Chapter 32 – Lydia - The Double-Cross #2
He doesn’t touch me, not yet. But when my fingers twitch, he reaches out, catches my wrist in his hand, his grip firm, grounding. Not comfort. A claim.
His thumb presses against my pulse, steady and insistent, as if daring me to admit it belongs to him now.
My eyes flick up to his. Blue-gray, hard, unrelenting.
“Steady,” he murmurs.
It isn’t kindness. It’s possession that is dressed in calm.
And God help me—I don’t pull away.
Ren’s blood spreads like a stain no one will ever scrub out, a reminder of what betrayal costs in this world. I stare at it, not flinching, not blinking, though something inside me twists like a knife dragged slow through muscle.
Jax paces the far wall, muttering curses under his breath.
He looks young for the first time since I met him, like the reality of loyalty and bullets has finally landed in his bones.
He kicks the leg of the table, hard enough to rattle the maps, then points at Ren’s body without looking at me.
“That’s what trust buys here. Nothing. Fucking nothing. ”
Mara’s voice is low, steady but frayed. “Stop it.” She won’t look at the body, won’t look at any of us. Her arms wrap across her chest like she’s holding herself together. “He made his choice. Don’t make it yours too.”
Her words throb against me, pulling Kinley’s ghost tighter around my ribs. Betrayal has a pattern—it changes names but never the ending. I should feel fury. I should feel cold triumph. Instead, what I feel is the weight of inevitability, pressing against my lungs.
And Silas, still holding my wrist, watching me like a man measuring pulse not for life, but for ownership.
I shift my gaze to him. “You think this makes me weaker?”
His lips twitch, not into a smile, but into something darker. “No. I think it makes you mine.”
I want to laugh, to snarl, to cut him with words harsh enough to bleed arrogance from his mouth. Instead, what comes out is a rasp. “You’re out of your mind.”
He leans closer, his voice low enough that only I hear it. “Maybe. But so are you. That’s why you haven’t pulled away yet.”
The heat of his grip brands my skin, steady and deliberate, as though he’s rewriting my heartbeat to his rhythm. The part of me that should recoil doesn’t. It leans.
Jax finally stops pacing, his shoulders rigid, his eyes flicking to me, then to Silas. “This isn’t a game,” he spits. “You two—whatever the fuck this is—you’re going to get us all killed.”
I meet his gaze, unblinking. “Then walk. No one’s chaining you here.”
The silence after that is deafening.
Jax doesn’t move. He just swears again and drops into a chair, head in his hands.
Mara sinks onto the couch, her face pale, her body trembling with the effort of staying upright. Elias is gone, and the rest of us are left with the aftershock.
Silas releases my wrist, but only so he can drag his knuckles over the inside of my palm, a fleeting touch that feels more permanent than Ren’s blood pooling on the floor. A mark. A warning. A promise.
He doesn’t say another word. He doesn’t have to.
Because in the hollow of my chest, in the echo of Kinley’s betrayal and Ren’s execution, I realize Silas is right.
I haven’t pulled away.
And I’m not going to.
The smell thickens fast—blood, acrid gunpowder, the sour bite of fear that clings even after the body stops trembling. Ren is a heap of limbs on the floor, but death doesn’t erase the mess. Death leaves you with work.
Jax curses again, too loud, like it will drown out the metallic tang hanging over us. He presses the heel of his palm against his forehead, then kicks the chair Ren had been sitting in. “We can’t just leave him like this.”
Elias’s voice cuts in from the doorway. He’s returned, jacket half-buttoned, cold command radiating off him. “Then don’t.”
Jax stiffens, and when his eyes dart to me, I see the hesitation in them. Not reluctance to move the body—he’s done that before. It’s the symbolism. Cleaning Ren feels like cleaning away the last illusion of trust.
Silas bends first. He doesn’t hesitate. He crouches, grips Ren under the shoulders, and looks back at Jax with a calm so sharp it borders on mockery. “Help me.”
Jax bristles but obeys. Together they haul Ren up, awkward dead weight dragging across the floor. The thud when his head clips the doorframe echoes through the safehouse.
I stay standing, arms folded, watching the stain smear across the boards. A part of me wants to turn away, to let this image fade like all the others. But I don’t. I catalog it, another ledger mark in the book of names and betrayals.
Mara lingers near the couch, pale and tight-lipped, but she doesn’t stop them. She’s shaking, though, her arms clutched around herself as if she could keep her insides from spilling out like Ren’s.
Silas and Jax dump the body on a tarp Elias has rolled out, plastic crinkling loud in the heavy room. Jax mutters under his breath as he knots the edges, hands moving fast, jerky with anger. Silas’s motions are measured, efficient. He doesn’t look at me, not yet.
When the last knot is tied, Elias steps closer. “There’s a morgue. Uptown. Private wing. People who take cash, not questions.” He eyes the bundle on the tarp like it’s not a body, just another piece of evidence to be erased. “We’ll leave him there.”
Jax looks up, incredulous. “And no one asks?”
Elias’s expression doesn’t shift. “Not when they’ve been paid enough times to keep their mouths shut.”
Silas wipes his hands on a rag, tosses it into the sink. His voice is steady, deliberate. “And if someone does ask?”
Elias finally glances at him. “Then they stop asking. Permanently.”
The words hang between them like a balanced knife on the edge of a table.
Mara turns abruptly, snatches her jacket from the chair. Her voice is tight, brittle. “I need to go to work. And after, I’m heading to the house. Ours.” She means another safehouse, but her choice of word—ours—draws Elias’s gaze to her.
“You’ll stay out of this mess,” he says, flat.
She doesn’t argue. She just nods, quick, and pulls the door open. Then she’s gone.
The silence after she leaves is almost louder than the shot.
The bundle on the tarp doesn’t look like a man anymore. Just an object, sealed and faceless, ready to vanish. That’s the most merciful thing about death—it reduces people to baggage.
Elias crouches near the body, tying a final knot. His movements are exact, the same as when he fixes his cuffs or folds a file. Everything he does has edges, and nothing wastes energy. He straightens, dusts his hands once, and glances toward Jax.
“You’ll drive.”
Jax startles. “Me?”
Elias’s stare pins him in place. “Yes, you. Consider it an education.”
Jax’s throat works, but he doesn’t argue. He just nods, mouth tight, as if swallowing glass.
Silas crosses the room, grabbing the roll of duct tape off the counter. He tears off a strip, presses it hard over the folds of the tarp. No hesitation, no grimace. Just efficiency.
Elias’s eyes linger on him a moment too long. Not distrust, not exactly. Something closer to assessment. As though he’s measuring how Silas carries the weight of another man’s body on his conscience—or if he even feels it at all.
“Help him load it,” Elias orders.
Silas doesn’t wait for agreement. He grips one end of the tarp and jerks his chin at Jax. “Lift.”
Jax groans as they heave it up, the weight dragging their arms low. They carry Ren out, the back door groaning on its hinges, and I trail behind just far enough to watch, not far enough to touch. The air slices across my skin, damp and biting, carrying the faint stench of the sea.
They lower the body into the trunk of a black sedan parked in the narrow alley behind the safehouse. It lands with a heavy thud, muffled by plastic, final as a slammed coffin lid.
Jax slams the trunk, then presses his palms flat against the metal as if steadying himself. His voice is low, ragged. “Feels wrong.”
Silas wipes his hands on his pants. “It always does. The first few times.”
The words make Jax flinch. He stares at Silas, searching for a hint of irony, some shard of humanity. He doesn’t find it.
Elias steps into the alley, his shadow long in the weak light. “It feels wrong because you’re still deciding if you belong here.” He tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “If you have to think about it, you don’t.”
Jax looks away, jaw set, but doesn’t argue.
The silence stretches, filled only with the soft hum of the city pressing at the edges of our little alley.
I cross my arms, leaning against the brick, watching them all. Elias is steel. Jax is cracked glass. And Silas—Silas looks like he belongs in this scene too much. The way his eyes flick over the car, the body, Elias’s stance—he isn’t just helping. He’s cataloguing. Owning the process.
He looks back at me once, catching me staring. His mouth curves—not into a smile, but into the kind of expression that says: I know you’re watching. And I like it.
I should look away. I don’t.