Chapter 26 – Silas - Ashes in the Morning #2
I cut in. “We don’t bring anyone else in.”
Elias’s brows lift. “You don’t trust anyone?”
“I don’t trust anyone who isn’t sitting in this room.”
“That’s suicide,” he snaps. “I have people who owe me, reliable people who don’t fold under pressure. We could set a net, scatter Drazen’s dogs before they close in.”
I shake my head. “Every person you add is another throat for Drazen to cut. Another mouth for the Bureau to bribe. I won’t risk her on that.”
Silence drapes the table, thick enough that I hear the tick of the old wall clock. Lydia doesn’t look at either of us. Her eyes fix on the stripe of sunlight carving through the blinds, as if the answer might be hiding in the dust motes floating there.
Finally, she speaks. “Why does this feel like a competition? Look, I don’t care which one of you thinks you’re smarter. I just care that Drazen doesn’t get another shot at me. So stop fighting over who gets to guard the cage and start figuring out how to break it.”
Her voice is steady, carved from stone, and it makes something dark and proud twist in my chest.
Elias exhales, then looks at me. “She’s right. You want to play protector? Fine. But make no mistake, Ward. If you fuck this up—if she bleeds because of your pride—I’ll put you down myself.”
I meet his stare without flinching. “Get in line.”
His smirk is thin, humorless, but he doesn’t argue.
The room settles into an uneasy truce. Lydia shifts in the chair, tugging my shirt tighter around her. She doesn’t notice how my gaze pins her, how every thought I have keeps circling back to the same truth.
The Bureau. Drazen. Elias. It doesn’t matter who tries to claim her.
She’s mine to protect.
Mine to keep.
And if that means burning everything—every bridge, every allegiance, every law—then let it burn.
I’ll walk through the ash with her in my arms.
Elias clears his throat, breaks the tension. “Come on, Lydia. You need food before you collapse.”
She narrows her eyes at both of us like she’s not done, but she lets him steer her toward the kitchen. I hear the fridge door open, Elias muttering about eggs and coffee, Lydia answering with that sharp edge she saves for men who think they know better.
I stay in the living room.
The quiet presses in heavy. Too heavy. I reach into my pocket, brushing the burner. Naomi’s number glows on the screen like a dare. If I don’t make the call, she’ll come looking. If I do, she’ll smell the blood.
I hit the dial.
One ring. Two. Then the line clicks—her voice cutting in, clipped, and cutting like a blade.
“What now?” Her voice cut out blunt and loud, I don’t bother adjusting the volume, even though I know her end of the conversation may be loud enough for Elias to hear.
I lean back in the chair, eyes on the blinds striping the floor. “Dom’s dead.”
Silence. I can hear her typing, probably cross-checking half a dozen feeds while I sit here.
“How,” she says. Not a question. A demand.
“Crossfire at the penthouse,” I answer. “He didn’t walk out.”
“You’re alive.”
“Observation skills intact, I see.”
She exhales, sharp enough to sting even over the phone. “Do you have any idea of the noise that will make? Drazen loses his right hand, every rival with a grudge thinks it’s open season. The Bureau will want answers. And you just put yourself in the middle of it.”
“I was already in the middle.”
Her tone hardens. “What have you done? Silas—”
“No,” I cut in. “Listen. I’ve been thinking, and remember that leaks we discussed?
Drazen having someone inside the Bureau feeding him intel?
That’s why he has always been one step ahead.
You know it. I know it. So don’t act like my report is the only problem.
The real problem is you’ve been compromised, and I’m the only one still breathing close enough to cut him down. ”
Another pause. Longer this time. I can almost picture her going stone-still, her eyes narrowing in that way she gets when she’s already filing the paperwork on a man’s grave.
I can’t even believe I blurt this all out to her, but at this point, let’s say I’m desperate, and I can’t have any of this pinned on me.
Yes, I’m fully involved with Lydia and Elias now, and I’ve been acting on impulse lately, which I’d do again and again, but the truth is I’ve been giving the bureau my own end of the bargain, that should count for something.
If I’ll have to say goodbye to the bureau, I have to do it in a way that will not have me being on the run, I don’t want to drag Lydia into that kind of mess.
“You want me to cover this,” she says. “You want me to bury Dom’s death, bury your presence there, because I’m one hundred percent sure you went back, you got yourself involved in this, against my warning, now you want me to bury the fact that you’re completely off protocol.
Do you have any idea what that costs me? ”
“Everything,” I say. “That’s why I’m asking you.”
The line stays dead quiet for ten full seconds.
Then she answers: “You’re playing a private war, Silas. And wars burn people like me first. If I keep you covered, you don’t report to anyone else. Not Ops, not Command, not your little ghosts in the field. Only me. You disappear for anyone who asks. You belong to my shadow queue now.”
“I never belonged to anyone.”
Her laugh is bitter. “Keep telling yourself that. But if Drazen has a file on Lydia Carr—and I know he does—you’re already bleeding for someone who won’t survive you.”
Heat flares in my chest. “That’s my problem.”
“Wrong,” she says. “That’s mine. And if you drag me down with you, I’ll cut you loose so fast you’ll wish Drazen had gotten to you first.”
The line clicks dead.
I stare at the burner in my hand, the echo of her words still hot in my ear. Elias is watching from the doorway now, arms folded, expression carved out of disgust.
“You just told your leash-holder you killed her boss’s best drinking buddy,” he says. “Congratulations. You’ve now got Drazen and the Bureau pissed off in the same breath.”
I slip the burner back into my pocket. “Then we move faster.”
“Or,” Elias says, his mouth twisting, “you think about the fact that maybe she’s right. Maybe Lydia doesn’t survive you.”
I look past him, toward the kitchen where Lydia is standing, looking like she’s lost in thought, wearing my shirt, skin marked with every place I touched her.
“She’s the only thing I’m surviving for,” I say.
Elias walks back to the kitchen without another word, his footsteps soft on the tile. Lydia’s voice drifts faintly from the other room; a question about tea, Elias answering about sugar. Domestic sounds in a place that isn’t built for them.
I stay in the living room, alone with the blinds and the dust. The burner feels heavier than it should, Naomi’s voice still ringing in my head. You belong to my shadow queue now.
She thinks she has me boxed. Drazen thinks he still has the board. They’re both wrong.
I sink into the chair, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor until the stripes of light blur.
I’ve been memorizing Drazen’s rhythms for months—his meetings, his movements, his habits when he thinks no one’s watching.
Lydia knows some of them too; she was his canary, the one he showed off to mask which windows were open.
If we move before he resets, we have a window. Not a big one. Not clean. But it’s there.
I pull a notepad from the side table. A real one, paper and pen, leaving no option of a digital trail.
My handwriting is quick, blocky.
– Supply depots.
– Secondary lieutenants.
– Shipping lanes he still controls.
– Judges still on his payroll.
– Where the file on Lydia is likely stored.
The page fills with names, times, addresses. A web of soft targets and choke points I’ve fed the Bureau piece by piece, never all at once. Enough to keep my cover intact, never enough to topple him.
Until now.
I mark a single X over one name: Petrov Station. It’s the one place he never expects me. Where the file on Lydia would be if he wants it untouchable.
A shadow moves at the edge of my vision. Lydia stands in the doorway, mug in both hands, my shirt hanging off her like a borrowed flag. Her eyes flick from the paper to my face. “You’re making… lists?”
“Thinking,” I say.
Her gaze lingers. “Thinking of what?”
“How to make sure he never touches you again.”
She doesn’t answer. She just takes a sip of the tea and leans against the frame, watching me like she’s trying to decide if I’m a bigger threat than the man we ran from.
When she finally speaks, it’s not soft. “You’re going to kill him.”
It’s not a question.
I look up from the paper, meet her eyes. “Yes.”
Her fingers tighten around the mug. “And the Bureau?”
“I’ll handle them.”
“Handle them how?”
“They won’t see it coming.”
She studies me for a heartbeat longer, then sets the mug down on the sideboard. “Then you’d better not miss.”
Elias appears behind her, wiping his hands on a towel, eyes flicking to the paper before I can cover it. He doesn’t smile. “Planning something off-script?”
“Always,” I say.
He leans against the wall, arms crossed. “Good. Because if you’re serious about this, I’ve got a few people Drazen doesn’t own yet. But you’ll have to trust me.”
I tear the page off the pad and fold it once, sliding it into my pocket. “Not yet.”
“Suit yourself,” he says, pushing off the wall. “But whatever you’re cooking up, make it fast. We’re on borrowed time.”
He disappears back into the kitchen, leaving me alone again with Lydia’s mug, the smell of tea, and the hum of a city that doesn’t know it’s about to bleed.
I look at the folded page in my hand, thumb brushing the X I made. Petrov Station. The place where Drazen hides what he can’t lose. The place where I’ll put a bullet in him before he can cut a deal.
For the first time since last night, a thought cuts through the static, strong and clear:
If I’m going to end him, it has to be soon. Before Naomi loses her nerve. Before Elias loses his patience. Before Lydia loses faith in me entirely.
I slip the page deeper into my pocket, stand, and glance toward the kitchen. Lydia is sitting at the table now, talking low to Elias. She doesn’t know it yet, but every move I make from here on out is for her.
Even if it kills me.