn’t understand.
Not then.
But I did now.
My hand trembled as I pulled the scrap free. It was stained at the corner, the ink faded but still legible.
“Silas?”
I barely heard Theo behind me, boots crunching as he crossed the warehouse floor. My throat was dry. My chest hollow.
“What is that?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I just stared at it—those same four words.
It was never meant for him.
Theo stepped forward and snatched it from my hand, his expression tight with confusion. But as he read it, something shifted in him—something subtle and dangerous.
His brows pulled together. His mouth opened, then closed again.
And I knew.
He recognized the handwriting.
“Where did you get this?” he said, voice low, eyes never leaving the paper.
“The desk,” I rasped. “From the study.”
Theo shook his head slowly, something brewing behind his eyes. “That’s dad’s writing.”
I said nothing.
And that said it all.
“What does it mean?”
I closed my eyes, the washed out grey world fading. “Nothing.”
“Don’t nothing me, Silas.” He leaned closer until all I could see was him. “What the fuck does it mean?”
His confusion.
His pain.
“Las Almas Perdidas.”
There. It was.
The words I’d fought so hard to unhear. But here they were again, worming their way under my skin.
“I asked him once about it,” I said quietly, the memory scraping against my voice. “I was just a kid. Thirteen, maybe. I saw the name scribbled in one of the ledgers. Didn’t know what it meant, only that it felt wrong. Twisted.”
Theo didn’t speak, but the silence between us sharpened.
“He reacted like a man possessed,” I continued. “Grabbed me by the collar, slammed me into the wall. He was shouting—never say that name again. He looked at me like I’d cracked open something he’d spent his whole life trying to bury.”
Theo’s expression darkened. “You think this…” He waved his hand toward the bloodied warehouse. “All this is because of some fucking words?”
I shook my head. “Not just words, Theo. Not. Just. Words.”
“What the fuck does it mean?”
Theo’s silence stretched.
I…
Don’t…
Know.
And then he said, barely above a whisper, “First our parents… now this.”
I didn’t move.
He wasn’t asking for comfort. He was asking for the world to make sense again.
“It doesn’t add up,” he muttered. “Our mother. Our father—ripped apart like a goddamn warning. The fucking videos and the goddamn Order—” His voice cracked. “And now this? This fucking name she shouldn’t even know?”
I said nothing. Because what the fuck was I supposed to say?
That I felt it too?
That all of it—the blood, the lies, the secrets—it felt like it was circling one person?
“I’m not saying she’s guilty,” Theo said, eyes burning. “But don’t ask me to believe this is coincidence anymore.”
I didn’t.
Because something bigger was moving under the surface.
Something that started long before she ever came into our lives.
Something that ended in our parents’ blood… and started again the second she said those words.
My phone buzzed.
Not a contact. No name. Just a number I didn’t recognize.
I stared at the screen, the air thick and unmoving around me. The silence after Theo’s words still hung heavy.
And then I answered.
Nothing.
No sound. No breath. Just dead space.
Until a voice slipped through the line. Deep. Rough. Dark Mexican accent.
“You should’ve left us alone…”
My spine stiffened.
“…should’ve rolled over like the dog you are, Ares.”
Theo moved beside me, sensing it. Watching.
The voice dropped lower. Slower. A murmur soaked in threat.
“She always belonged to them.”
Then a sound—quiet, stifled. A breath caught in panic.
Sharp. Fragile. Real.
Angelica.
The line went dead.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. The phone was still in my hand, but it might as well have been a live grenade.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty.
It was waiting.
Theo’s voice snapped through it, hard and sharp. “What the fuck was that?”
I didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t. My throat felt sanded raw. My pulse was a slow, relentless hammer.
“We’ve got a problem,” I said finally, and the words felt like gravel.
Jude turned toward me, tension winding through his frame. “Where’s Angelica?”
I blinked. The question hit harder than it should have.
Not because I didn’t know.
But because I suddenly realized—I hadn’t seen her since the smoke cleared.
“With Gabe,” I muttered, and as soon as the words left my mouth, that sickening wave of dread curled its fist around my spine.
Theo’s expression cracked. “And where the fuck is Gabe?”
No one spoke.
No one moved.
Time didn’t just slow—it stopped.
“Call him,” I said, already stepping back, already reaching for my weapon. “Now.”
Jude fumbled for his comms. “Gabe? Come in. Do you copy? This is base—check in. Report.”
Static.
Theo cursed and punched the wall.
My heart was thundering now. My ribs throbbed where I’d bled through my shirt again. But none of that mattered.
We were too late.
Or close enough to it that the difference didn’t matter.
We’d been looking in the wrong direction. Fighting the wrong war.
And now the only person who could unravel all of it was already slipping away.