Chapter 33 – Silas - Blood Debt
We move out immediately after putting Ren’s body in the trunk, Jax takes the wheel, the body shifting every time we hit a bump. The sound isn’t loud, just the dull scrape of plastic sliding against metal, but it grinds into my skull like a confession that won’t shut up.
Jax grips the wheel tighter than he should, knuckles pale against the steering column. His eyes locked harder on the road, as if staring too long at the world outside will erase what’s breathing down his neck inside this car.
I sit in the passenger seat, leaning back but never at ease, one hand resting near the pistol on my thigh. Not because I expect trouble here, but because I don’t trust stillness. Stillness is the kind of lie that gets you killed.
Behind us, Elias is seated behind Jax, giving him orders of where to turn at intervals and Lydia sits pressed against the door behind me, her gaze trained on the window.
She hasn’t said a word since we loaded Ren into the trunk.
Not when Jax swore under his breath, not when Elias gave his orders, not when Mara pulled her jacket on and left.
She’s stone, carved out of ice and nerves, but I know what I saw back there when I took her wrist. The way she didn’t pull back. The way her pulse throbbed like a drum under my thumb.
She’s not stone. She’s fire waiting for a hand reckless enough to stay on it.
Jax exhales through his teeth, loud enough to break the silence. “This isn’t right.” He says again, like saying it over and over again will somehow make it feel right to him.
I glance at him. “Killing traitors is the most right thing in this fucked-up business.”
He snaps his head toward me, eyes wide with something between fury and nausea. “He wasn’t…” He swallows hard, corrects himself. “He didn’t deserve—”
I cut him off. “He gave names. He deserved every ounce of it. You want to play in this world, you don’t get to choke when the blood gets on your shoes.”
Jax looks back at the road, lips pressed thin, but I see it, the crack. The boy hasn’t fully decided if he belongs here, and Elias saw it too. That’s why he made him drive. Nothing teaches you the rules faster than hauling a body while it cools a foot away.
The morgue is tucked behind an industrial district, where the streetlamps hum but never shine bright enough. Elias picked the place because men like us don’t need paperwork, just a door that opens and shuts without comment.
Jax pulls the sedan into a narrow alley, cutting the engine. For a second, no one moves. Then I pop the trunk.
The stench hits first. Blood and plastic.
The body is heavier now, dead weight settled and unforgiving.
We grab the tarp by the corners, hauling Ren corpse out, his head lolling with each step.
Jax’s face is pale as chalk, sweat clinging to his hairline.
He nearly gags when the tarp brushes his leg.
I smirk at him. “Don’t puke on him. That’s disrespectful.”
Lydia is standing a few paces away, arms crossed, heels clicking against the pavement as she shifts her weight. Watching, always watching.
The morgue door opens with a metallic groan. A man in scrubs stands there, eyes flat, face pockmarked, hands tucked into latex gloves that glisten under the yellow light. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t even look at Ren’s face when we shove the tarp across the threshold.
He just nods once. “Room six.”
We follow him down a corridor that smells of bleach fighting a losing battle. The lights flicker overhead, buzzing like flies circling carrion. Every drawer we pass whispers a truth: men vanish here every night, and the city never notices.
As instructed, we drop Ren on the slab in Room six. Jax stumbles back, wiping his palms against his jeans as if the filth will come off. The man in scrubs takes out a clipboard, scribbles something down, then looks at us with all the warmth of a locked door. “Same as last time?”
Elias’s voice echoes from behind me. He came in without me hearing, which means he’s angrier than he looks. “Same as last time.”
The man nods, no more words, and wheels the body away.
It’s that easy. One man executed, erased, filed into oblivion.
Jax looks like he might vomit on the floor. Lydia doesn’t blink.
I can’t stop watching her.
Her face is unreadable, but when the door closes and the body disappears, she exhales through her nose, subtle, a release she doesn’t want noticed. And I know. She’s fighting the memory of every betrayal carved into her skin, the way trust always collapses into blood.
She catches me staring.
“What?” she asks, voice sharp.
The ride back is heavier than the body we left behind. Jax doesn’t say a word, just grips the wheel like the steering column owes him money. The city blurs past—empty streets, glowing windows, the occasional siren in the distance—but none of us are watching it.
Lydia sits behind me at the back this time, her reflection caught in the window glass. Eyes fixed outward, but not really seeing. She’s too still. Too calm. The kind of calm that only lives on the edge of something breaking.
When we reach the safehouse, Elias wastes no time, he moves, phone pressed to his ear, pacing in front of the table littered with maps and weapons.
His voice is low, clipped, calculated. “I don’t care how many you pull, I want loyal men, and I want them ready by nightfall.
Yes. Petrov Station. No, there’s no delay. You’ll be compensated.”
He hangs up without a goodbye, snatches another phone from the table, dials again. His tone doesn’t rise, but it cuts deep, steel grinding steel. He’s summoning men, gathering muscle, moving pawns across a board that only he can see.
Jax sinks into a chair, rubbing his palms against his thighs. He looks drained, hollowed out. That’s what moving bodies does to men not yet sure if they belong in the dark.
I don’t sit. I lean against the doorframe, watching Elias call one ghost after another into play.
His control is unshakable, the kind that makes men like Jax obey, makes rooms still themselves when he walks in.
But I see the crack. Just a hairline fracture in the steel, left behind by what we almost lost —Mara watching Ren’s blood splatter across the floor.
Elias would gut a city for her, and everyone here knows it. I bet he hates that he had to do that while she was here.
Lydia pours herself a drink, amber liquid catching the light as it swirls into the glass. Her hands don’t shake. She tips it back, swallows like it’s water. When she sets the glass down, her eyes find mine.
She doesn’t look away. Neither do I.
Her lips tilt, barely a smirk, more like a test. “What are you looking at?”
I step closer, slow enough for her to see it’s intentional, not cautious. “The only person in this room who’s not pretending.”
Her eyes narrow. “And what am I, then?”
I let the silence stretch, then tilt my head just enough that she has to lean in to hear me. “Mine.”
Her laugh is short, cutting, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She wants to argue, wants to remind me she doesn’t belong to anyone. But she doesn’t say the words. She drains the rest of her glass instead, as if liquor can scrub me out of her blood.
The hours bleed together.
By the time the light outside starts to fade, the air inside the safehouse feels thick with waiting.
We spend the day sharpening edges—checking weapons, recalculating routes, running through the Petrov Station plan again and again.
Elias moves like a machine, calling in favors, tightening his grip on men who owe him too much to say no.
Jax hovers over the maps, trying to act like his head is in it, though I can see his mind chewing on Ren’s corpse in the morgue.
Lydia, on the other hand, doesn’t flinch.
She sifts through information like she’s sorting cards, pulling the right ones, discarding the weak.
She’s the calmest one in the room, and it eats at me that she wears control like it costs her nothing.
By the time the sun slips behind the horizon, the table is littered with notes, empty cups, and loaded magazines. The city hums faint outside, the kind of noise that feels like it’s waiting for a scream to split it open.
Then Elias’s phone rings.
He grabs it off the table, presses it to his ear. His voice is clipped, carrying the same cadence he’s used all day. “Talk.”
I watch the change happen in real time. The steel in his face hardens, then cracks at the edges.
“What?” he barks. His gaze cuts toward me, then Lydia. His throat works. “Repeat that.”
Even from across the table, I can hear the panic bleeding through the line. Mara’s name tangled with phrases about movement, Drazen’s men, coordinates.
The ice Elias wears fractures in one violent motion.
His free hand slams against the table, shaking the maps, rattling the glassware.
His voice dips into something rawer. “If anything touches her—” He cuts himself off, his control locking back in like a blade sheathed.
“Keep her alive. Move with your men. Head to the house. Do not wait for me.”
He kills the call, shoving the phone back onto the table like it offends him. His other hand closes around his gun, pulling it free as he turns toward us.
His eyes burn now—no polish, no armor. Just fire.
“They’re going after Mara.”
The words drag the air out of the room.
I stand before I even realize it, every muscle primed. Lydia does the same, her eyes dark with something I can’t name.
Elias’s voice cuts through. “We move. Now.”
And just like that, the waiting ends.
The room doesn’t pause long enough for doubt to form. Elias is already moving, his hands precise as he gathers the weapons laid out on the table—pistol, knife, spare clips, everything checked twice. The calmness he’s carried all day is gone, stripped down to raw command.
“Jax,” he snaps, “with me.”
The kid jerks upright, nearly knocking his chair over, but he nods. His fear doesn’t matter. Elias’s tone leaves no space for argument.