Chapter 29 – Lydia - Blood in the Walls
The SUV is too full of bodies and too short on trust.
I sit wedged between Jax and Ren, their elbows claiming more space than mine, the heat from their jackets pressing in until I can barely shift without brushing one of them.
Jax chews on the end of an unlit cigarette like it’s a bone, the filter soft and soggy where his teeth grind it flat. Every time his jaw works, the scar cutting across his cheek flexes like a rope pulled taut.
Ren, smaller, wiry, jittery, keeps flicking a lighter open and closed. Metal scrapes metal, the flame catching and dying, over and over. The rhythm crawls under my skin.
I want to tell him to stop. I don’t. Because if I open my mouth, it’ll be for something worse.
Jori sits at the far end of the row, shoulders relaxed, head tilted back like this is just another Sunday drive.
His fingers tap a steady rhythm on his thigh.
No nerves. No wasted motion. It makes him stand out more than the others—the stillness.
In this SUV of fidgeting, chewing, grinding men, Jori looks like he’s waiting.
There's something else, too. Something I’ve noticed about him, the way his eyes keep cutting to his phone, the screen dark in his palm, like he's expecting a message he can't check in front of everyone. The way his thumb hovers over it, then pulls back when Elias glances in the rearview.
Silas said Jori fought like he was cataloguing intel. Now he sits like he's waiting for instruction.
My stomach knots tighter.
I catch Silas's eyes in the mirror. Hold them for a beat longer than necessary. His jaw tightens—he sees it too. Sees me seeing it.
Neither of us says a word. But the air between us shifts, charged with unspoken warning.
Up front, Elias drives. His grip on the wheel is steady, eyes fixed ahead, but I know better than to think he isn’t watching everything in the mirrors.
He was born reading angles of threat, taught himself to spot a knife in a room full of smiles.
I can feel it in the air: his suspicion, coiled and steady, a mirror of my own.
Silas rides shotgun, the seat set back far enough for his knees to bend loose, one hand draped across his thigh.
He hasn’t spoken since we pulled out of the safehouse, but I can see the tension running down his arm into the fist braced on the door.
His gaze moves like a metronome: windshield, side mirror, rearview.
Back again. He doesn’t miss much. He doesn’t miss me either.
Every so often, his eyes cut across the glass, lock with mine for a second too long before shifting forward.
It’s too warm from the press of bodies, but a restless chill creeps in through the cracks in the frame. The steady grind of tires over cracked asphalt fills the cabin, underscored by the scrape of Jax’s lighter and the wet click of his cigarette filter.
The silence feels loaded, like all of us are sitting on a powder keg. And maybe we are.
I shift a little on the seat, tugging my now changed shirt tighter. He notices. Something flickers in his eyes, and he looks back to the window. Nothing is said, but it sits between us anyway.
The city outside fades into abandoned warehouses and industrial skeletons. The further we go, the fewer cars on the road, the more graffiti crawling across walls, old paint peeling like burned skin. Broken windows stare down at us, hollow and blind.
No one speaks. No one cracks a joke. The only thing moving faster than the SUV is suspicion itself.
The SUV pulls off the main road into an industrial graveyard. Rows of rusted containers lean like toppled dominoes, weeds splitting cracked concrete.
Bellamy looks dead.
The kind of dead that makes your skin itch, like something’s waiting underneath the silence. The warehouse squats against the cracked pavement, its windows blacked out, the steel door welded over with a newer lock.
Rust runs down the sides of the building like dried blood. No lights. No hum of machines. No signs of anyone alive inside. Just a building that looks like it’s been abandoned for decades.
That’s the trick.
Elias kills the engine, the silence slamming harder than the brakes. For a moment no one moves, like we’re waiting for something to announce itself.
“Spread out,” Elias says finally, his voice even. “Two angles. Jax, Ren, you circle left. Jori, you’re with me on the right. Ward—” his eyes cut toward Silas “—you keep her breathing.”
My teeth grit at that. I don’t need babysitting, for fuck’s sake. Yet I don’t argue, not with all their eyes flicking to me… not with Drazen’s shadow hanging over this place like a blade.
The doors creak when we open them. The air outside tastes like rust and old oil, heavy enough that it sticks to the back of my throat. Our boots crunch over gravel as we fan out. Jax and Ren lumber left, already muttering to each other.
Elias stops beside me as the others fan out, pressing something cold and heavy into my palm. A Glock, compact, the grip worn smooth from use.
My fingers close around it automatically, muscle memory older than my time with Drazen. "Thanks."
" Don't hesitate." He moves off before I can respond.
Silas's eyes track the exchange, his jaw tight, but he doesn't comment. The weight of the gun feels both foreign and familiar—like slipping back into skin I'd tried to shed.
I slide the Glock into the waistband at the small of my back, the metal cold against my skin. My hand rests there for just a moment, memorizing the weight, the angle.
This time, I'm not going to be helpless.
Elias keeps right with Jori at his flank, both of them quiet, deliberate. That leaves Silas and I walking the center line.
His hand hovers near his weapon, but his eyes stay sweeping—roof, windows, corners. Mine do too. Years with Elias taught me the same habits. We don’t talk, not until we reach the edge of the building.
“This stinks of something fishy,” I mutter, my discomfort palpable. My stomach is in knots.
“Everything Drazen touches stinks,” Silas says. He glances down at me, just a flick, but it’s enough to catch the hard line of his jaw. “Stay behind me.”
The words scrape. “I don’t do behinds.”
He almost smiles—almost. “I will, if you don’t get shot, sweetheart.”
I want to bite back at him for the moment he chooses to flirt with me, but Elias’s voice cuts over the comm before I get a word out, static rough in my earpiece. “Clear right. Nothing yet.”
“Same left,” Jax adds, breath loud enough to sound like he’s sprinting, though we’ve barely started.
“Keep your eyes up,” Elias orders. “We’ll sweep to the front and regroup.”
We move closer to the steel doors, the building looming larger with every step. My skin prickles. Too still. No birds, no traffic hum. Just the wind scraping rust against metal.
Silas pauses, crouches, presses two fingers to the dirt near the door. When he straightens, his eyes are cold. “Tracks. Fresh ones. Big vehicle. A couple sets of boots.”
“How fresh?” I ask.
“Hours.”
My stomach knots. If Drazen wanted to bait us, this is the perfect stage.
We regroup at the main doors. Elias and Jori from the right, Jax and Ren from the left. Six bodies now facing one slab of steel. The doors are chained, padlocked, but the links look new—too new against the rust.
“Inside,” Elias mutters. “That’s where the truth is.”
Silas eyes the chains. “Or where the trap is.”
No one laughs. Not even Jax.
Elias stops a few paces back, scanning the roofline with a soldier’s patience.
His men fan out, boots crunching over broken glass, weapons loose in their hands.
Ren and Jax drift toward the far corners, taking angles as they stand guard.
Jori lingers near the door, eyes narrowed, like he’s seen this picture before.
“Place has been cold for months,” Elias mutters. “If Drazen’s sniffing here, he’s sniffing for a reason.”
Silas moves past him, toward the lock. His steps are too confident, too deliberate, like he wants Drazen’s ghosts to know he’s here. I follow, because I can’t stand the thought of being left three paces behind. The air stinks of mildew and iron, and the closer I get, the heavier it feels.
He crouches at the door, gloved fingers brushing the new lock. It gleams against the rusted steel like a fresh scar. “Not yours?”
Elias shakes his head once. “I shut this place down when Mara moved in with me. Didn’t want old ghosts dragging through her front yard.”
“Then somebody else is paying rent.” Silas’s voice is flat, his hand already reaching for the cutter strapped to his thigh.
I watch the line of his shoulders as he bends over the lock. The movement is efficient, practiced, like he’s done this a thousand times. I can’t stop the sting of memory: Drazen making me watch his men change locks on doors I wasn’t allowed to open. Locks always meant cages.
The cutter bites. Sparks spit against the concrete, bright in the gloom.
Elias stands to the side, gun raised, gaze sharp.
Jori edges back toward the SUV, too slow, like he doesn’t want anyone to notice the distance he’s putting between himself and the door.
My stomach twists, but there’s no time to call it out.
The lock snaps, clattering to the ground.
Silas pushes the door open, the hinges groaning like an animal in pain.
Dust billows out. It’s dark inside, darker than it should be for a place that’s supposed to be empty.
“Stay tight,” Elias says.
The first step inside is the last clean one.
I hear it before I feel it: the soft click of weight shifting overhead, the snap of a trigger pulled.
Then the world erupts. Gunfire rains from the rafters, bullets chewing through wood and steel, sparks exploding off the concrete floor.
Jax shouts, dragging Ren down behind a stack of rotted crates.
Elias fires upward, muzzle flashes lighting his face in discordant bursts.